SUMMARY: Malaria causes nearly half a million deaths worldwide every year. Ninety percent of them are in sub-Saharan Africa, where poor infrastructure limits delivery of drugs. But now there is worry that those drugs are losing effectiveness as disease strains become resistant. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Cambodia, where scientists are researching and tracking new outbreaks.
SUMMARY: Cancer treatment was for years dominated by just four techniques. But there is now a fifth category -- immunotherapy -- thanks to the revolutionary research of Jim Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday. Allison joins Nick Schifrin to discuss his research and his personal connection to fighting the disease.
SUMMARY: A trio of scientists won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating some of the world's tiniest machines. Their nanorobots use extremely controlled movements to perform tasks that the creators hope will one day be useful in the world of medicine. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss these mini machines and the other science and medicine Nobels awarded this week.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The latest winners are in the field of chemistry, and the Nobel went to a trio of scientists who helped pioneer tiny molecular machines in the world of Nanotechnology. These are specially designed molecules that can produce controlled movements. And there's talk they could some day be useful in the world of medicine.
Our science correspondent, Miles O'Brien, is here to walk us through the significance of this and the other Nobels awarded this week. He joins us tonight from San Diego.
Miles; Drs. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard Feringa, for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. How small are we talking?
MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour): Well, think of a nanometer.
A nanometer is — well, there are 80,000 of them in a human hair. That will give you an idea. We're talking very small. Imagine machines at the molecular level that can do work, and some of the applications that we're thinking about are potentially drug delivery inside our system, and many others where tiny machines can pack a punch.
Another application they're looking at potentially, Hari, is creating computer storage capability at the atomic level. Well, if you're storing things at the atomic level, you basically need a processor that is at the molecular model.
And so nanomachines are potentially revolutionary. We're still very early on, though, in that game.
HARI SREENIVASAN: How do you build something that small?
MILES O'BRIEN: It's basically a chemical process that you engage with, and that is part of their insight.
And, you know, basically, the researchers are saying that we're kind of like the Wright Brothers at this point. We built a flying machine, but how could you possibly have conceived of the 747 at the time that occurred?
These mechanisms, these tiny nanomachines, have the capability of revolutionizing medicine, revolutionizing computer storage, and really who knows what, because we can't imagine that 747.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, let's shift to physics.
The Nobel was given to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz for something called topological phase transitions and phases of matter. I need an advanced degree just to understand what the prize was for.
MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, yes, it's — this is a tough one. It's a lot of mathematics and physics. And it's difficult, frankly. It's tough sledding.
But it is a very human moment involved. There is a very human moment involved. Dr. Kosterlitz got the word in his car. Listen to his response.
QUESTION: We run the official Web site for the Nobel Prize. Have you already heard the news of the announcements to the physics…
DR. MICHAEL KOSTERLITZ, Nobel Prize Winner: No, haven't heard anything. I'm talking from an underground car park in Helsinki, Finland, right now. So, I can barely hear you.
SUMMARY: There are so many ways to spend money on health care, but which offer the most bang for the buck? Dr. Chris Murray is trying to answer that question with an equation that measures the impact of different interventions. Countries that rely on big data have made big strides in health care, but some say the system ignores the human side of medicine. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now, using big data to assess medical treatments and interventions and whether decisions for individual patients are the right choice for all of society.
That’s not necessarily seen as the right way of making decisions in science and medicine when lives are at stake. But some believe it’s a critical consideration.
Our science correspondent Miles O’Brien looks at how some thinkers in the field are challenging long-held assumptions.
The story was produced in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): This is where the line between life and death is drawn, an operating room at a hospital in a remote part of Nepal.
Dr. Shree Ram Tiwari is performing one of the first C-sections in this part of the world, hoping to save the lives of Muna Buhl and her unborn child. It’s not going smoothly.
DR. SHREE RAM TIWARI, Physician (through interpreter): The power cut out at such an important time, because the baby should keep crying after it’s born, but it wasn’t. We needed power for the suction machine.
MILES O’BRIEN: Bringing C-sections to this remote corner comes not only with risks, but also a hefty price tag. The bills are paid by Possible, the American charity that runs the hospital.
DR. SHREE RAM TIWARI (through interpreter): Nepal’s constitution talks about health rights, that every person should have access to health care. But that is not implemented.
MILES O’BRIEN: While mother and child remain the focus for Dr. Tiwari as he copes with the power failure, the global health community tries to shed light on whether this surgery should have happened at all.
Medical ethicist Peter Singer is a professor at Princeton University. He is a leading proponent of a philosophy called effective altruism.
PETER SINGER, Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University: Effective altruists look for those health care programs worldwide that offer the low-hanging fruit. Where can you save lives most cheaply?
