The Lab Of Many Voices

Below, is the transcriptions of participants who have took part in Multiverse Lab by adding their voice. A selection of these voices are being played via three speakers which are next to the Lab, underpinned by soft music.

Transcriptions

The medical research I'd like to see in my lifetime is finding more people with my genetic condition

The main one would be cancer, because that is the main taker of life at this time.

The health breakthrough I would like to see at this point in time is Covid

In relation to my local community, I'd like to see local care for local people. I understand, there's a lot of talk about this in the future.But this is what I'd like to see happening now.I'd also like an honest and open conversation and a bit of research about costs and facilities available in the community. As a whole,  I'd like to see equal care for all in society no matter what age or ethnic origin.

I think in the absence of organ donation in the UK, we don't really have anything like supply to meet the demand. And it doesn't seem to be growing, anyway.I think we need to do a lot more research into stem cell techniques and, controversial though it may be, some sort of cloning may need to be required in the future, if the uptake on organ donation does not increase.There's a recent innovation to opt out of the system rather than opt into it.But even that may take some years to satisfy the demand.

My hopes for medical research are that medical researchers ramp up their efforts to listen to what's important to people in terms of their health and social support and fully reflect what they hear in shaping and driving their research.

I'd like to encourage researchers to coordinate their research into healthy ageing and social isolation of the elderly, so there is no duplication of effort or resources.

Because we live in the North East, it tends to be quite cold and that causes a lot of joint destruction with some people. Maybe related to diet as well.But we need more research into how to prevent it.But it does tend to be very cold here in the winter.

I would like research to encourage the elderly to be proactive and not passive in their physical and mental well-being.

I'll change the way babies are born.They should be perfect. The shouldn't have to go through life being ill or something wrong with them.

I'd like to first bring to the attention that should be an early intervention at all age groups particularly in the younger because if the younger children don't make that first change in the first step away from things like obesity.It will stay with them until they get into adulthood where they could have underlying medical underlying conditions like stroke or type 2 diabetes.

As I grow older, I would like to be treated as myself not as everybody else.

I would like to have a cure for Parkinson's because I've seen not just how it cuts life short, but how it cuts creative life short. People who can't gig any more, people who’ve been involved in the theatre that have got Parkinson's and I think it's heartbreaking.And also people who are very energetic. People used to go off hiking, friends, and now they can't do any of that.And I find Parkinson's really quite heartbreaking and I would love a cure for Parkinson's, please. I really would love that.

The thing I'd like to see is to see a difference for people with MS.There's been lots on the news about new treatments that are being researched and I'd really like to see some of this make its way into treatments that are making a difference to people's lives.

Hello everyone. I think if we had a new medicine for diabetes,I think it would really help the people who had it.

I would like a whole lot of medical research to go into endometriosis.So that future women, young girls don't have to live with a really quite debilitating disease under the guise that it's just normal and painful periods are normal.Because on average it takes people eight years to be diagnosed and most women are diagnosed during keyhole surgery.So it would be great if we could plough more energy and resources into women and menstrual cycle.

The health research development I'd like to see in my lifetime would be into rheumatoid arthritis and Type 2 diabetes to make old age more comfortable for lots of people.

The medical breakthrough I'd like to see is far earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

My grandmother had Alzheimer's, my sister has got Alzheimer's and my brother’s got some kind of dementia and my mother had multi-infarct dementia. I would like to see a breakthrough in dementia research because it takes people away while they're alive.

Both my parents died of cancer and I would like all research into cancer move towards being able to cure it or treat it early, but the types that I think particularly need extra research, perhaps are pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer because they're both quite hard to detect sometimes till they're too far advanced to really do anything about about it. So those kinds of cancer.

The health research breakthrough I want to see in my lifetime is a cure for HIV. Even though HIV is no longer a life sentence, it can still have a huge effect on an individual's life with relationships and even confidence HIV still carries a lot of stigma and more progress needs to be taken to get rid of that, but wouldn't it be great if we could take a step further and get rid of HIV altogether?

