Scientific Discovery Is Just a Beginning to Helping Children Lead Healthier Lives

How do we make medications (drugs) — the prescribing of which is the most frequent of all medical interventions — safer for all patients? Drugs are like cars: a great help in many respects, but that help sometimes comes with a substantial cost of harm. I use the sciences of pharmacology and medical genetics to understand why some people benefit from drugs and others are harmed. How scientific discovery is "Just a Beginning" in helping children lead healthier lives will be discussed in this presentation, using these two sciences as examples. The great thing about clinical pharmacology science is that discovery can occur as part of any medical specialty because every doctor uses drugs to treat patients. This is great news for aspiring scientists who often ask, "What field of medicine should I consider as the most promising for scientific discovery?" The answer? Any and all of them. There is much more to discover! Presented by Dr. Bruce Carleton, Investigator & Director, Pharmaceutical Outcomes Programme, BC Children's Hospital; Division Head, Translational Therapeutics & Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, UBC. (2021)