Why wait for posterity (or the future) to provide proof to savor the elixir of precision oncology? Read interviews with intellects and dine with the doyens of discovery

Excerpt

It is sad that as we seem to advance further into the ever-increasingly complex realms of science and medicine our strategies appear to become more naive and simplistic. To some extent, this reflects the digitalization of information and the quantification of thought rather than an expected inspiration of the quintessence of comprehension and assessment. Somewhat regrettably, therefore, it seems that the evolution of thought in the last decades has shifted further and further toward the concept of binary responses (yes or no) with respect to monodimensional questions (therapy works or not, or lesions exist or not?). How we have lost comprehension of the vast spectrum that is represented by the ceaseless and amaranthine interaction of disease and the unique cellular and chemical and genomic matrix that is ourself. This disturbing vision provides a consequence that directly involves nuclear medicine as oncology has more and more become the province of “moonshots” and “Hail Mary” passes. These frequently speculative and more-often hyped concepts are disproportionately driven by the marketing decisions of “big pharma,” vogue (fake news) assessments of worth rather than by the scientifically based concepts of logic, ideation, creativity, and genius. The medical and scientific surrogates of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Leeuwenhoek, and Spinoza are rarely found as politics, power, and peculation have devalued the spirit of novel, medical, and scientific creative and inspired thought. …