Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials,
Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription
The View From India
Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective.
First Day First Show
News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming.
Today's Cache
Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day.
Science For All
The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in!
Data Point
Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers
THEdge
At the cutting edge of education and careers
Health Matters
Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there
Gender Agenda
Stories from beyond the binary.
The Hindu On Books
Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features.
AI has entered the design stage of biology. For medicine, that creates remarkable opportunities. For biosecurity, it raises equally important questions. Image used for representational purposes only
| Photo Credit: Getty Images
Did cataclysmic events happen over the week in healthcare – developments that made us sit up and take note, fume a little, wonder much and record everything? Bringing to you, five major themes that caught our attention this past week, and then, some more.
AI technology is forever invading our columns here, opening up the possibilities of what can happen in the future, and indeed, bringing the future to our door steps today. The last week, there was news about researchers using AI to design, hold your breath – viruses. A particular type of virus actually – a bacteriophage. Infectious Diseases specialist Dr. Abdul Ghafur explains what happens when AI begins to design pathogens. Referring to the Stanford experiment that produced the bacteriophages (bacteria- eating viruses), he explains: “It does not show that AI can casually manufacture dangerous human viruses; it shows that computers are beginning to move from analysing biological information towards proposing biological designs that scientists can physically build. This requires appropriate governance and safeguards.”
“The computer did not create a virus. It did not touch a test tube or handle a living cell. What it did may ultimately be more consequential: it helped decide what the virus’s genome should be,” he writes. Of the 285 AI-generated designs physically synthesised and tested in the laboratory, 16 produced functioning phages. Some were able to overcome bacterial resistance that defeated the original virus. What is new, is not the physical manufacture of a virus. AI has entered the design stage of biology. For medicine, that creates remarkable opportunities. For biosecurity, it raises equally important questions, he says.
Further, in the cardiac diseases sector, AI heart disease prediction tools show promise but are not ready for clinical use, Afshan Yasmeen writes, quoting a review. Published in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, an open-access journal. The review assessed 30 studies published since 2017 on AI-based models developed to predict future cardiovascular disease among adults without established heart disease. Researchers say “Many models demonstrate good discrimination, but very few studies examine whether the predicted risks correspond to what actually happens in different populations.” For more on this, hit the link above.Â