
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


It’s hard to believe today, but leaching was once considered a legitimate and effective medical practice. Years from now, we may look back upon chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer in much the same way we now look upon leaching.
In labs today, all across the world, new forms of treatment for cancer and many other diseases under the general heading of immunotherapy are being discovered. The magic of the body’s own immune system is being brought to the task. However, there is no one size fits all, no silver bullet and such treatments are not a free ride. Either with respect to costs or side effects.
Just as the discovery of penicillin and the class of antibiotics, saved millions and truly changed the world, immunotherapy is on the precipice of doing the same for the 21st century.
However, its complexity, its connection to virtually every other aspect of the human body makes its study and the ability to harness and manipulate it, the medical holy grail of our times. Helping us to understand this is Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Matt Richtel in Elegant Defense, An: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives.
My conversation with Matt Richtel:
By Jeff Schechtman3.7
77 ratings
It’s hard to believe today, but leaching was once considered a legitimate and effective medical practice. Years from now, we may look back upon chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer in much the same way we now look upon leaching.
In labs today, all across the world, new forms of treatment for cancer and many other diseases under the general heading of immunotherapy are being discovered. The magic of the body’s own immune system is being brought to the task. However, there is no one size fits all, no silver bullet and such treatments are not a free ride. Either with respect to costs or side effects.
Just as the discovery of penicillin and the class of antibiotics, saved millions and truly changed the world, immunotherapy is on the precipice of doing the same for the 21st century.
However, its complexity, its connection to virtually every other aspect of the human body makes its study and the ability to harness and manipulate it, the medical holy grail of our times. Helping us to understand this is Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Matt Richtel in Elegant Defense, An: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives.
My conversation with Matt Richtel:

38,460 Listeners

3,986 Listeners

9,508 Listeners

12,460 Listeners

5,569 Listeners

8,179 Listeners

15,836 Listeners

2,059 Listeners

759 Listeners

4,500 Listeners