Another excellent talk at TED:
“Surgeon and inventor Catherine Mohr tours the history of surgery (and its pre-painkiller, pre-antiseptic past), then demos some of the newest tools for surgery through tiny incisions, performed using nimble robot hands. Fascinating — but not for the squeamish.”
Speaking at a London girls’ school, Michelle Obama makes a passionate, personal case for each student to take education seriously. It is this new, brilliant generation, she says, that will close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be.
A very inspiring talk with the message that “everything is possible with education and hard work.”
“Using genetic sequencing, needle-haystack research, and dogged persistence, Nathan Wolfe has proven what was science-fiction conjecture only a few decades ago — not only do viruses jump from animals to humans, but they do so all the time. Along the way Wolfe has discovered several new viruses, and is poised to discover many more. His research may open the door before the next pandemic may happen.”
Watch this awesome presentation at TED 2009.
A related presentation was given by Joe DiRisi at TED 2006 in which he described a DNA Microarray test (Virochip) that can not only detect all viruses in one test but also has the capability (and technology) to detect relatively unknown viruses.
Acquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is potentially fatal disease caused by HIV virus. AIDS renders our body defenseless against any and every infection in the world by killing the immune system.
The currently available treatment – highly active anti-retroviral treatment (HAART) is very effective in giving people a few more decades to live. However, HAART has 2 major problems:
Therefore, it is of imperative importance that we find a cure for this deadly disease which is safer (ideally without side effects) and does not need to be taken over a protracted period of time.
Mortality data of HIV/AIDS in the world and US:
Video: BLOODLINE: AIDS and Family is a short documentary movie by Kristen Ashburn and takes an intimate look at the harsh reality of the AIDS pandemic in Africa (available for online viewing on Mediastorm Project website).
Video: HIV 101 – This is a 10 minute video explaining HIV and AIDS (YouTube Link)
Let’s take this scenario:-
A prominent scientist X publishes a clinical trial that Drug A is effective in a particular disease.
Another scientist Y publishes another article reinforcing that Drug A is indeed an effective treatment.
Then several small studies are done which show that Drug A has harmful side effects. Some of these get accepted in prominent journals, while others are rejected. Five years later, FDA discovers to its surprise (!!!!) that Drug A is indeed associated with harmful side effects.
This has happened, is happening and will happen!!!
The big question is – Is there any way to prevent this?
Welcome to open source scientific data sharing.
Open source data sharing is similar to open source software, where not only the end result (i.e. software) but also the source code is given away for free. Open source data sharing therefore should aim to not only have all the scientific articles available for free but should also include the raw data that was generated during the course of the experiment or clinical trial.
There are thousands of scientists in the world who can benefit from this data and come up with amazing results. Probably, if the data for Vioxx and Vytorin studies was available online, their side effect profile would be exposed much earlier by “entrepreneur” scientists.
This talk given by Clay Shirky at TED in 2005 explains why we need to move from institutionalization towards open collaboration (which can only be enabled by data sharing).
Of course, there are certain differences between his and my proposal. He is giving public the authority to generate data. I am proposing that scientists generate data by careful experiments/clinical trials and publish their results but in addition make the data available for “entrepreneur” scientists to analyze. It is better to have many eyes looking at data rather than a few.
Besides searching for potential side effects in a mountain of data, open source data sharing has bigger benefits. Consider this:
Many NGO’s are currently funding scientific research in the hope of speeding up the process of scientific research to produce results quickly. Stand up to Cancer is bringing the best scientific minds across the world to develop new medications to fight cancer. This is excellent – but it goes back to Clay Shirky’s talk – Institutionalization vs open collaboration. The best brains can generate excellent data and also probably are the best people to analyze it. But, this data generated should be made available for all other scientists on this planet to analyze and build upon.
Historically most inventions happened by accident. Entrepreneur scientists can make these accidents happen more often - only if given access to scientific data.
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