The End of Medicine As We Know It

Host : Jonathan McCrea, newstalk

Interview on "The End of Medicine As We Know It."

Host : Hannah MacInnes

In this final episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we return to  Max , the man from the prologue, and look at how radically life has changed in a world shaped by genome sequencing, microbiome profiling, digital twins, continuous monitoring, and precision prevention. This is not science fiction anymore—it is a realistic vision of what the healthcare landscape may look like in just a few...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we explore one of the most powerful concepts in modern health: creating your  digital twin . This means digitising everything that defines your biology—your genome, microbiome, exposome, health behaviours, medications, and medical history—and building a personalised, lifelong data model that protects you from disease before it develops. We ex...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we move from diagnosis to  action . While gene therapy can eliminate some diseases entirely, most health risks come from genetically influenced vulnerabilities that interact with lifestyle, behaviour, and environment. These risks cannot simply be removed—but they  can  be controlled with personalised, targeted self-therapy. You’ll learn why g...

In this final episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we turn from future visions to practical tools you can use  today . Instead of waiting for the new era of precision medicine to arrive, you can already take your first steps toward  smart, data-driven self-care —starting with modern  symptom checkers . Millions of people search the Internet for symptoms every day. But “Dr. Google” rarel...

In this interlude of  The End of Medicine As We Know It we step back from the technical details of precision medicine and take a wide, philosophical view of the coming era. The transformation driven by  Big Data, machine learning, and genome engineering  is not only changing medicine—it is changing what it means to be human. With disease prevention, early detection, and gene editing becoming routi...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we explore the rise of  Well-Tech : a radically new, technology-driven health ecosystem built around precision prevention, personalised diagnostics, and real cures instead of chronic management. This is the point where everything learned in genomics, microbiome science, exposome research, big data, and AI comes together to redefine what “heal...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we look at the difference between  treating  disease and truly  healing  it. Using a simple but powerful analogy—a faulty car component—we explore how medicine is now shifting away from chronic symptom management toward precise, data-driven, mechanism-based  curative interventions . Imagine your old car: repairs every few months, ongoing chec...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we explore one of the most disruptive forces in modern healthcare:  Big Data Medicine . When billions of data points from genomes, microbiomes, wearables, imaging, lab tests, lifestyle apps, and electronic health records converge, the only way to analyse them is through  machine learning —the mathematical core of today’s so-called artificial...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we explore the  exposome —the complete set of environmental factors that influence your biology from before birth until the end of life. Even if you fully understand your  genome, microbiome, proteome, metabolome, and transcriptome , you still cannot predict your true health risks without understanding your exposome. It is the  missing piece...

In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we dive into one of the most surprising facts in modern biology: you are outnumbered by your own microbes. Your body contains around 30 trillion human cells—but about 38 trillion bacteria live  in  and  on  you. And because each bacterial strain has its own genes, your microbiome carries  150 times more genetic information  than your own geno...

What can your DNA reveal about your health, ancestry, and future? In this episode of  The End of Medicine As We Know It , we explore one of the most transformative topics in modern medicine: your personal genome. We discuss why knowing your genetic makeup will soon become a standard part of prevention, diagnostics, and treatment—and how you can benefit from it today. You will learn • how DNA testi...

If biomedical research is to truly serve patients, it must abandon the incentives that have steered it astray: chasing high-impact publications instead of medical progress. The issue is not the brilliance of scientists — it is the system. Today, careers, funding, and prestige depend on Nature, Cell and Science papers, not on whether research improves diagnosis, treatment, or outcomes. A future res...

Medicine’s future will not be an improved version of today — it will be something fundamentally new. To overcome the failures of organ-based, symptom-driven care, we must rethink how we understand disease, how we deliver care, and how we finance it. The next revolution will rely on  Big Data , global digital infrastructure, and a shift from treating organs to understanding the  whole human being ....

Before entering the new world of medicine, this episode pauses to ask a deeper question: What does it mean to  feel healthy? Drawing on Klaus Dörner and Byung-Chul Han, we explore how the pursuit of perfect well-being can become a trap: declining pain tolerance, hyper-attention to minor discomfort, and an expanding definition of disease. When health becomes a commodity, demanded and consumed like...

The greatest flaw in modern medicine isn’t poor research or bad incentives — it is the very structure of the system itself: medicine divided by organs. Because we rarely understand the true causes of disease, we wait for symptoms, give diseases symptom-based names, and treat only what we can see. Organ specialists inherit this logic, leading patients with a single underlying cause to receive multi...

Biomedical research should uncover disease mechanisms and deliver new therapies — yet most of it never reaches patients. Instead, basic science has become a self-reinforcing system built around publications, prestige, and grants. Clinicians rarely produce meaningful innovations, and pivotal clinical trials are largely industry-run. Worse, over  half of all biomedical studies are not reproducible  ...

The core problem is structural: because diseases are defined by symptoms and organs rather than mechanisms, pharma can only create symptom-relief drugs with very low precision — the same concept that produces staggering NNT values. As mechanistic understanding fails, so does drug development. Facing dwindling innovation, some companies increasingly rely on legal grey zones or outright fraud to mai...

Healthcare systems differ widely — single-payer, socialized medicine, insurance mandates, hybrids — but all share one fundamental flaw: incentives reward  disease care , not  health . Prevention receives barely  1%  of total spending. Hospitals maximize revenue through more cases, more procedures, and higher severity, not better outcomes. The result: unnecessary surgeries, inflated use of X-rays a...

Health systems matter far less than we think. Whether you live in the U.S. with private insurance or in the U.K. with tax-funded care, healthy life expectancy barely differs. What truly determines how long — and how well — we live is  education  and  income . Higher education adds up to nine years of life; the gap in healthy years between low- and high-income groups reaches  14 years . Gender adds...

Why are chronic diseases rising — and why are they shortening life expectancy in countries like the U.S. and U.K.? This chapter reveals a simple but uncomfortable truth: the vast majority of chronic illness is preventable, yet our healthcare systems invest almost nothing in real prevention. Just  15 common conditions —from depression and back pain to diabetes, heart disease, COPD and cancer—drive ...

What does it actually mean to be “chronically ill”? Medicine has no clear definition. For many patients, it means lifelong treatment, constant appointments, and deep social, emotional, and financial consequences. Chronic illness often leads to isolation — and loneliness, in turn, worsens disease. This episode explores the hidden burden of chronic disease and reveals a surprising truth: outside of...

When you take a medication, you naturally assume it will help you. Why else would you swallow it every day? But for millions of people, this hope is an illusion. Modern medicine routinely prescribes drugs that work  only for a small minority  of patients — and we usually have  no idea  who that minority is. Some common drugs, such as cholesterol-lowering medications, help  only 1 in 50  patients....