WEBVTT 00:00:05.415 --> 00:00:06.858 Hi. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:07.622 --> 00:00:08.959 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:08.983 --> 00:00:10.680 [Jennifer Brea is sound-sensitive. 00:00:10.704 --> 00:00:13.849 The live audience was asked to applaud ASL-style, in silence.] NOTE Paragraph 00:00:13.873 --> 00:00:17.240 So, five years ago, this was me. 00:00:17.747 --> 00:00:19.752 I was a PhD student at Harvard, 00:00:19.776 --> 00:00:21.809 and I loved to travel. 00:00:22.472 --> 00:00:25.652 I had just gotten engaged to marry the love of my life. 00:00:27.072 --> 00:00:31.047 I was 28, and like so many of us when we are in good health, 00:00:31.071 --> 00:00:33.102 I felt like I was invincible. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:34.477 --> 00:00:38.147 Then one day I had a fever of 104.7 degrees. 00:00:38.758 --> 00:00:40.807 I probably should have gone to the doctor, 00:00:40.831 --> 00:00:43.395 but I'd never really been sick in my life, 00:00:43.419 --> 00:00:45.772 and I knew that usually, if you have a virus, 00:00:45.796 --> 00:00:48.929 you stay home and you make some chicken soup, 00:00:48.953 --> 00:00:51.266 and in a few days, everything will be fine. 00:00:52.499 --> 00:00:54.336 But this time it wasn't fine. 00:00:55.560 --> 00:00:57.097 After the fever broke, 00:00:57.121 --> 00:01:00.972 for three weeks I was so dizzy, I couldn't leave my house. 00:01:01.467 --> 00:01:03.661 I would walk straight into door frames. 00:01:04.335 --> 00:01:07.295 I had to hug the walls just to make it to the bathroom. 00:01:08.613 --> 00:01:11.270 That spring I got infection after infection, 00:01:11.825 --> 00:01:13.652 and every time I went to the doctor, 00:01:13.676 --> 00:01:16.459 he said there was absolutely nothing wrong. 00:01:17.533 --> 00:01:19.158 He had his laboratory tests, 00:01:19.182 --> 00:01:21.086 which always came back normal. 00:01:21.875 --> 00:01:23.842 All I had were my symptoms, 00:01:23.866 --> 00:01:25.796 which I could describe, 00:01:25.820 --> 00:01:27.512 but no one else can see. 00:01:29.370 --> 00:01:30.593 I know it sounds silly, 00:01:30.617 --> 00:01:33.885 but you have to find a way to explain things like this to yourself, 00:01:33.909 --> 00:01:37.533 and so I thought maybe I was just aging. 00:01:38.114 --> 00:01:41.667 Maybe this is what it's like to be on the other side of 25. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:41.691 --> 00:01:43.983 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:44.808 --> 00:01:46.976 Then the neurological symptoms started. 00:01:47.590 --> 00:01:51.301 Sometimes I would find that I couldn't draw the right side of a circle. 00:01:52.325 --> 00:01:55.631 Other times I wouldn't be able to speak or move at all. 00:01:58.330 --> 00:02:00.064 I saw every kind of specialist: 00:02:00.088 --> 00:02:03.160 infectious disease doctors, dermatologists, endocrinologists, 00:02:03.184 --> 00:02:04.467 cardiologists. 00:02:04.945 --> 00:02:06.861 I even saw a psychiatrist. 00:02:07.679 --> 00:02:10.923 My psychiatrist said, "It's clear you're really sick, 00:02:10.947 --> 00:02:13.103 but not with anything psychiatric. 00:02:14.045 --> 00:02:16.783 I hope they can find out what's wrong with you." NOTE Paragraph 00:02:18.094 --> 00:02:22.160 The next day, my neurologist diagnosed me with conversion disorder. 00:02:22.842 --> 00:02:24.525 He told me that everything -- 00:02:25.255 --> 00:02:28.232 the fevers, the sore throats, the sinus infection, 00:02:28.916 --> 00:02:32.246 all of the gastrointestinal, neurological and cardiac symptoms -- 00:02:32.715 --> 00:02:35.433 were being caused by some distant emotional trauma 00:02:35.457 --> 00:02:37.063 that I could not remember. 00:02:38.069 --> 00:02:40.067 The symptoms were real, he said, 00:02:40.546 --> 00:02:42.905 but they had no biological cause. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:44.527 --> 00:02:47.136 I was training to be a social scientist. 