The health research breakthrough i'd like to see in my lifetime is to see social prescribing become fully integrated with our current Healthcare Systems. I think it will be amazing for health care providers to be able to prescribe art classes, community groups Library groups to people rather than overly relying on medication to treat conditions like mental health problems are loneliness or isolation. We know that social prescribing works and we know that it is effective and I think we would see huge benefits to our society if our healthcare and our government put more stock and faith into social prescribing.

I would like to see a cure for cancer.

I would like to see a breakthrough for cancer but of course answers is a very broad Church different kinds have different treatments now, so I think the recognition of cancer and the treatment for each kind of cancer would be absolutely marvellous, but I don't think I'm going to live long enough to see that, it would be nice, but I'm not convinced that I will but that would be just tremendous.

I think about health inequalities is the thing that worries me the most and particularly with, in relation to ageing and as Madeline says it the economics and the politics of equitable support for people who are ageing and what that looks like for young, you know, my generation the generation below the capacity and the support for ageing populations is really really concerning so that for me it's about the research in the social constructs around health support is really key as well as you know, the being healthy and having vitality in older age is really important. So, you know really targeting and thinking about how to prevent Dementia and Parkinson's and all those diseases that come with older age.

Yes, my priority would be about the Dementia’s and Alzheimer’s because of people living much longer and therefore more likely to get Alzheimer's and Dementia and it's the impact on the population as a whole and particular the carers for those people who actually need a lot more support. So that would be my main emphasis. What I didn't mention was obesity with that's probably another aspect I'll come back to those memories another time.

I met about a month and a half ago a doctor who was a gynaecologist and was working in the NHS and I was thinking about America and how women have a gynaecologists and I was then thinking why don't women in the UK have some sort of regular health care that is around what goes on down there because we don't and nobody talks about it and that can kind of go into, i recently sat through a seminar around the menopause and a doctor said to somebody “what you want me to do about it? It's just what's going to happen.” So I think my victory I would like to see is more support more information, kind of more regularity about how women are supported around their own bodies and what they do because you get a lot, you got a lot around childbirth, but then after that you're pretty much on your own and left. And nobody ever comes back and goes to it will all go back to normal.

Okay, so the other thing we had both jotted down was about mental health and well-being and we were thinking about people's capacity to ask for help when they need it in order to prevent kind of escalation of problems and specifically I was really thinking about how during sort of treatment for life limiting illnesses. Yes, you can get support for Mental health issues, but you have to request it and I'd like to know if it was tracked more holistically and whether that would have better outcomes.

So obviously if it's untreatable or sorry not untreatable incurable but treatable and we know what the ultimate outcome is going to be but about quality of life of that person and that person's family. I suppose that's a couple of things, the thing I keep going back to same as Madeline is cancer because it just feels like it's everywhere all of the time and there's always somebody going through that at some point and there's somebody my family at the minute going through that and it's such, it's so sad and it's you know, it's something that you know is going to happen again to somebody else that's close to you and I think if we can find Find a way to stop that happening. That would be just revolutionary.

And the other thing is ME which which I had s a teenager and was really poorly with and was off school for like 18 months with that and was really lucky that I recovered and my mom did loads of research and got me the right things. But also there's lots of people who live with that for the rest of their lives and they're in wheelchairs and and I think there's not very much research that is put into that and it's quite an unknown disease and there's still no cure for it and it would be amazing for people to understand that disease more than we do at the minute.

I think mental health is you know, the pandemic is shown as increasingly how important that is for everybody to look after and I think you're right Annie, young people as so much more switched on and able to talk about that and hopefully that will be something that we can spread across all ages and particularly in the North East, you know, where the male suicide is that I think the highest in the country, you know, so we absolutely need to be talking about that here specifically.

Mine would be about preventable non-communicable diseases. So that covers so many things and so work that sort of enables people to live healthier lives and looking widely at society in the built environment and thinking or what does, what should it look like if people are going to be healthier so, you know everything from doing we need out of town shopping or in town shopping. Do we need less cars? You know that whole thing.

Well, actually what makes that Society healthier and you know, so you can have active engaged people who are able to look after their own health.

