Over the past two days, I’ve read two really interesting articles. One of them is about one of the most important developments in medicine. If successful, it could lead to a complete revolution in modern medicine and save millions of lives each year. The article discusses the start of trials for a lung cancer vaccine that BioNTech is currently producing, with the trials having just begun.
To give you some context on how significant this is: lung cancer is responsible for more than 1.8 million deaths each year, making it the deadliest form of cancer. As the cancer advances, the chances of survival drop exponentially. The vaccine in question is an mRNA vaccine, which you’re probably familiar with because of COVID-19—those vaccines were rapidly developed and became more common during the pandemic. This lung cancer vaccine works by presenting tumor markers from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to the immune system, preparing the body to fight cancer cells that express these markers.
The goal is to boost a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells unaffected, unlike chemotherapy.
Let’s hope the trial is successful!
The second topic isn’t something that will happen soon, but I believe some conspiracy theorists will love to hate it. The idea is that the male gender could eventually cease to exist—that’s what a recent study is concluding. You might wonder, how could this happen? Well, gender is determined by a single chromosome. Men have the Y chromosome, which makes them male, while women have two X chromosomes, which make them female. But the research suggests that the Y chromosome will eventually disappear.
Now, this won’t happen overnight—it will take about 4.5 million years. This doesn’t mean that women will be the only sex; a new chromosome might emerge, and the species will likely continue without the Y chromosome. Nature tends to correct itself, and all species usually evolve and adapt. If we don’t adapt, then yes, humans could cease to exist, as a stronger, better-adapted species might become the dominant one.