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:50.392 I had studied statistics, probability theory, 00:02:50.416 --> 00:02:52.990 mathematical modeling, experimental design. 00:02:55.058 --> 00:02:59.051 I felt like I couldn't just reject my neurologist's diagnosis. 00:02:59.599 --> 00:03:01.191 It didn't feel true, 00:03:01.215 --> 00:03:04.685 but I knew from my training that the truth is often counterintuitive, 00:03:05.356 --> 00:03:07.953 so easily obscured by what we want to believe. 00:03:08.514 --> 00:03:11.446 So I had to consider the possibility that he was right. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:13.603 --> 00:03:16.118 That day, I ran a small experiment. 00:03:16.919 --> 00:03:20.332 I walked back the two miles from my neurologist's office to my house, 00:03:21.229 --> 00:03:25.264 my legs wrapped in this strange, almost electric kind of pain. 00:03:26.475 --> 00:03:28.078 I meditated on that pain, 00:03:28.102 --> 00:03:32.121 contemplating how my mind could have possibly generated all this. 00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:35.195 As soon as I walked through the door, 00:03:35.219 --> 00:03:36.384 I collapsed. 00:03:36.837 --> 00:03:39.619 My brain and my spinal cord were burning. 00:03:40.696 --> 00:03:44.467 My neck was so stiff I couldn't touch my chin to my chest, 00:03:45.324 --> 00:03:47.075 and the slightest sound -- 00:03:47.099 --> 00:03:48.934 the rustling of the sheets, 00:03:48.958 --> 00:03:51.223 my husband walking barefoot in the next room -- 00:03:51.737 --> 00:03:53.871 could cause excruciating pain. 00:03:55.832 --> 00:03:58.415 I would spend most of the next two years in bed. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:59.235 --> 00:04:01.995 How could my doctor have gotten it so wrong? 00:04:02.939 --> 00:04:05.120 I thought I had a rare disease, 00:04:05.144 --> 00:04:07.133 something doctors had never seen. 00:04:07.926 --> 00:04:09.121 And then I went online 00:04:09.145 --> 00:04:11.523 and found thousands of people all over the world 00:04:11.980 --> 00:04:13.600 living with the same symptoms, 00:04:14.087 --> 00:04:15.651 similarly isolated, 00:04:15.675 --> 00:04:17.132 similarly disbelieved. 00:04:17.854 --> 00:04:19.137 Some could still work, 00:04:19.161 --> 00:04:21.646 but had to spend their evenings and weekends in bed, 00:04:21.670 --> 00:04:23.737 just so they could show up the next Monday. 00:04:24.364 --> 00:04:26.444 On the other end of the spectrum, 00:04:26.468 --> 00:04:28.206 some were so sick 00:04:28.230 --> 00:04:30.536 they had to live in complete darkness, 00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:33.932 unable to tolerate the sound of a human voice 00:04:33.956 --> 00:04:35.865 or the touch of a loved one. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:37.469 --> 00:04:41.471 I was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis. 00:04:42.554 --> 00:04:46.006 You've probably heard it called "chronic fatigue syndrome." 00:04:46.987 --> 00:04:48.909 For decades, that's a name 00:04:48.933 --> 00:04:50.538 that's meant that this 00:04:51.578 --> 00:04:52.961 has been the dominant image 00:04:52.985 --> 00:04:56.260 of a disease that can be as serious as this. 00:04:57.468 --> 00:04:58.992 The key symptom we all share 00:04:59.016 --> 00:05:02.768 is that whenever we exert ourselves -- physically, mentally -- 00:05:03.296 --> 00:05:05.249 we pay and we pay hard. 00:05:05.807 --> 00:05:09.301 If my husband goes for a run, he might be sore for a couple of days. 00:05:09.325 --> 00:05:12.724 If I try to walk half a block, I might be bedridden for a week. 00:05:13.323 --> 00:05:15.578 It is a perfect custom prison. 00:05:16.261 --> 00:05:19.009 I know ballet dancers who can't dance, 00:05:19.033 --> 00:05:21.206 accountants who can't add, 00:05:21.230 --> 00:05:23.788 medical students who never became doctors. 00:05:24.421 --> 00:05:26.589 It doesn't matter what you once were; 00:05:27.056 --> 00:05:28.846 you can't do it anymore. 