Question: What got you interested in Lung disease and finding a cure?

anon answered on 12 Jun 2010:

There’s lots of answers to this question. The real answer is that my father was a lung physician and I had a lot of respect for him (he died when I was about 16). If you study medicine you find that all the different specialties cardiology (heart), respiratory (lung), Gastrointestinal (stomach, guts and liver) have a range of disease. There’s examples of genetic diseases, cancer, chronic disease, acute disease, infections, diseases with an environmental influence, allergic disease, vascular disease in all of them. I guess I was most interested in the lung versions. Additionally, I’ve always been into the history of medicine and Edinburgh has an interesting history with the disease tuberculosis (TB). TB is an important infective disease of the lungs (mainly) which we thought we’d cured in this country (but which is on the way back) and is absolutely devastating in Africa.

As to finding a cure….This is the goal of most medical scientists. The jargon for it is ‘ translation’. If you can transfer your scientific findings into something useful clinically like a cure then you have given something tangible back to the society that probably funded your research. One of the worst (but important) parts of being a doctor is knowing there’s nothing more you can do for a patient. Actively participating in scientific research is a way of feeling like you’re still trying to help the people you can’t with current knowledge/medicines.