The Medical Matchmaking Machine

As he finished his medical residency exam, David Fajgenbaum felt off.  He walked down to the ER and checked himself in.  Soon he was in the ICU with multiple organ failure.  The only drug for his condition didn’t work. He had months to live, if that.  If he was going to survive, he was going to have to find his own cure. Miraculously, he pulled it off in the nick of time. From that ordeal, he realized that our system of discovering and approving drugs is far from perfect, and that he might be able to use AI to find dozens, hundreds, even thousands of cures, hidden in plain sight, for as-yet untreatable diseases. 

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser
Produced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez
with mixing help from - Jeremy S. Bloom
Fact-checking by - Natalie A. Middleton

EPISODE CITATIONS:
Books -
Blair Bigham, Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine is Complicating the Way We Die

Radiolab | Lateral Cuts:
Check out Death Interrupted (https://radiolab.org/podcast/death-interrupted), a conversation with Blair Bigham about a worldview shifting change of heart.

The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub (https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub) to hear the crazy story about how Rapamycin was discovered.

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