As a student at a medical school, Sam thinks poetry is a big part of his life, thanks to his new teacher, Rafael Campo, who believes poetry can benefit every doctor’s education and work. Rafael is a physician, professor and a highly respected poet.

“Poetry is in every encounter with my patients. If we do anything when we’re with our patients, we’re really immersed in their stories, really hearing their voices. And, certainly, that’s what a poem does,” he said.

Rafael worries that something important has been lost in medicine and medical education today: humanity, which he finds in poetry. To end that, he leads a weekly reading and writing workshop for medical students and residents. He thinks medical training focuses too much on distancing the doctor from his or her patients, and poems can help close that gap.

Third-year resident Andrea Schwartz was one of the workshop regulars. She said, “I think there’s no other profession other than medicine that produces as many writers as it does. And I think that is because there’s just so much power in doctors and patients interacting when patients are at their saddest moments.” Not everyone believes that’s what doctors should do, though.

Rafael said, “I was afraid of how people might judge me, actually. In the medical profession, as many people know, we must always put the emergency first. But, you know, that kind of treatment, if it’s happening in the hospital, very regrettably, sadly, results in a bad outcome. The family is sitting by the bedside. The patient hasn’t survived the cancer. Don’t we still have a role as healers there?”

In a poem titled “Health”, Rafael writes of the wish to live forever in a world made painless by our incurable joy. He says he will continue teaching students, helping patients and writing poems, his own brand of medicine.

One major issue in contemporary medical science is the use of humans in clinical trials of medical products. These trials occur frequently to determine the best way to manage diseases.

People are invited randomly and paid to take part in trials of an experimental drug, or new surgical procedure, in a number of countries at the one time. For example, up to a quarter of patients in some fields like breast cancer may be engaged. Other projects, one of which is to determine whether new scanning techniques can detect Alzheimer’s disease, are under way. They may be given the drug or a placebo (安慰剂), or the best existing treatment, and results compared. The trials may be ”blind” with the patient not knowing which group they are in or they may be a “double-blind” with the doctors not knowing either.

Actually, so many people offer themselves willingly. Patients take the views that at least they will get special attention from the doctor if they participate and they may get access to new drugs before they become available in chemists’ shops. In some countries people are paid to participate, especially in poorer countries where they may be told little of what is actually happening.

Yet there are significant risks too. One US study estimated that one in 30 people suffered side effects from such trials, and one in 10, 000 dies. Doctors say that the risk is not so great during the trial itself, where patients are closely monitored, but comes when the drug is released on the market place. For example, in 2004 a US company recalled an arthritis drug, when it was found that after 18 months of use, the risk of heart attack and stroke increased.

People who support testing claim the risks to the individual are small compared with the benefits. Even if the individual has adverse outcomes and their condition worsens, that is valuable information for the drug company. While the drug companies usually pay for the hospital trials, government has set up medical committees to handle the issue.

The development of the mRNA vaccine (疫苗) — a breakthrough in its field, instructing cells (细胞) to produce their own protection without the risk of giving someone the virus — was fast and effective, made possible through rapid genome sequencing (基因组测序).

So how does it work? Once mRNA is injected (注射), the vaccine attaches to a cell, instructing it to produce a harmless copy of the spike protein — the significant marker of the coronavirus, which allows COVID-19 to inject itself into human cells — causing an immune response. Because mRNA does not enter the cell nucleus (细胞核), it does not change human DNA.

Different from the time it takes to produce traditional vaccines，which are time-wasting and expensive, mRNA can be produced almost instantly.

It’s been a “game changer,” says Tom Kenyon, a former director of global health at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “These are vaccines that give very strong immunity, which we never had in previous attempts.” Besides, its potential to treat cancer, which it can do by causing the immune system to target cancer cells, is especially exciting. Most traditional immune treatment for cancer uses “passive immunity,” where a drug doesn’t always last long. But active immunity, achieved with mRNA, means the body can remember how to create the response on its own. “That’s what gives everybody in the public health community hope,” Kenyon says.

The biggest drawback is production ability. Many parts of the world would need help setting up the ability to produce these vaccines. “The mRNA story is by far the greatest story of this pandemic (流行病), and it’s an amazing scientific achievement, but we haven’t translated that yet into programmatic results, and that’s what matters,” Kenyon said.