TED Talks
Dan Ariely: Beware conflicts of interest
In this short talk, psychologist Dan Ariely tells two personal stories that explore scientific conflict of interest: How the pursuit of knowledge and insight can be affected, consciously or not, by shortsighted personal goals. When we're...
TED Talks
TED: This tiny particle could roam your body to find tumors | Sangeeta Bhatia
What if we could find cancerous tumors years before they can harm us -- without expensive screening facilities or even steady electricity? Physician, bioengineer and entrepreneur Sangeeta Bhatia leads a multidisciplinary lab that...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do we determine the value of a life? | Rebecca L. Walker
To protect against a possible resurgence of smallpox, the US government is funding research to improve treatments and vaccines. And since it's unethical to expose people to a highly lethal virus, labs are using monkeys as research...
TED Talks
TED: How we'll fight the next deadly virus | Pardis Sabeti
When ebola broke out in March 2014, Pardis Sabeti and her team got to work sequencing the virus's genome, learning how it mutated and spread. Sabeti immediately released her research online, so virus trackers and scientists from around...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why is it so hard to cure the common cold? | TED-Ed
On average, adults catch more than 150 colds throughout their lives. Even with similar symptoms, the cause could be different each time. Common colds are caused by at least 8 different families of virus, each of which can have its own...
TED Talks
Siddharthan Chandran: Can the damaged brain repair itself?
After a traumatic brain injury, it sometimes happens that the brain can repair itself, building new brain cells to replace damaged ones. But the repair doesn't happen quickly enough to allow recovery from degenerative conditions like...
TED Talks
Patience Mthunzi: Could we cure HIV with lasers?
Swallowing pills to get medication is a quick, painless and often not entirely effective way of treating disease. A potentially better way? Lasers. In this passionate talk, TED Fellow Patience Mthunzi explains her idea to use lasers to...
TED Talks
TED: How we could teach our bodies to heal faster | Kaitlyn Sadtler
What if we could help our bodies heal faster and without scars, like Wolverine in X-Men? TED Fellow Kaitlyn Sadtler is working to make this dream a reality by developing new biomaterials that could change how our immune system responds...
SciShow
Genomics Has a Diversity Problem
Someday, the information in our genome could transform healthcare as we know it, but one major hurdle we have to get over is the lack of diversity in our studies.
TED Talks
Chuck Murry: Can we regenerate heart muscle with stem cells?
The heart is one of the least regenerative organs in the human body -- a big factor in making heart failure the number one killer worldwide. What if we could help heart muscle regenerate after injury? Physician and scientist Chuck Murry...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why do you get a fever when you're sick? | Christian Moro
There are many mysteries around fever, but we do know that all mammals, some birds and even a few invertebrate and plant species feel fever's heat. It has persisted for over 600 million years of evolution. But it has a significant cost:...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How does laser eye surgery work? | Dan Reinstein
In 1948, Spanish ophthalmologist Jose Ignacio Barraquer Moner was fed up with glasses. He wanted a solution for blurry vision that fixed the eye itself, without relying on external aids. The surgery he eventually devised was called...
TED Talks
TED: Good news in the fight against pancreatic cancer | Laura Indolfi
Anyone who has lost a loved one to pancreatic cancer knows the devastating speed with which it can affect an otherwise healthy person. TED Fellow and biomedical entrepreneur Laura Indolfi is developing a revolutionary way to treat this...
TED-Ed
Ugly History: The US syphilis experiment | Susan M. Reverby
Afflicting nearly 1 in 10 Americans, syphilis was ravaging the U.S. in the 1930s. Many doctors believed syphilis affected Black and white patients differently, and the Public Health Service launched an experiment to investigate,...
TED Talks
TED: A new way to study the brain's invisible secrets | Ed Boyden
Neuroengineer ed Boyden wants to know how the tiny biomolecules in our brains generate emotions, thoughts and feelings -- and he wants to find the molecular changes that lead to disorders like epilepsy and Alzheimer's. Rather than...
TED Talks
TED: Could we treat spinal cord injuries with asparagus? | Andrew Pelling
Take a mind-blowing trip to the lab as TED Senior Fellow Andrew Pelling shares his research on how we could use fruits, vegetables and plants to regenerate damaged human tissues -- and develop a potentially groundbreaking way to repair...
TED Talks
TED: How cancer cells communicate -- and how we can slow them down | Hasini Jayatilaka
When cancer cells are closely packed together in a tumor, they're able to communicate with each other and coordinate their movement throughout the body. What if we could interrupt this process? In this accessible talk about cutting-edge...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How the COVID-19 vaccines were created so quickly | Kaitlyn Sadtler and Elizabeth Wayne
In the 20th century, most vaccines took over a decade to research, test, and produce. But the vaccines for COVID-19 were cleared for emergency use in less than 11 months. The secret behind this speed is a medical technology that's been...
TED Talks
TED: The pharmacy of the future? Personalized pills, 3D printed at home | Daniel Kraft
We need to change how we prescribe drugs, says physician Daniel Kraft: too often, medications are dosed incorrectly, cause toxic side effects or just don't work. In a talk and concept demo, Kraft shares his vision for a future of...
TED Talks
Siddhartha Mukherjee: Soon we'll cure diseases with a cell, not a pill
Current medical treatment boils down to six words: Have disease, take pill, kill something. But physician Siddhartha Mukherjee points to a future of medicine that will transform the way we heal.
TED Talks
Molly Stevens: A new way to grow bone
What does it take to regrow bone in mass quantities? Typical bone regeneration -- wherein bone is taken from a patient’s hip and grafted onto damaged bone elsewhere in the body -- is limited and can cause great pain just a few years...
TED Talks
TED: Why genetic research must be more diverse | Keolu Fox
Ninety-six percent of genome studies are based on people of european descent. The rest of the world is virtually unrepresented -- and this is dangerous, says geneticist and TED Fellow Keolu Fox, because we react to drugs differently...
TED Talks
TED: How digital DNA could help you make better health choices | Jun Wang
What if you could know exactly how food or medication would impact your health -- before you put it in your body? Genomics researcher Jun Wang is working to develop digital doppelgangers for real people; they start with genetic code, but...
TED Talks
Fatima AlZahra'a Alatraktchi: To detect diseases earlier, let's speak bacteria's secret language
Bacteria "talk" to each other, sending chemical information to coordinate attacks. What if we could listen to what they were saying? Nanophysicist Fatima AlZahra'a Alatraktchi invented a tool to spy on bacterial chatter and translate...