00:05:29.475 --> 00:05:31.365 It's been four years, 00:05:31.389 --> 00:05:33.985 and I've still never been as well as I was 00:05:34.009 --> 00:05:37.485 the minute before I walked home from my neurologist's office. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:38.683 --> 00:05:41.878 It's estimated that about 15 to 30 million people around the world 00:05:41.902 --> 00:05:43.156 have this disease. 00:05:43.604 --> 00:05:46.867 In the US, where I'm from, it's about one million people. 00:05:46.891 --> 00:05:50.523 That makes it roughly twice as common as multiple sclerosis. 00:05:51.797 --> 00:05:54.539 Patients can live for decades with the physical function 00:05:54.563 --> 00:05:56.697 of someone with congestive heart failure. 00:05:57.310 --> 00:06:00.348 Twenty-five percent of us are homebound or bedridden, 00:06:00.927 --> 00:06:04.628 and 75 to 85 percent of us can't even work part-time. 00:06:05.385 --> 00:06:07.389 Yet doctors do not treat us 00:06:08.064 --> 00:06:10.002 and science does not study us. 00:06:11.116 --> 00:06:14.544 How could a disease this common and this devastating 00:06:15.325 --> 00:06:17.150 have been forgotten by medicine? NOTE Paragraph 00:06:19.264 --> 00:06:21.788 When my doctor diagnosed me with conversion disorder, 00:06:21.812 --> 00:06:24.500 he was invoking a lineage of ideas about women's bodies 00:06:24.524 --> 00:06:26.674 that are over 2,500 years old. 00:06:27.215 --> 00:06:28.948 The Roman physician Galen thought 00:06:28.972 --> 00:06:31.943 that hysteria was caused by sexual deprivation 00:06:31.967 --> 00:06:34.492 in particularly passionate women. 00:06:35.125 --> 00:06:37.889 The Greeks thought the uterus would literally dry up 00:06:37.913 --> 00:06:40.340 and wander around the body in search of moisture, 00:06:40.364 --> 00:06:42.260 pressing on internal organs -- 00:06:42.284 --> 00:06:43.498 yes -- 00:06:44.648 --> 00:06:47.343 causing symptoms from extreme emotions 00:06:47.367 --> 00:06:49.612 to dizziness and paralysis. 00:06:50.715 --> 00:06:53.319 The cure was marriage and motherhood. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:54.898 --> 00:06:59.458 These ideas went largely unchanged for several millennia until the 1880s, 00:06:59.482 --> 00:07:03.180 when neurologists tried to modernize the theory of hysteria. 00:07:03.764 --> 00:07:05.417 Sigmund Freud developed a theory 00:07:05.441 --> 00:07:08.237 that the unconscious mind could produce physical symptoms 00:07:08.261 --> 00:07:10.276 when dealing with memories or emotions 00:07:10.300 --> 00:07:12.611 too painful for the conscious mind to handle. 00:07:12.635 --> 00:07:15.514 It converted these emotions into physical symptoms. 00:07:17.460 --> 00:07:19.656 This meant that men could now get hysteria, 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:22.178 but of course women were still the most susceptible. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:23.448 --> 00:07:27.065 When I began investigating the history of my own disease, 00:07:27.089 --> 00:07:30.134 I was amazed to find how deep these ideas still run. 00:07:31.011 --> 00:07:32.197 In 1934, 00:07:32.221 --> 00:07:36.996 198 doctors, nurses and staff at the Los Angeles County General Hospital 00:07:37.020 --> 00:07:38.561 became seriously ill. 00:07:38.585 --> 00:07:42.996 They had muscle weakness, stiffness in the neck and back, fevers -- 00:07:43.020 --> 00:07:46.374 all of the same symptoms I had when I first got diagnosed. 00:07:46.928 --> 00:07:49.247 Doctors thought it was a new form of polio. 00:07:50.133 --> 00:07:53.064 Since then, there have been more than 70 outbreaks documented 00:07:53.088 --> 00:07:54.249 around the world, 00:07:54.273 --> 00:07:56.711 of a strikingly similar post-infectious disease. 00:07:57.419 --> 00:08:00.912 All of these outbreaks have tended to disproportionately affect women, 00:08:01.482 --> 00:08:05.409 and in time, when doctors failed to find the one cause of the disease, 00:08:05.433 --> 00:08:08.572 they thought that these outbreaks were mass hysteria. