Opinion: Letting funding for the All of Us research program lapse will cost the U.S. far more than it saves
I was in high school when I first encountered the ruthlessness of the number one killer in the U.S. A close friend of mine, then only 16 years old, witnessed his father having a heart attack while checking the mail. Despite desperate attempts at CPR on the driveway, he wasn’t able to save his dad, a seemingly healthy man in his early 40s. That event put me on a path to become a cardiologist. Twenty-five years later, as a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, I’m still seeing young patients having heart attacks, though they often have nothing in their health profiles to indicate increased risks.
As a preventive cardiologist, I wish I had a better way to identify patients who have a heightened risk for heart disease earlier so that they can take action before it’s too late. Prevention is the best medicine — it saves lives and health care dollars — but in our current paradigm, we’re focused on treating conditions after they occur.
