Medicating The Mega-Cities
Friday, September 10, 2010 - 19:49
in Health & Medicine
Is there a pill that might inoculate us from smog? Is there a gene we can target that would make us resistant to resurgent infectious diseases? And is there a way to use genetic data to insulate new immigrants from some of the metabolic challenges of living in a new land of plenty? Welcome to the slowly emerging world of environmental medicine and its inevitable outgrowth, environmental pharmaceuticals: compounds specifically suited for mitigating the physiological challenges of mega-city life in the 21st century. The inchoate drive for such pills — disparate, proceeding in entrepreneurial fits and starts — is fueled by twin facts. read more