The Most Exciting Month of Medical Breakthroughs in Years

For years, scientists worried that medical progress was slowing down. Drug development became more expensive than ever with more complex clinical trials, and even then, many new treatments offered only modest gains. But over the past month, a series of breakthroughs has raised hopes that medicine may be entering a new era. Researchers unveiled a massively promising new therapy for pancreatic cancer, a gene-editing treatment that could dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease, and an experimental obesity drug that not only produces unprecedented weight loss but also improves a huge range of related conditions. Cancer and heart disease are America’s two biggest killers, but if these treatments fulfill their promise, they could transform public health and extend millions of lives. Today’s guest is Matthew Herper, senior writer at STAT News. We discuss this remarkable month in medicine, why so many advances are arriving at once, and what they could mean for the future of human health. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Matthew HerperProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman All Matches Streaming Live. Watch 3 Days Free. Offers are subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(404)

The Truth About Mississippi's Education "Miracle"

Education outcomes have been getting worse across much of the world, with reading and math scores falling to historic lows. The U.S. has seen some of the steepest declines in decades. But, why does ...

18 Sep 56min

Why Experts Keep Getting the Economy So Wrong

Expert economists keep making predictions about America’s financial future, and those predictions keep being … wrong. Over the past few years, we’ve heard warnings about a recession, inflation, tariff...

15 Sep 58min

What’s the Point of College?

Trust in American higher education is near a historic low. Tuition has soared, and the payoff for a college degree is now in question as graduates face a weird and challenging job market. Simultaneous...

11 Sep 56min

The New Book That Scares Big Tech

In the late 19th century, a railroad boom fueled by easy money, speculative investment, and new technology helped kick off one of the worst financial crises in American history. Sound kind of familiar...

8 Sep 59min

AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet. Can We Save It?

So many people seem to hate AI, and it’s not just because it might displace millions of jobs, destroy the world, or deepen distrust in big corporations and government. The reason might actually be sim...

1 Sep 56min

Why Everything Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive

For much of the 21st century, the U.S. economy was built around cheap money. Today, though, interest rates are rising, and borrowing is getting much more expensive. At the same time, the federal gover...

25 Aug 41min

Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’

It would be an understatement to say that higher education is in crisis, as it faces attacks from both the current presidential administration as well as issues of its own making, like diversity polit...

18 Aug 1h 2min

It May Be Time to Freak Out About AI

Today, Derek talks with cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos about a recent wave of alarming AI cyberattacks. For decades, one of the biggest fears about AI has been that the machines will start doing thi...

14 Aug 1h 17min