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Science.
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The very word for many of you conjures
unhappy memories of boredom
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in high school biology or physics class.
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But let me assure that what you did there
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had very little to do with science.
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That was really the "what" of science.
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It was the history
of what other people had discovered.
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What I'm most interested in as a scientist
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is the "how" of science.
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Because science is knowledge in process.
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We make an observation,
guess an explanation for that observation,
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and then make a prediction
that we can test
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with an experiment or other observation.
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A couple of examples.
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First of all, people noticed
that the Earth was below, the sky above,
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and both the Sun and the Moon
seemed to go around them.
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Their guessed explanation
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was that the Earth must be
the center of the universe.
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The prediction: everything
should circle around the Earth.
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This was first really tested
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when Galileo got his hands
on one of the first telescopes,
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and as he gazed into the night sky,
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what he found there was a planet, Jupiter,
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with four moons circling around it.
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He then used those moons
to follow the path of Jupiter
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and found that Jupiter
also was not going around the Earth
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but around the Sun.
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So the prediction test failed.
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And this led to
the discarding of the theory
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that the Earth was the center
of the universe.
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Another example: Sir Isaac Newton
noticed that things fall to the Earth.
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The guessed explanation was gravity,
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the prediction that everything
should fall to the Earth.
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But of course, not everything
does fall to the Earth.
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So did we discard gravity?
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No. We revised the theory and said,
gravity pulls things to the Earth
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unless there is an equal
and opposite force in the other direction.
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This led us to learn something new.
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We began to pay more attention
to the bird and the bird's wings,
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and just think of all the discoveries
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that have flown
from that line of thinking.
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So the test failures,
the exceptions, the outliers
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teach us what we don't know
and lead us to something new.
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This is how science moves forward.
This is how science learns.
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Sometimes in the media,
and even more rarely,
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but sometimes even scientists will say
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that something or other
has been scientifically proven.
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But I hope that you understand
that science never proves anything
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definitively forever.
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Hopefully science remains curious enough
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to look for
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and humble enough to recognize
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when we have found
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the next outlier,
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the next exception,
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which, like Jupiter's moons,
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teaches us what we don't actually know.
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We're going to change gears
here for a second.
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The caduceus, or the symbol of medicine,
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means a lot of different things
to different people,
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but most of our
public discourse on medicine
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really turns it into
an engineering problem.
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We have the hallways of Congress,
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and the boardrooms of insurance companies
that try to figure out how to pay for it.
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The ethicists and epidemiologists
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try to figure out
how best to distribute medicine,
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and the hospitals and physicians
are absolutely obsessed
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with their protocols and checklists,
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trying to figure out
how best to safely apply medicine.
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These are all good things.
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However, they also all assume
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at some level
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that the textbook of medicine is closed.
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We start to measure
the quality of our health care
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by how quickly we can access it.
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It doesn't surprise me
that in this climate,
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many of our institutions
for the provision of health care
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start to look a heck of a lot
like Jiffy Lube.
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(Laughter)
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The only problem is that
when I graduated from medical school,
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I didn't get one of those
little doohickeys
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that your mechanic
has to plug into your car
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and find out exactly what's wrong with it,
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because the textbook of medicine
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is not closed.
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Medicine is science.
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Medicine is knowledge in process.
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We make an observation,
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we guess an explanation
of that observation,
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and then we make a prediction
that we can test.
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Now, the testing ground
of most predictions in medicine
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is populations,
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and you may remember
from those boring days in biology class
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that populations tend to distribute
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around a mean
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as a Gaussian or a normal curve.
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Therefore, in medicine,
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after we make a prediction
from a guessed explanation,
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we test it in a population.
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That means that what we know in medicine,
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our knowledge and our know-how,
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comes from populations,
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but extends only as far
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as the next outlier,
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the next exception,
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which, like Jupiter's moons,
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will teach us what we don't actually know.
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Now, I am a surgeon
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who looks after patients with sarcoma.
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Sarcoma is a very rare form of cancer.
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It's the cancer of flesh and bones.
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And I would tell you that every one
of my patients is an outlier,
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is an exception.
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There is no surgery I have ever performed
for a sarcoma patient
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that has ever been guided
by a randomized controlled clinical trial,
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what we consider the best kind
of population-based evidence in medicine.
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People talk about thinking
outside the box,
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but we don't even have a box in sarcoma.
