ThinkLONG
The Oxford Martin School Blog
Entries by Theme: Health & Medicine
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HIV cure: scientific reality or media hype?
Until a few years ago there was no talk of curing HIV writes Dr John Frater. Research focused on making anti-HIV drugs better, trying to find a vaccine or understanding why they didn’t seem to be working. Another area was public healt... Read More »
Nano: avoiding toxic shock
How do you regulate for the unknown? In the field of nanotechnology this has become a crucial question. We can currently buy on the open market a variety of products using silver nanoparticles…but scientists have recently discovered the tox... Read More »
Medical ethics on trial
How do you balance the risks and benefits from trialling a new drug? After all, the people with the most to gain from a successful new vaccine for HIV or Hepatitis C are often those who are most vulnerable in the first place. Clinical trials are e... Read More »
Walk the line
Imagine a world where we could correct climate change with a scientific procedure; we could fight cancer using nanoparticles to target malignant cells; we could comfortably feed our growing population with disease and drought resistant crops; we c... Read More »
Leave the Short Term at the Door
It was a daunting gathering: one of the most senior economic ministers of China, former Presidents of the European Central Bank and the UK's Royal Society, India's inspiring techno-entrepreneur behind its Unique Identification project, for... Read More »
Adapting skin cells for potential cancer vaccine
Dendritic cells derived from a patient’s own skin cells promise to be the ideal starting point for the development of effective new cancer therapies. A team of researchers led by Dr Paul Fairchild, Co-Director of the Oxford Stem Cell Ins... Read More »
The benefits and risks of affordable technologies in healthcare
Recently returned from the World Economic Forum's 'Summer Davos' IdeasLab in China, Kazem Rahimi reflects on the pros and cons of affordable technologies in healthcare. Despite and perhaps because of the advances in biomedicine ... Read More »
Time to review peer review
Standard lore has it that scientific results are supposed to be published in academic journals before they are even worth discussing. These publications use a "peer-review" system to determine the validity of a paper. If it's not val... Read More »
All change for intellectual property
Late last year the Court of Justice of the European Union introduced a ban on the patenting of stem cells when their production involves the destruction of human embryos. In the United States, the patentability of human genes is again under legal ... Read More »
Are you ready for this new age in human development?
When you get a pop up on your screen telling you that the privacy settings have changed, what do you do? Press accept, in the rush to get to your web page? Yes? Big mistake. As we enter the Hybrid Age, the importance of taking personal responsibil... Read More »
Career juggling - Sunetra Gupta on life as a scientist and novelist
Professor Sunetra Gupta, James Martin Senior Fellow at the Institute for Vaccine Design, has parallel careers as both a scientist and a novelist. Her fifth novel, So Good in Black was published in February 2009. She was named as the winn... Read More »
Global health leader takes world bank helm
The nomination by the US Government of physician Jim Yong Kim for the World Bank Presidency triggered the usual debate over the fairness of the electoral process, as well as intense scrutiny of Kim’s qualifications and experience. But missin... Read More »
- Adam Stones
- Alexander Leveringhaus
- Alison Stibbe
- Anders Sandberg
- Andrew Pontzen
- Caspar Henderson
- Clare Heywood
- David Rodin
- Devi Sridhar
- Eric Beinhocker
- Gilles Giacca
- Gillian Petrokofsky
- Guy Houlsby
- Hein de Haas
- Hugo Slim
- Ian Goldin
- James Marrow
- Javier Lezaun
- Jennifer Welsh
- John Frater
- Julia Banfield
- Julian Savulescu
- Justin Bishop
- Kazem Rahimi
- Lucy Crittenden
- Maria Villares Varela
- Marian Dawkins
- Mathias Czaika
- Megan Lynagh
- Myles Allen
- Natalie Day
- Nigel Moore
- Oliver Bakewell
- Peter Taylor
- Phil Renforth
- Quentin Sattentau
- Rafaela Hillerbrand
- Richard Branson
- Richard Reschen
- Richard Willden
- Serena Sharma
- Sophie Hackford
- Steve Rayner
- Stuart Armstrong
- Sunetra Gupta
- Susan Curran
- Takafumi Nishino
- Tim Kruger
- Toby Ord
- Tom Aubrey-Fletcher