The Student Room Group

Who finds the cures?

Excuse my ignorance but I always wondered: are doctors taught to only treat patients with current technologies and knowledge or are doctors also on the forefront of finding cures or developments in combating diseases? Or are cures found usually by lab scientists?
Is not really as simple as that.

Firstly let's consider drugs. New drugs are synthesised by biochemists/organic chemists. The processes for synthesising them would be based on procedures discovered by organic chemists, or even inorganic chemists who had no interest in medicine at all. The drug then needs to be extensively characterised by yet more chemists. It then needs to be tested to see if it works on your desired target - that could come under a number of fields depending on what it is. It then needs to be tested on animals by some different lab scientists, then tested on volunteers to determine safe dosing, then a clinical trial on patients. If it works, it then needs to be analysed for its financial viability and comparison to existing strategies. Independent groups need to validate the work to limit bias. Once it's approved, then a doctor might prescribe it. Doctors tend to be more involved in the latest stages, though given that is increasingly popular for doctors to do Phds they could be involved and almost any point.

Alternatively, you've got existing drugs that are found to have new uses. Again this tends to be pharmacology led but there are famous cases of doctors stumbling onto cures e.g beta blockers for haemangioma.

Then there's non-drug stuff. The biggest impact on health in recent times had come from prevention - public health are a mixture of doctors and others. Stenting for heart attacks required medical engineers, but also extensive logistical efforts and organisational reform to enable people with heart attacks to bypass A&E and go straight to the table where the best results are had. Doctors were the ones driving that, but the managers were the ones who make it happen. New surgical techniques tend to be similarly tech dependent but not necessarily. You've also got those who come up with scoring systems to help identify those who need treatment more urgently resulting in a highest proportion of people being 'cured'. You've got those who come up with diagnostic criteria in the first place. The research that I've done that I'm most proud of was identifying where an African hospital's patients were coming from in order to direct a new maternity outreach project. You didn't need any particular skills at all in order to do that, but I think it might make a huge difference to the success of the project.

'Cures' in the modern world are rarely discovered by an individual. Of the many different ways you can make a difference, some are doctor-led, some are not.

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