One of the challenges of living in a rural area as we do in North Northumberland is actually access to healthcare and social care and the impact of isolation with living in a rural community. So when you were talking about planning and transport is key in North Northumberland. AND - a vaccine for Covid-19 please so I can have a big dinner party with my family!!

I'd like to see safe reliable neural implants, used extensively, as an all round body diagnosis system.

Equality for health and social care for all groups in society, as individuals not consumers but a holistic form of care physical and mental . 

Is there enough research taking place on how ones own immune system can be improved with ageing and reduce need for "cures"?

We need to find a vaccine for Covid 19 and look at current and new medications that can strengthen our immune system and speed up recovery and lessen the after effects of the virus.

Perhaps in the next few years, we will not need to have organ transplants or hip and knee replacements.  Organs, skin and bone material will be grown from our own cells.  Hopefully this will end rejection of transplants and also end the need for medication.  

Perhaps in the future, we won't need to take pills or have injections, instead we would wear a gel patch which contains all the medication that we need.  We won't need to remember to have to take anything, the correct dosage and timing of it would be delivered safely.

I'd like to see the day when we can regrow nerve cells so that people with spinal injuries, like me, can fully recover!

Better housing and community resources would make a real difference in health. There should be more investment in good social housing to provide nice environments for everyone to live in. This could encourage community interaction, more social activities and creative projects, combatting loneliness, prejudice and isolation.

I would like to see a better understanding of trauma triggered flashbacks and nightmares, and a quicker and more effective response from the Crisis Team. I would like to see the development of a blue light service for mental health. This is crucial if we are to reduce the rate of suicide, and admissions due to attempted suicide. I would also like to both find preventative and curative treatments for all Cancers.

I would like to see a way to prevent or arrest the impact of dementia

The change I'd like to see is I'd like to see medications or drugs developed for dementia to turn it into a chronic condition that you can live. Well with pretty much like HIV is now it's a chronic condition and people generally do acknowledge that you can live well with it.So this change isn't just going to be about a medical drug.It's going to be more of a change in society as well and a behavioural change.So not only people with dementia, but also their family caregivers and family members are not all overburdened and completely dread the diagnosis, but that it can be something that people can actually live with in a realistically positive way at the moment.I don't think that happens. I think there's just lip service actually to being positive and the kind of infrastructure and the attitudes people have in society towards dementia.Just don't allow that positivity.So my change would be a bit behavioural and a bit societal as well as the medical breakthrough.

What I would really like to see happen is better treatments for diseases that are caused by chronic inflammation.And I'm not thinking about a particular disease because inflammation is at the heart of many different diseases.For example, arthritis dementia, cardiovascular disease and even some cancers so really getting on top of this in a way that does not impair the protective function of the immune system would massively improve treatments for many different diseases or even prevent them.That's what I would really like to see happen.

The research breakthrough that I would like to see in my lifetime is impact.So when individual members of the community or members of the public are involved in research projects their input has an impact they are able to see an outcome from their contribution to research people get a bit tired of being consulted about things and then nothing different appears to happen.So it would be great if we could see any participants in research are informed about the outcome of it.And even if it isn't an earth-shattering groundbreaking new revelation that they do know what happens to the information that they contribute to research.I think that's really important and I think it would make a big difference to the way that communities feel about being involved in research.

The health care development i would like to see in my lifetime are effective drugs for neuromuscular disorders as a research in this field. I see the pain and burden that these diseases bring to people affecting all their daily life activities, and most often no curative treatment on the horizon.Since many of these disorders are genetic this burden does not stop but instead goes on within a family from generation to generation.Therefore, i would like to see that we can finally do something for this group of people.

I think mental health will be a big problem in the future of healthcare.How widespread the problem is is made even more clear now because of the lockdown since not everyone is able to reach out to the support network.It's not very clear how to ask for help for any medical emergency.You can call an ambulance, it shows up straight away.Whereas for mental health to can be long waiting lists.So the breakthrough I would like to see in my lifetime in the area of Healthcare is better understanding of mental health and better treatment options.