SUMMARY: In medical school, Dr. Damon Tweedy says he learned about health problems being more common in the black community, but he didn’t hear the reasons why. In “Black Man in a White Coat,” Tweedy examines racial disparities in medicine, for both patients and medical professionals.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Being black can be bad for your health.
It’s a lesson Damon Tweedy writes in his new book, “Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine,” that he learned time and again in his own life and in his many years as a doctor. Tweedy is a psychiatrist at Duke University, where he also attended medical school.
And welcome to you.
DR. DAMON TWEEDY, Author, Black Man in a White Coat: Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, you start with this big subject. Is that what started it for you, that you wanted to write about?
DR. DAMON TWEEDY: Yes.
So, race is this really highly charged political subject that we have in our society, obviously, but, for me, this is a very personal story. This is really kind of about my experience and my journey.
All too often in medical school, you learn about health problems in the black community, you learn — you hear this disease is more common than this. It’s always more common in black people, but you didn’t really hear why. And so it wasn’t — and the question of why is a huge issue for me.
And there was also a big question about how my experience as a young black man was different than the experiences of other people in my class.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, that comes through, because you’re also saying that, as a young doctor in training, you’re saying constantly hearing about the medical frailties of black people picked at the scab of your insecurity. You didn’t set out thinking about medicine and race.
DR. DAMON TWEEDY: No, I was actually attracted to medicine.
It was sort of like this — it was almost like a post-racial kind of mind-set I had. Medicine to me held it appeal to being objective, formulas, equations. And it was really — and that was appealing. So much of society is messy, and life is messy as a black person. So this — it was this appeal that it could be objective.
And then, when I got to medical school, I kind of got a rude awakening that it wasn’t.
SUMMARY: Video conferencing technology can now connect patients and physicians almost instantaneously, offering convenience, efficiency and savings. But what happens to the doctor-patient relationship if you're never in the same room? Hari Sreenivasan reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Videoconferencing has become so commonplace that we have grown comfortable communicating with one another through pixels on a screen.
That comfort, combined with rapid advances in health monitoring technology, is fueling a new boom in telemedicine. Teladoc, a big player in providing video and telephone medical consults, had an extremely successful launch when it went public on the stock market earlier this month. It raised more than $270 million on the first day.
As Hari Sreenivasan explains, telemedicine is beginning to transform the way we experience the medical system. It’s the latest in our Breakthroughs series on invention and innovation.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): A simple ritual, like gardening on a hot summer day, is something Tom and Trisha Uhrhammer don’t take for granted anymore.
TRISHA UHRHAMMER: Can you use some basil?
HARI SREENIVASAN: Just a year ago, Tom had a massive stroke.
TOM UHRHAMMER: I was sitting right next door here in this room watching TV. Time to go to bed. So I got up and walked up the stairs, and I didn’t make it. I collapsed short of the bed.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The paramedics took Tom, who was paralyzed on his left side, to nearby Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento. With blood seeping into his skull, creating enormous pressure on his brain, time was of the essence. That’s when a telestroke robot was deployed to the E.R.
SUMMARY: This week, astronaut Scott Kelly arrived at the International Space Station, where he will stay for a year -- the longest duration of time any American has spent in space. While Scott is in orbit, researchers on Earth will be studying his identical twin brother Mark Kelly for insight into how space affects the human body. Jeffrey Brown learns more from former astronaut Chris Hadfield.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally, a conversation about an out-of-this-world experience: living in space.
Astronaut Scott Kelly arrived this weekend at the International Space Station. He will stay there for almost a year, the longest duration an American has ever spent in space. He’s the identical twin brother of former astronaut Mark Kelly. And both will participate in a study to see the effects of living in space.
After Scott Kelly lifted off on Friday, Jeffrey Brown spoke with a former astronaut, Chris Hadfield, whose final stay on the space station lasted five months.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Chris Hadfield, welcome to you.
The twin study is especially interesting this time, right, the research on the two brothers, Scott and Mark Kelly, one in space, one on the ground. What kinds of things are being looked at?
CHRIS HADFIELD, Canadian Space Agency: Yes, it sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it, to have an identical twin on a space ship and another one down on the ground?
But it’s just luck, but, boy, it sure provides some interesting medical and scientific opportunity. You take two people that are as identical as they can be. You put them in wildly different environments, one of them that is really brand-new for humanity, living in weightlessness off the planet, and then you watch how they change over a year. You measure all of those subtle things, bone density, muscle strength, psychology, vision, blood pressure, blood pressure regulation, all of those, liver function, everything.
And it is really going to help us not only understand spaceflight for long-term flight, for going from here to the moon and Mars and beyond, but also just understand the effects on the body of flight itself, the subtle changes that happen within the body, and teach us inherently about physiology. It’s a really cool thing. It’s never been done before.