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What we do have as we take
a bath in the uncertainty
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and unknowns and exceptions
and outliers that surround us in sarcoma
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is easy access to what I think
are those two most important values
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for any science:
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humility and curiosity.
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Because if I am humble and curious,
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when a patient asks me a question,
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and I don't know the answer,
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I'll ask a colleague
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who may have a similar
albeit distinct patient with sarcoma.
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We'll even establish
international collaborations.
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Those patients will start
to talk to each other through chat rooms
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and support groups.
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It's through this kind
of humbly curious communication
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that we begin to try and learn new things.
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As an example, this is a patient of mine
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who had a cancer near his knee.
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Because of humbly curious communication
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in international collaborations,
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we have learned that we can repurpose
the ankle to serve as the knee
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when we have to remove the knee
with the cancer.
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He can then wear a prosthetic
and run and jump and play.
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This opportunity was available to him
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because of international collaborations.
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It was desirable to him
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because he had contacted other patients
who had experienced it.
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And so exceptions and outliers in medicine
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teach us what we don't know,
but also lead us to new thinking.
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Now, very importantly,
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all the new thinking that outliers
and exceptions lead us to in medicine
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does not only apply
to the outliers and exceptions.
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It is not that we only learn
from sarcoma patients
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ways to manage sarcoma patients.
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Sometimes, the outliers
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and the exceptions
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teach us things that matter quite a lot
to the general population.
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Like a tree standing outside a forest,
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the outliers and the exceptions
draw our attention
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and lead us into a much greater sense
of perhaps what a tree is.
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We often talk about
losing the forests for the trees,
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but one also loses a tree
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within a forest.
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But the tree that stands out by itself
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makes those relationships
that define a tree,
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the relationships between trunk
and roots and branches,
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much more apparent.
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Even if that tree is crooked
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or even if that tree
has very unusual relationships
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between trunk and roots and branches,
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it nonetheless draws our attention
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and allows us to make observations
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that we can then test
in the general population.
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I told you that sarcomas are rare.
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They make up about one percent
of all cancers.
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You also probably know that cancer
is considered a genetic disease.
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By genetic disease we mean
that cancer is caused by oncogenes
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that are turned on in cancer
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and tumor suppressor genes
that are turned off to cause cancer.
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You might think
that we learned about oncogenes
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and tumor suppressor genes
from common cancers
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like breast cancer and prostate cancer
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and lung cancer,
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but you'd be wrong.
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We learned about oncogenes
and tumor suppressor genes
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for the first time
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in that itty-bitty little one percent
of cancers called sarcoma.
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In 1966, Peyton Rous got the Nobel Prize
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for realizing that chickens
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had a transmissible form of sarcoma.
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30 years later, Harold Varmus
and Mike Bishop discovered
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what that transmissible element was.
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It was a virus
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carrying a gene,
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the src oncogene.
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Now, I will not tell you
that src is the most important oncogene.
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I will not tell you
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that src is the most frequently
turned on oncogene in all of cancer.
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But it was the first oncogene.
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The exception, the outlier
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drew our attention and led us to something
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that taught us very important things
about the rest of biology.
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Now, TP53 is the most important
tumor suppressor gene.
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It is the most frequently turned off
tumor suppressor gene
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in almost every kind of cancer,
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but we didn't learn about it
from common cancers.
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We learned about it
when doctors Li and Fraumeni
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were looking at families
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and they realized that these families
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had way too many sarcomas.
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I told you that sarcoma is rare.
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Remember that a one
in a million diagnosis,
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if it happens twice in one family,
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is way too common in that family.
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The very fact that these are rare
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draws our attention
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and leads us to new kinds of thinking.
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Now, many of you may say,
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and may rightly say,
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that yeah, Kevin, that's great,
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but you're not talking
about a bird's wing.
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You're not talking about moons
floating around some planet Jupiter.
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This is a person.
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This outlier, this exception,
may lead to the advancement of science,
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but this is a person.
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And all I can say
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is that I know that all too well.
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I have conversations with these patients
with rare and deadly diseases.
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I write about these conversations.
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These conversations are terribly fraught.
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They're fraught with horrible phrases
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like "I have bad news"
or "there's nothing more we can do."
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Sometimes these conversations
turn on a single word:
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"terminal."
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Silence can also be rather uncomfortable.
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Where the blanks are in medicine
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can be just as important
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as the words that we use
in these conversations.
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What are the unknowns?