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:09.115 --> 00:08:12.020 Why has this idea had such staying power? 00:08:13.567 --> 00:08:15.363 I do think it has to do with sexism, 00:08:15.387 --> 00:08:18.828 but I also think that fundamentally, doctors want to help. 00:08:18.852 --> 00:08:20.622 They want to know the answer, 00:08:20.646 --> 00:08:25.537 and this category allows doctors to treat what would otherwise be untreatable, 00:08:25.561 --> 00:08:28.366 to explain illnesses that have no explanation. 00:08:29.079 --> 00:08:31.771 The problem is that this can cause real harm. 00:08:32.382 --> 00:08:35.978 In the 1950s, a psychiatrist named Eliot Slater 00:08:36.002 --> 00:08:40.186 studied a cohort of 85 patients who had been diagnosed with hysteria. 00:08:40.766 --> 00:08:44.763 Nine years later, 12 of them were dead and 30 had become disabled. 00:08:44.787 --> 00:08:48.220 Many had undiagnosed conditions like multiple sclerosis, 00:08:48.244 --> 00:08:50.140 epilepsy, brain tumors. 00:08:51.259 --> 00:08:54.984 In 1980, hysteria was officially renamed "conversion disorder." 00:08:55.563 --> 00:08:58.887 When my neurologist gave me that diagnosis in 2012, 00:08:58.911 --> 00:09:01.528 he was echoing Freud's words verbatim, 00:09:01.552 --> 00:09:02.703 and even today, 00:09:02.727 --> 00:09:07.101 women are 2 to 10 times more likely to receive that diagnosis. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:08.487 --> 00:09:12.486 The problem with the theory of hysteria or psychogenic illness 00:09:12.510 --> 00:09:14.544 is that it can never be proven. 00:09:14.568 --> 00:09:17.423 It is by definition the absence of evidence, 00:09:18.192 --> 00:09:19.567 and in the case of ME, 00:09:19.591 --> 00:09:23.596 psychological explanations have held back biological research. 00:09:23.620 --> 00:09:26.919 All around the world, ME is one of the least funded diseases. 00:09:27.321 --> 00:09:34.263 In the US, we spend each year roughly 2,500 dollars per AIDS patient, 00:09:34.809 --> 00:09:37.529 250 dollars per MS patient 00:09:38.100 --> 00:09:41.307 and just 5 dollars per year per ME patient. 00:09:42.125 --> 00:09:44.206 This was not just lightning. 00:09:44.230 --> 00:09:45.994 I was not just unlucky. 00:09:46.494 --> 00:09:49.585 The ignorance surrounding my disease has been a choice, 00:09:49.609 --> 00:09:53.733 a choice made by the institutions that were supposed to protect us. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:55.535 --> 00:09:58.406 We don't know why ME sometimes runs in families, 00:09:58.430 --> 00:10:00.895 why you can get it after almost any infection, 00:10:00.919 --> 00:10:04.652 from enteroviruses to Epstein-Barr virus to Q fever, 00:10:05.123 --> 00:10:08.363 or why it affects women at two to three times the rate of men. 00:10:09.058 --> 00:10:11.777 This issue is much bigger than just my disease. 00:10:12.356 --> 00:10:13.539 When I first got sick, 00:10:13.563 --> 00:10:15.721 old friends were reaching out to me. 00:10:16.180 --> 00:10:19.309 I soon found myself a part of a cohort of women in their late 20s 00:10:19.333 --> 00:10:21.019 whose bodies were falling apart. 00:10:22.012 --> 00:10:24.867 What was striking was just how much trouble we were having 00:10:24.891 --> 00:10:26.049 being taken seriously. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:26.577 --> 00:10:28.535 I learned of one woman with scleroderma, 00:10:28.559 --> 00:10:30.659 an autoimmune connective tissue disease, 00:10:30.683 --> 00:10:33.393 who was told for years that it was all in her head. 00:10:33.417 --> 00:10:35.929 Between the time of onset and diagnosis, 00:10:35.953 --> 00:10:38.380 her esophagus was so thoroughly damaged, 00:10:38.404 --> 00:10:40.649 she will never be able to eat again. 00:10:40.673 --> 00:10:42.855 Another woman with ovarian cancer, 00:10:43.376 --> 00:10:46.124 who for years was told that it was just early menopause. 