Now We’re Talking. These chip-based testing environments are a fundamentally different approach to medicine — and science itself. Western scientific thought is based on compartmentalization, differentiation, and control. Eastern (Chinese) scientific thought is based on systems, composite interaction, and result. Putting off explaining these distinctions in detail, let’s just say I’ve overjoyed that the approach discussed in this TED Talk shifts scientific process, and therefore ability, to a synthesis of the two.
The (strictly Western) approach has to this point been un-idealistically simplistic and rigid for medicine, placing our most cherished advances, from penicillin to cloning, in the long waiting line of trial, error, and luck. By adding known factors rather than eliminating them, perhaps a ripe approach due to the ability to mass-manufacture such environments, we’re set for a whole new revolution in medicine.
But on the other hand, pay close attention to the graph shown at the beginning of the video. The amount of money and lack of approved drugs is disturbing, and begs the question of economic efficiency, regulation, even corporatism.