 I would like to see quicker diagnosis of conditions such as fibromyalgia, ME, MS, chronic fatigue syndromes.It takes very long time to get diagnosed you go through years and years of symptoms before doctors finally, maybe suggest it could be something like that and it's a matter of a process of elimination of other things rather than a test specifically.For that condition, so I'd love to see that process gets sped up for the sake of you know, the patient also the medical body themselves.

I would like to see a social change between medical practitioners and patients of colour because a lot of patients with colour either get dismissed or there is still archaic notions of a lot of people have like, black people having a higher pain tolerance, which is totally untrue and I'd like to never have to hear of like my mum or a friend having to go to the doctors and have to up what their symptoms are just to get considered. And I'd also like to see the fatality rate of black women in childbirth go down.

I'd like to see wait lists for literally everything just like disappear overnight because they are absolutely ridiculous. But doesn't matter what you're going in for it. Like it's horrible. It's just weeks or it's months weeks If you're lucky, it's can be months to get a response back.

The breakthrough that I'd like to see is the fact that we just accept that men die on average earlier than women and it is just become accepted and I think you know, the focus has been very much on inequalities in terms of women's inequalities and we have indeed suffered a lot of inequality in very many respects. But this is something that I feel has been neglected and that we really need to do some research into and not just accept it.

So the breakthrough that I would like to see is I think there's already quite a lot of research in prostate cancer and that's moving along really well, but I'd like to see a breakthrough whereby we test some men much younger or we just put out a story that you could go and get it tested a younger because there I think we align it much more with older men and I think there's there's lots of people who get it younger, but there's not much of a story around getting checked.

The health research breakthrough I would like to see happen in my lifetime I suppose I've got personal experience and personal experience in my family has been cancer both personally. I've been affected by it and family members have died from it. So that is where I would come from a personal point of view and just because I feel like it is the biggest killer in my family and it's the disease that I know the most about having lived through it.

So I would like to see a cure for all forms of cancer and in the near future.

Cancer would normally be the default option for most people in my opinion, mine would be dementia. I've got an elderly grandparent who was diagnosed with dementia couple years ago, and she's just been declining on a sometimes weekly basis and it's difficult to see someone forget your name. Forget your place.

I'd like to see advances in dermatological conditions. I've seen how debilitating problems with skin can be and how psychologically demanding it can be and how it can affect people's social and mental well-being it. Also of course has physical effects of limiting movement and ability to do things. So I'd really like to see some advances I think It's an area of research that goes under the radar a lot of the time. So that is something I'd like to see get more attention.

I would like to see a way to stop the effects of Alzheimer's and other diseases like it to try and find a way to stop the horrible effects that that can have on the people affected by those conditions.

Cure for cancer and a reconnect to organic food practises and unpicking the damage modern farming methods are doing to our soil and health and how some foods are actually making us sick!  

I would like to see a socio-health breakthrough in the way that we as society look at disability and access. People want access, this should not feel like a burden but instead at the start of any process. 

People should care about health care more and do more about it.

Chronic illnesses deserve more attention.

My wife's a carer on an Alzheimer's ward and the thing she sees is sadness. One day people are ok and the next day they're not. Some of them have got 20 years left. So a cure for Alzheimer's would be mine.

2 years ago I had cancer and I had a kidney removed, so a cure for cancer would be good. But something is always going to kill us. I would say something to avoid Alzheimer's because it is such a soul destroying experience.

It feels like everyone's first response is cancer because it affects so many people. But personally for me better diagnosis and better treatments for mental health is what I want.

I would love to see a cure for cancer in my lifetime. When you hear the stats and that 1 in 2 people will be affected by a form of cancer you really think something has to be done about this. It can affect all ages, backgrounds, lifestyles and if the global pandemic has shown us anything - we need our great medical brains to have the support and financial resource to work together across the globe - but with the support from world leaders to make this happen. 

I’m more Sci-fi. So i’d say genetic editing, to amend genes. so if heredity issues then could edit the chance out. but the ethics on this would so intense so there is a huge discussion needed on this to see if should be something to even think about

The health research breakthrough I want to see in my lifetime is a proper understanding of the placebo effect so that fewer drugs are needed for an effective cure of more conditions

The main change I would like to see is a blue light mental health ambulance support system for people in crisis.

