Tom Junod
The Death of Patient Zero
Personalized medicine – or, as President Obama calls it, ‘precision medicine’ – may indeed one day deliver routine medical miracles. But for Stephanie Lee, the only miracles were the human and ancient kind.
Esquire, 2016
What's inside?
Personalized medicine wasn’t quite there in time for Stephanie Lee, but today it might be a different story.
Recommendation
As the title suggests, there’s no happy ending to this story. Award-winning journalist Tom Junod tells the story of a young, courageous war widow and mother who survived Hurricane Katrina only to get colon cancer. Stephanie Lee experienced plenty of false hope and unspeakable suffering along the way. The upside is that she befriended two journalists who arranged a chance at an experimental treatment. When her local health system was letting her down, she had her friends and medical experts in New York on whom she could call for help. The personalized treatment didn’t work, but today it could save a life. getAbstract recommends this intriguing article to anyone interested in the future of medicine.
Summary
About the Author
Tom Junod is an American journalist who has worked for Esquire magazine since 1997.
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