Regenerative Medicine

In this Alan Russell speech, the surgeon and professor hopes to convert the fear society harbors towards health and disease into hope. He offers the audience a different way to think about treating debilitating disease in a concept he refers to as regenerative medicine.

Regenerative medicine focuses on regenerating the lost functions of organs as opposed to healing the body as quickly as possible with the use of machines and technology. Russell describes regenerative medicine as a way of restoring the body to the way it was before the illness or disease. Essentially, he is working towards a technology that will help individuals re-build their own organs and tissue.

To demonstrate how this works, he shares the story of a man whose fingertip is currently rebuilding itself after an accident.

In a world where politicians and policy advisors are constantly trying to reform health care to be the most efficient, often overlooking what is best for one's body and not just a country's budget, this speech extremely eye-opening and thought-provoking.