Further research into why suicidal ideation is so prominent in men and effective treatments for low mood and suicidal thoughts.

I think the research for the drugs that people need to tick. Um, I think there needs to be more work because from my experience, as I mentioned with my grandson, it suppresses his personality totally. And he's a different person and he just doesn't communicate at all then. So from what will come from one extreme to the other, and I think there's quite a few people that are, it's a quicker.

Diagnosis. I would like to see rather than three and a half to four years for somebody who was, you know, eight year old when he first started the goal. So that's it in a nutshell, from my personal point of view, I know there's a lot bigger issues, but I would just say that I know.

Yeah, I think two things, one of which is about diagnosis. So is how, how can we work across different services and medical disciplines to get people the right help quicker. And it's a kind of critical pathway thing. How, how do people find the help that they need? Um, and that's around, it's not directly around science, I guess that it's about the science of organisation and the science of.

How science is understood and distributed, um, and a big breakthrough that I would like to see. Um, it's related to that, that we would have a better understanding, um, and treatments for chronic illness. Um, again, scene's a joined up approach across different services. So, um, as opposed to seeing. And medical problems as a crisis.

I think we, we often feel that, um, ill health is a crisis that needs to be solved, uh, rather than something that, um, has to be lived with and, um, uh, understood in longer term sense.

Something that's sort of been on my mind increasingly since the sort of start of the sort of COVID period and the first block down. And it's possibly related to the discussion we were having around sort of, uh, life expectancy in certain different areas of if a given city. And that is the sort of connection between, um, mental health and quality of life versus.

This sort of amount of space a person has to live in and the amount of access to, to, uh, you know, outside space and what air quality they're in. And I'm quite positive. There's a whole slew of research that already exists in this area, but it is something that it's, it's sort of made me quite interested based on what we've talked about.

Earlier this evening and my own sort of situation in the flat that we live in with nor yard and nor garden and right in the city. But, uh, and it does sort of, um, make you start to wonder when you're in a situation where you kind of can't really get out of that zone as much, or as freely as you sort of previously used to being able to.

And then the second thing is based on a really close friend of mine, who, like I said earlier, has struggled and suffered with chronic or CD for almost 20 years now. And there's only really started to get the sort of accurate treatment that, that, that, that person was needed for such a long time. And it's the development of, um, holistic thing, really, in a sense, but the, the, um, knowledge and the sort of the.

Relevant information that, that, that support network of that given person needs to understand and know and hear in order to kind of. Better facilitate that person's recovery. If you like, you know, um, th for a lot of illnesses, to my mind in all the things like in this example or CD, which is still get you where everyone sort of feels like they know what it is, but there are lots of different permutations of, of, of that illness.

There's not a huge amount of understanding. Of what the implications of it are and how it kind of deal with that with your loved ones and things until you actually have to kind of zone in and sort of find, find that out for yourself. You know? So I think kind of, it's a, it's an awareness related is kind of an issue for me really.

I think it's important that there's a great urgency to treating anxiety is as other people have mentioned and before they get their worst and the medical profession is not just treating the most extreme examples where that will, can be done, preventing causes that lead on to better issues in the future.

And, and that made me reflect on the. Patient patient's experience of going out to try and get a health issue. You've got solved and reducing the stigma around having an illness, pains and what particularly I'm anonymous being some kind of personal failure. I'm like, it's not something you're responsible at all.

It's just something that you possess control. Um, and the medical breakthrough. You want to see any lifetime. And the way I responded to that was, and just diseases I wanted to see here. It just came to my head, but, um, chronic pain, dementia, and there's things like this, that, that, and that is spread out over such a long period of time in someone's life that they can suffer with them.

We could reduce the amount of time. So that's the stuff that would be seeing seriously in my lifetime. I'd be tough to see that I know how difficult it is for everyone around some long they'll miss illness and deal with there.

I think one of the things that, that is the biggest challenge, the ways that there is a lot of very useful and valid stuff, I would, they voted its access. Isn't it? That access isn't there for enough people. So it doesn't matter how brilliant our research is. If the money is not there to disseminate it to a wide section of the population.

