A few months ago, I heard an interview with one of the winners of the Nobel prize in Chemistry. Jennifer Doudna is credited with Emmanuelle Charpentier for the invention of Crispr, a revolutionary gene editing technology.
Ms. Doudna said quite casually that they had been thinking about such a process and discussing options when things came together and Crispr was born.
This technology will allow specialists to identify the corrupt DNA strand that causes an illness like Sickle Cell Anemia and go in via CRISPR technology and cut it out thereby potentially curing a person of the disease.
Now trust me I understood about a tenth of what Ms. Doudna was saying but what hit me hardest was that these two women had developed this technology from conversations around solutions for gene therapy.
Listening to Ms. Doudna I definitely felt the weight of my failing grade twelve chemistry exam mixed with the unmitigated joy that there are people like her in the world who work for solutions to complex health problems.
See where I’m going with this?