This week the nonprofit TED is celebrating 1 billion video views with a series of playlists put together by celebrities like Bill Gates and Ben Affleck.
The organization’s entire offering of videos contains some fascinating talks on science, medicine and running a business. Below are just four of the ones we would put on our “most inspiring” list for life science inventors and entrepreneurs. Comment or tweet your top TED talks to @medcitynews.com.
Drew Berry: Animations of unseeable biology
In this video, a biomedical animator shows some astounding digital visualizations of the complex processes happening inside the billions of cells in our bodies.
Tal Golesworthy: How I repaired my own heart
Born with the genetic defect called Marfan syndrome, Golesworthy faced a life-threatening problem with his aorta. The surgery he needed, though, would be incredibly risky and require a lifetime of anti-coagulation therapy to follow. Unsatisfied with his options, the boiler engineer set out to create his own solution. The result was a successful procedure that led to the founding of a company, ExoVasc.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Abraham Verghese: A doctor’s touch
Verghese argues that modern healthcare is losing sight of medicine’s greatest innovation: the human hand. Even the most sophisticated technologies can’t pick up on the information the doctor can with his own senses, he explains.
E.O. Wilson: Advice to young scientists
In an “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)” for scientists, the celebrated biologist dishes out advice based on a lifetime of experience. “For every scientist – whether researcher, technician, teacher, manager or businessman – working at any level of mathematical competence, there exists a discipline in science or medicine for which that level is enough to achieve excellence,” he reminds us.