And, and that's the problem with a lot of those things, you know, especially with mental health, you know, you get kids referred to CAMHS and they're told go to a two year waiting list. What good is that? When you're 15 and on the brink, you know, um, sometimes we've got the answers, but we can't get them out there.

The equality thing I think is an alarmingly, like looked over thing. I just know from, from what I worked in a school. And I think this is a fault of our school alumni saying all schools are like this, but it pays that it comes down to who shouts the loudest and. Like, it's just, you mentioned that about children getting report hams and things.

I know that money has been wasted in our school because. Parents shouting that we want this for my child. I want this for my child. I want this. And there are children who have much greater needs, but because their parents maybe don't have the knowledge or the influence of things like that. To, to put there, to put their needs for what they're doing, do it.

And like, I can just count in the last four years. I know there's been at least four children who have had referred different people, different specialists, some around mental health, some around other, other things as well. Because of parents. And I think one of those children was probably a fair referral.

I would hope there would be more of a focus on children and young people’s mental health. Because I don’t think I appreciate the changes that have happened, certainly in the last 10 years, with social media and things like that, and what impact that’s had …

Heart disease, because with other illnesses, it's through a sister, but I want you in the system. You're okay. But without disease, you could be one minute and not the next can't. You.

From a purely selfish point of view, I would live a machine that could scan you and tell you that you, what was wrong with your all in one. Go.

I've never been in a doctor's for six years and I couldn't get an appointment and alarm bells should ring with it and receptionist this day. Never a person never rang up saying he's not very well. We don't know who he is. He better see a doctor. Yeah. Yeah. We should make.

Understanding Alzheimer’s and finding ways to stop it happening. Memory is central to our sense of self.

I think, from a psychological perspective, I would like more progress in research around developmental neurology and psychology, understanding learning and how children understand the world initially

I think mine would be those conditions where the body is healthy but the brain starts to fail. They are particularly heart-breaking conditions. The other way where the brain is healthy but the body fails is also very difficult to see.

Delaying onset of Alzheimer's would be wonderful.

I would like to see Alzheimer’s disease cured within my lifetime. Just because of the destruction it causes families and the upset.

I would like to see a cure for Motor Neurone Disease

A cure for cancer

The medical breakthrough I'd like to see happen in my lifetime would be that there is a cure for HIV/Aids or a vaccine.

The medical breakthrough that I would like to see in my lifetime is more research going into how disease and illness affects women in particular. I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about how the knowledge that we have at the moment is geared particularly towards, kind of, the male biological set up. And I would like to see more attention devoted to how illness affects females in particular and how we can help women to be healthy and survive diseases.

My medical breakthrough I’d like to see in my lifetime is an increase in conversational awareness of mental health especially in men and young men, because everyone goes through the same stuff but too many people sit in silence alone.

Having just gone through the NHS associated counselling service. I would like for there to be a breakthrough in mental health services offered on the NHS. While I understand the service must be broad enough to accommodate a wide populous with numerous conditions, I think these services need to be more in touch with how aware people are of their own mental health and offer actual practices and exercises to better behaviours rather than simple stating that 'stress is bad'. The system should allow for a more tailored counselling for each individual’s needs, a space to talk and get to the route of the issues as well as clear practical applications to improve mental health.  

A progression in cancer treatments and early detection to assist in diagnosing and catching illness early where possible. 

When it comes to filling out application forms when it comes to healthcare, I know we have the biological sex that is a requirement, but I also think we should also be able to put down our preferred name and preferred pronouns and any preferred gender that you prefer to go by on there. So, a gender identity and pronoun section. As a trans non-binary person, it kind of feels isolating when you’re looking at the application form and you don’t have anywhere to feel validated on that form. So when you go to talk to your, any healthcare professional you feel kind of like, invalidated by what they’re saying. Because they’re going to use what they have on the paper in front of them. Not what you actually want to say to them.