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What are the experiments
that are being done?
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Do this little exercise with me.
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Up there on the screen,
you see this phrase, "no where."
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Notice where the blank is.
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If we move that blank one space over
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"no where"
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becomes "now here,"
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the exact opposite meaning,
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just by shifting the blank one space over.
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I'll never forget the night
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that I walked into
one of my patients' rooms.
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I had been operating long that day
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but I still wanted to come and see him.
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He was a boy I had diagnosed
with a bone cancer a few days before.
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He and his mother had been meeting
with the chemotherapy doctors
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earlier that day
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and he had been admitted
to the hospital to begin chemotherapy.
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It was almost midnight
when I got to his room.
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He was asleep, but I found his mother
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reading by flashlight
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next to his bed.
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She came out in the hall
to chat with me for a few minutes.
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It turned out that
what she had been reading
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was the protocol
that the chemotherapy doctors
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had given her that day.
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She had memorized it.
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She said, "Doctor Jones, you told me
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that we don't always win
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with this type of cancer,
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but I've been studying this protocol,
and I think I can do it.
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I think I can comply
with these very difficult treatments.
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I'm going to quit my job.
I'm going to move in with my parents.
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I'm going to keep my baby safe."
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I didn't tell her.
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I didn't stop to correct her thinking.
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She was trusting in a protocol
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that even if complied with,
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wouldn't necessarily save her son.
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I didn't tell her.
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I didn't fill in that blank.
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But a year and a half later
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her boy nonetheless died of his cancer.
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Should I have told her?
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Now, many of you may say, "So what?
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I don't have sarcoma.
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No one in my family has sarcoma.
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And this is all fine and well,
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but it probably doesn't
matter in my life."
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And you're probably right.
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Sarcoma may not matter
a whole lot in your life.
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But where the blanks are in medicine
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does matter in your life.
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I didn't tell you one dirty little secret.
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I told you that in medicine,
we test predictions in populations,
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but I didn't tell you,
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and so often medicine never tells you
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that every time an individual
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encounters medicine,
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even if that individual is firmly
embedded in the general population,
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neither the individual
nor the physician knows
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where in that population
the individual will land.
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Therefore, every encounter with medicine
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is an experiment.
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You will be a subject
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in an experiment.
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And the outcome will be either
a better or a worse result for you.
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As long as medicine works well,
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we're fine with fast service,
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bravado, brimmingly
confident conversations,
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but when things don't work well,
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sometimes we want something different.
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A colleague of mine
removed a tumor from a patient's limb.
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He was concerned about this tumor.
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In our physician conferences,
he talked about his concern
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that this was a type of tumor
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that had a high risk
for coming back in the same limb.
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But his conversations with the patient
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were exactly what a patient might want:
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brimming with confidence.
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He said, "I got it all
and you're good to go."
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She and her husband were thrilled.
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They went out, celebrated, fancy dinner,
opened a bottle of champagne.
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The only problem was a few weeks later,
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she started to notice
another nodule in the same area.
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It turned out he hadn't gotten it all
and she wasn't good to go.
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But what happened at this juncture
absolutely fascinates me.
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My colleague came to me and said,
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"Kevin, would you mind
looking after this patient for me?"
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I said, "Why, you know the right thing
to do as well as I do.
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You haven't done anything wrong."
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He said, "Please, just look
after this patient for me."
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He was embarrassed --
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not by what he had done,
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but by the conversation that he had had,
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by the overconfidence.
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So I performed
a much more invasive surgery
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and had a very different conversation
with the patient afterwards.
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I said, "Most likely I've gotten it all
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and you're most likely good to go,
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but this is the experiment
that we're doing.
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This is what you're going to watch for.
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This is what I'm going to watch for.
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And we're going to work together
to find out if this surgery will work
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to get rid of your cancer."
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I can guarantee you, she and her husband
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did not crack another bottle of champagne
after talking to me.
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But she was now a scientist,
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not only a subject in her experiment.
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And so I encourage you
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to seek humility and curiosity
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in your physicians.
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Almost 20 billion times each year,
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a person walks into a doctor's office,
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and that person becomes a patient.
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You or someone you love
will be that patient sometime very soon.
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How will you talk to your doctors?
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What will you tell them?
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What will they tell you?
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They cannot tell you
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what they do not know,
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but they can tell you when they don't know
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if only you'll ask.
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So please, join the conversation.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)