00:10:47.188 --> 00:10:48.756 A friend from college, 00:10:48.780 --> 00:10:52.675 whose brain tumor was misdiagnosed for years as anxiety. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:54.222 --> 00:10:55.832 Here's why this worries me: 00:10:57.125 --> 00:11:00.576 since the 1950s, rates of many autoimmune diseases 00:11:00.600 --> 00:11:02.303 have doubled to tripled. 00:11:02.818 --> 00:11:05.758 Forty-five percent of patients who are eventually diagnosed 00:11:05.782 --> 00:11:07.776 with a recognized autoimmune disease 00:11:07.800 --> 00:11:10.308 are initially told they're hypochondriacs. 00:11:10.783 --> 00:11:13.933 Like the hysteria of old, this has everything to do with gender 00:11:13.957 --> 00:11:15.823 and with whose stories we believe. 00:11:16.974 --> 00:11:20.625 Seventy-five percent of autoimmune disease patients are women, 00:11:20.649 --> 00:11:23.828 and in some diseases, it's as high as 90 percent. 00:11:25.076 --> 00:11:27.933 Even though these diseases disproportionately affect women, 00:11:27.957 --> 00:11:29.609 they are not women's diseases. 00:11:29.633 --> 00:11:33.321 ME affects children and ME affects millions of men. 00:11:33.345 --> 00:11:35.130 And as one patient told me, 00:11:35.154 --> 00:11:36.662 we get it coming and going -- 00:11:36.686 --> 00:11:40.294 if you're a woman, you're told you're exaggerating your symptoms, 00:11:40.318 --> 00:11:43.776 but if you're a guy, you're told to be strong, to buck up. 00:11:44.676 --> 00:11:48.825 And men may even have a more difficult time getting diagnosed. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:57.419 --> 00:12:00.284 My brain is not what it used to be. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:13.914 --> 00:12:15.241 Here's the good part: 00:12:16.645 --> 00:12:18.824 despite everything, I still have hope. 00:12:19.903 --> 00:12:23.803 So many diseases were once thought of as psychological 00:12:23.827 --> 00:12:26.735 until science uncovered their biological mechanisms. 00:12:27.323 --> 00:12:30.417 Patients with epilepsy could be forcibly institutionalized 00:12:30.441 --> 00:12:35.045 until the EEG was able to measure abnormal electrical activity in the brain. 00:12:35.500 --> 00:12:39.776 Multiple sclerosis could be misdiagnosed as hysterical paralysis 00:12:39.800 --> 00:12:43.112 until the CAT scan and the MRI discovered brain lesions. 00:12:43.945 --> 00:12:45.460 And recently, we used to think 00:12:45.484 --> 00:12:48.304 that stomach ulcers were just caused by stress, 00:12:48.328 --> 00:12:51.648 until we discovered that H. pylori was the culprit. 00:12:52.801 --> 00:12:55.695 ME has never benefited from the kind of science 00:12:55.719 --> 00:12:58.029 that other diseases have had, 00:12:58.053 --> 00:12:59.717 but that's starting to change. 00:13:00.661 --> 00:13:04.202 In Germany, scientists are starting to find evidence of autoimmunity, 00:13:04.226 --> 00:13:06.568 and in Japan, of brain inflammation. 00:13:07.406 --> 00:13:10.460 In the US, scientists at Stanford are finding abnormalities 00:13:10.484 --> 00:13:12.380 in energy metabolism 00:13:12.404 --> 00:13:15.866 that are 16 standard deviations away from normal. 00:13:16.640 --> 00:13:20.685 And in Norway, researchers are running a phase-3 clinical trial 00:13:20.709 --> 00:13:24.376 on a cancer drug that in some patients causes complete remission. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:25.798 --> 00:13:27.459 What also gives me hope 00:13:28.316 --> 00:13:30.333 is the resilience of patients. 00:13:31.968 --> 00:13:33.842 Online we came together, 00:13:34.251 --> 00:13:35.930 and we shared our stories. 00:13:37.449 --> 00:13:40.223 We devoured what research there was. 00:13:40.743 --> 00:13:42.820 We experimented on ourselves. 00:13:43.496 --> 00:13:45.869 We became our own scientists and our own doctors 00:13:45.893 --> 00:13:47.484 because we had to be. 00:13:48.378 --> 00:13:52.117 And slowly I added five percent here, five percent there, 00:13:52.141 --> 00:13:54.374 until eventually, on a good day, 00:13:54.398 --> 00:13:56.304 I was able to leave my home. 00:13:57.815 --> 00:14:00.402 I still had to make ridiculous choices: 00:14:00.568 --> 00:14:04.409 Will I sit in the garden for 15 minutes, or will I wash my hair today? 