I want to see a change from med school because there is an idea around med school where if you’re not working yourself to death from the moment you start until the moment you finish and go into the field you’re not working hard enough. So there’s a whole environment around med students who stay up.. absolutely burning themselves out… And I that has an impact on how they look at people who are coming to them for help who are feeling tired, who are feeling drained. Because they have created this idea for themselves that that sort of feeling is normal. And it takes away from the empathy they should be having for patients…

The attitude of paramedics and bioengineers, especially when they are dealing with foreign nurses. Many times myself and my colleagues will have called an emergency…, when the team come they never address the black person. They have an assumption that the black person there - it could be a nurse - is never the ‘in charge’ person. So they’ll always go, the majority of them myself I have encountered, they’ll go to the junior person who is not foreign who they think will deal with them better. So they leave the person who has more details, more information, for the scenario which they have been called for. … They waste a lot of time. It’s very hurtful. When it has happened to me, I have felt so bad. There is a lot of training that needs to be done.

Nutritional health related to obesity. But also socio-economic as well. We talked a bit about the 11 year gap between Ponteland and Byker. There’s a reason why we eat a certain way. Especially if you’ve grown up eating really high starchy foods because you need the energy for longer because you don’t know when you’re going to eat next. And I touched a bit on my heritage. My mum and dad both know what starvation is. What the reality is of what it could be because of where they’re from and where they were brought up in. Whereas I don’t. But we they still have a habit of eating like they’re not going to be able to eat tomorrow because they might not have the food. There’s more to it than… The amount of times I’ve been to a doctor and said “There’s something wrong here” and they’ve said “Just lose some weight and that should fix it” and you’re thinking, “You’ve not even checked. You don’t know.” And I’ve been diagnosed with a few things now that have nothing to do with obesity at all it turns out. It turns out it’s to do with genetics. But no one checked because they didn’t want to do the checks. They just looked at me and thought “That person’s big and that’s the problem.” …

I think it is important to focus more on the mental health of young doctors. Because too often they enter the field and the stress of it all, along with the stress of their studies can amount to them committing suicide and it’s a terrible terrible thing. That I think young doctors need to have a proper support system so this stops happening.

For me it’s more about challenging the notions, to be more precise, the preconceived notions that are outdated and as yet are unfortunately still in application, that ultimately lead to more Africans or so called people of colour being more trustful of the healthcare system. Because the reason why there’s that reticence to sort of approach the healthcare system or even trust it in the first place is because of these archaic notions and once those notions have been challenged, ultimately we can perhaps have a better playing field and engage on much better terms.

Um, yeah, so I'd like to have a bit more focus on antibiotic resistance with that on the rise with super books like MRSE, um, you know, having a rather large impact on like health care and like the kind of drugs we can use to treat infections. Um, like the timeline mentioned when the discovery of penicillin was like monumental and helping get rid of getting rid of, um, conditions that were like deadly and got completely.

Eradicating a lot of them, but with the rise in like, um, resistant, um, To antibiotics. Um, there's going to be a lot of, um, conditions and like infectious diseases that can make a comeback with having like the antibiotics that would previously have trapped them, treated them, sorry, like not as effective.

And with, um, that like potential infectious diseases have the potential to make comeback and kill more people than other like logicals that we have today, like heart diseases and cancers, just because of how widespread they can. Um, Get to being so having more focus on antibiotics and like I'm more research, but the thing is with antibiotics, it's not a very profitable for the pharmaceutical industry because of course, antibiotics is lasting what, seven days, 10 days.

Whereas something like cancer, that's a drug that someone would be on for like a long period of time. So it's much more profitable. But I think a lot of the issues in the pharmaceutical industry is focusing more on profit over like the, the, like how, um, How the patient and patient outcomes in their lives and stuff.

So I think that there needs to be a bit more of a focus on patient centred care, as opposed to like the profit and the capitalist, like side of it. But again, we're in a capitalist society and stuff, and there has to be some sort of money coming in somewhere. But I think to put it into perspective and focus on what really matters.

Cancer is a disease I find impacts most the population at some point in varying capacities and claims so many lives every year. I would love in my lifetime to see not only a cure but also a less invasive form of therapy that eradicates the disease , as chemotherapy can be at times equally as debilitating as Cancer.

