Business Insight Presented by Arlington Dermatology Science and Medicine I am probably going to disappoint some of you today. Some of you who know me from the medical practice realize what I enjoy and have passion for. In my office, I have a wall covered in a huge world map. I love geography. You also will find some historical pictures of people from the past. I love history. Geography and history have interplayed for centuries. I enjoy looking at the old maps and see how our knowledge and technology of developing them changed. Have you ever done a walk over the Google satellite maps? Try, please, you can visit any country on Earth. My true love though is reserved for medicine and science. There are a few things about each scientific field, with medicine being one of them. They evolve. There is nothing static about medicine. What we knew and how we knew it 50 years ago is totally different from what we know now. Ten years ago, we had no idea about the stage of computers as they are now. I want to offer you some examples from the past, just to put it into perspective. All medical discoveries took a long time to develop. Professor Salk spent most of his life working on virology and epidemiology, and it took him 7 years to discover the polio vaccine. It was 1954. Within a year, millions of kids around the world were vaccinated and avoided what was the most dangerous disease of those times. What Dr. Salk did not have, was discovered in 1990. Dr.Collins, whom you can see on TV from time to time as he is a chief of National Institute of Health, came up with genetic mapping. human genome, which ultimately allowed hundreds of diseases to be genetically sequenced. Discovery of human genome changed everything in modern medical science and development of cures and drugs. With time, almost every virus, every genetic disease can be 'sequenced', which is nothing else but a very specific formula of human DNA and its deviations. If Dr.Salk had had this technology, his discovery would have taken months and not years. I picked Dr.Salk for some other reasons as well. Yes, he was a genius in medical science. Yes, he was an extremely hardworking individual who dedicated his whole life to medical research. But he also had a very specific philosophy of medicine and discovery. When asked about the ownership of a patent for the polio vaccine, he responded humbly that it was young people who were the owners. People who participated in clinical trials and allowed for experiments to happen in order to prove his concepts. He did not seek attention or money. He just wanted to work further and bring more benefit to the society. He actually did as one of the early troopers in research of AIDS. If you really believe in science, you do not politicize it. You do not commercialize it. You work on concepts that you believe might bring benefit to humans. I do not like politics and I do not like commercialization. i never really identified with any of it, which might be surprising to some of you. Being a doctor, for me, means leaving all of that behind and staying in front of my patients, making decisions based on science and ethics. Science and ethics have no political affiliations or price tag. You may say that it is not possible. Well, it is and it should be. When you conduct clinical trials, you are a subject of many rules. They are international rules, with no physical borders or political structures. You look at every new drug and every new discovery from one point of view: is the benefit of developing this new entity higher than the possible risk of putting it in use. You should read that last statement twice. Every time a doctor sees a patient and is making a medical decision, that statement is what stands before him. It is a scientific knowledge and ethical view that make us good doctors. Not political views or big billboard commercials. Michael Bukhalo, MD Arlington Dermatology 5301 Keystone Court Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 Tel. 847 392 5440 | www.arlingtondermatology.net Business Insight Presented by Arlington Dermatology Science and Medicine I am probably going to disappoint some of you today. Some of you who know me from the medical practice realize what I enjoy and have passion for. In my office, I have a wall covered in a huge world map. I love geography. You also will find some historical pictures of people from the past. I love history. Geography and history have interplayed for centuries. I enjoy looking at the old maps and see how our knowledge and technology of developing them changed. Have you ever done a walk over the Google satellite maps? Try, please, you can visit any country on Earth. My true love though is reserved for medicine and science. There are a few things about each scientific field, with medicine being one of them. They evolve. There is nothing static about medicine. What we knew and how we knew it 50 years ago is totally different from what we know now. Ten years ago, we had no idea about the stage of computers as they are now. I want to offer you some examples from the past, just to put it into perspective. All medical discoveries took a long time to develop. Professor Salk spent most of his life working on virology and epidemiology, and it took him 7 years to discover the polio vaccine. It was 1954. Within a year, millions of kids around the world were vaccinated and avoided what was the most dangerous disease of those times. What Dr. Salk did not have, was discovered in 1990. Dr.Collins, whom you can see on TV from time to time as he is a chief of National Institute of Health, came up with genetic mapping. human genome, which ultimately allowed hundreds of diseases to be genetically sequenced. Discovery of human genome changed everything in modern medical science and development of cures and drugs. With time, almost every virus, every genetic disease can be 'sequenced', which is nothing else but a very specific formula of human DNA and its deviations. If Dr.Salk had had this technology, his discovery would have taken months and not years. I picked Dr.Salk for some other reasons as well. Yes, he was a genius in medical science. Yes, he was an extremely hardworking individual who dedicated his whole life to medical research. But he also had a very specific philosophy of medicine and discovery. When asked about the ownership of a patent for the polio vaccine, he responded humbly that it was young people who were the owners. People who participated in clinical trials and allowed for experiments to happen in order to prove his concepts. He did not seek attention or money. He just wanted to work further and bring more benefit to the society. He actually did as one of the early troopers in research of AIDS. If you really believe in science, you do not politicize it. You do not commercialize it. You work on concepts that you believe might bring benefit to humans. I do not like politics and I do not like commercialization. i never really identified with any of it, which might be surprising to some of you. Being a doctor, for me, means leaving all of that behind and staying in front of my patients, making decisions based on science and ethics. Science and ethics have no political affiliations or price tag. You may say that it is not possible. Well, it is and it should be. When you conduct clinical trials, you are a subject of many rules. They are international rules, with no physical borders or political structures. You look at every new drug and every new discovery from one point of view: is the benefit of developing this new entity higher than the possible risk of putting it in use. You should read that last statement twice. Every time a doctor sees a patient and is making a medical decision, that statement is what stands before him. It is a scientific knowledge and ethical view that make us good doctors. Not political views or big billboard commercials. Michael Bukhalo, MD Arlington Dermatology 5301 Keystone Court Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 Tel. 847 392 5440 | www.arlingtondermatology.net