00:14:04.924 --> 00:14:07.352 But it gave me hope that I could be treated. 00:14:07.693 --> 00:14:10.035 I had a sick body; that was all. 00:14:10.789 --> 00:14:14.820 And with the right kind of help, maybe one day I could get better. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:15.740 --> 00:14:18.943 I came together with patients around the world, 00:14:19.466 --> 00:14:21.220 and we started to fight. 00:14:21.863 --> 00:14:25.034 We have filled the void with something wonderful, 00:14:25.698 --> 00:14:27.190 but it is not enough. 00:14:28.662 --> 00:14:32.699 I still don't know if I will ever be able to run again, 00:14:32.723 --> 00:14:34.620 or walk at any distance, 00:14:34.644 --> 00:14:38.553 or do any of those kinetic things that I now only get to do in my dreams. 00:14:39.143 --> 00:14:42.233 But I am so grateful for how far I have come. 00:14:43.955 --> 00:14:45.440 Progress is slow, 00:14:45.464 --> 00:14:46.756 and it is up 00:14:47.310 --> 00:14:48.566 and it is down, 00:14:49.222 --> 00:14:52.135 but I am getting a little better each day. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:54.013 --> 00:14:57.932 I remember what it was like when I was stuck in that bedroom, 00:14:58.548 --> 00:15:01.496 when it had been months since I had seen the sun. 00:15:03.226 --> 00:15:05.314 I thought that I would die there. 00:15:06.961 --> 00:15:08.528 But here I am today, 00:15:09.255 --> 00:15:10.537 with you, 00:15:11.513 --> 00:15:13.574 and that is a miracle. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:16.606 --> 00:15:20.225 I don't know what would have happened had I not been one of the lucky ones, 00:15:20.377 --> 00:15:22.554 had I gotten sick before the internet, 00:15:22.995 --> 00:15:24.969 had I not found my community. 00:15:25.777 --> 00:15:28.505 I probably would have already taken my own life, 00:15:29.028 --> 00:15:30.935 as so many others have done. 00:15:32.094 --> 00:15:35.318 How many lives could we have saved, decades ago, 00:15:35.957 --> 00:15:37.860 if we had asked the right questions? 00:15:38.626 --> 00:15:40.775 How many lives could we save today 00:15:41.592 --> 00:15:43.754 if we decide to make a real start? NOTE Paragraph 00:15:45.205 --> 00:15:48.248 Even once the true cause of my disease is discovered, 00:15:48.881 --> 00:15:52.356 if we don't change our institutions and our culture, 00:15:52.380 --> 00:15:54.756 we will do this again to another disease. 00:15:55.658 --> 00:15:57.652 Living with this illness has taught me 00:15:57.676 --> 00:16:00.604 that science and medicine are profoundly human endeavors. 00:16:01.153 --> 00:16:03.744 Doctors, scientists and policy makers 00:16:03.768 --> 00:16:06.655 are not immune to the same biases 00:16:07.568 --> 00:16:09.147 that affect all of us. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:11.377 --> 00:16:14.429 We need to think in more nuanced ways about women's health. 00:16:15.119 --> 00:16:19.221 Our immune systems are just as much a battleground for equality 00:16:19.245 --> 00:16:20.827 as the rest of our bodies. 00:16:21.253 --> 00:16:23.597 We need to listen to patients' stories, 00:16:24.542 --> 00:16:27.107 and we need to be willing to say, "I don't know." 00:16:28.024 --> 00:16:30.376 "I don't know" is a beautiful thing. 00:16:31.235 --> 00:16:33.827 "I don't know" is where discovery starts. 00:16:35.365 --> 00:16:36.787 And if we can do that, 00:16:37.447 --> 00:16:41.142 if we can approach the great vastness of all that we do not know, 00:16:41.166 --> 00:16:43.118 and then, rather than fear uncertainty, 00:16:43.142 --> 00:16:45.653 maybe we can greet it with a sense of wonder. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:46.342 --> 00:16:47.693 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:52.096 --> 00:16:53.336 Thank you.