My first responses are a cure to cancer, a male sex contraceptive pill/contraception and then also better treatments/cures for HIV and ebola.

I’m not sure if it counts as medical breakthroughs but I would really love to see mental health be taken seriously and for there to be more accessible support for mental health. It would be incredible if lots of different high quality therapies and treatments could be easily and painlessly accessed through the NHS.

The scientific breakthrough I would like to see is a cure for neurodegenerative diseases. I guess, if I had to pick one in particular it would be dementia. But I realise that that is probably very very far away. So perhaps if I had to pick one it would be Parkinson’s disease or motor neurone disease. So, I think they would be the me

So, I would really like see some kind of breakthrough that would enable the mind to be better understood… I think there are certain circumstances where more research in the neuroscience field … there are times the physical body has been prioritised…

The medical breakthrough that I would like to see in my lifetime is a cure for all cancers.

I’m much more interested in looking at what research is already done and who benefits from it. And what structures we need to change… so some of the changes will lead to much earlier intervention… Then much more than cures, then to look at ways of preventing things… I don’t want a miracle cure that super rich people who have billions in the bank account while the rest of the planet suffers… To make things more equitable and more global.

I would like to see research to prevent the impacts of ageing.

When I think about the medical breakthrough I’d like to see in my lifetime, I think mostly about an improved awareness or understanding of how the brain works. And perhaps when you reach an age like mine you start thinking about how the brain deteriorates, how it’s functionality begins to falter and I think also maybe you’re scared of the conditions that you may get. So what drives you is a fear of your body outliving your brain and the consequences that will have on the people that are around you and have to look after you.

I would like to see the national health service or perhaps the department of education, teach people from nursery age, how to live a healthy life. It would be a lot cheaper. On the nation's finances, it's living a healthy life because it's quite cheap to live, to live a healthy life. And it would save all this money, which is spent on curing disease, which I believe is 95% of the national health service budget as against 5% on prevention of illness.

One of the things we know is about diet before eating healthy eating and people in those affluent areas. Look after they have the money to have the way with all to eat better. And I think education is really important about teaching people to eat well, but it doesn't always do. I was thinking of this because I'm sort of magic pill that people could take with, with all of it.

A nutrient or something we need to in the wall with Cod liver oil or whatever. And I don't mean vitamin pills, just something, because it's about the nutrients. It's about various aspects of food and we're very telling people to eat better. Some people have such lives, they don't have the money. They don't have the time.

All of these things, but if it was something that could equalise a diet, somehow I might have a magic pill sort of, they could do. I was heading to Tim, the chapter on the radio, the other night, talking about the microbiomes and you've done or something, and he's written a book about it, but I mean, he's explored that.

What do you say? There's going to be a lot more exploration about the effect of food on the metabolism and the health and everything. So I suppose it's a bit more researching that.

My hope is that there will be much more research in, into gut into the microbiome of the gut, because I've from personal experience, I've found that probiotics have helped my mental health and obviously everybody's is very different. Everybody's microbiome is different. And I think research into that, which is fairly new at the moment.

I'm hoping it will lead to some sort of breakthrough, uh, where that, that will help.

Much more research into preventing and reversing Alzheimer's disease.

Um, I would like to see a cure for endometriosis because it's a very debilitating, debilitating disease.

I think more research on Amy because it affects a lot of people and me and there hasn't been enough research done. And I think it leads looking into a lot more.

I would like to see more research into personally targeted medication, not only, and especially not only in the rich countries of the world, but between rich and poor between the sexes between the ethnicities and so on and so forth, much more research onto personally targeted medication.

Why is it that triers only carry down to uncertain people? What, what is it about the, um, clinicians, the researchers, but what is it about those that we don't put ourselves forward to being part of those trials? So I think to actually identify that in the first place as to why that happens, and then look at the next stage, which is to encourage, you know, the researchers and buses.

Members of the public to come forward and actually take projects to triers and to explain the advantages of that. So that was a helpline that you can contact to see what I'm interested in this, but what would I have to do? And you know, how, how would I achieve that and what would they be outcome and have fines are great for all sorts of diseases.