The Nobel Prize: Gore Has Earned It

Posted on | October 11, 2007 | Comments Off on The Nobel Prize: Gore Has Earned It

And so have Doctors Fert and Grunberg!

This past week, we featured an archived Health Politics piece on Global Warming. That was appropriate as we await word whether former Vice President Gore will be awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on global warming. He certainly deserves it when you considered what he has endured and what he has accomplished. Not only was he one of the first to recognize the magnitude of the issue and herald it, but he stood up to (and eventually overwhelmed) organized resistance of an administration intent on foot-dragging. Beyond that, to have been able to collect himself after the 2000 election debacle and apply himself in such a determined and deliberate manner is remarkable.

Equally incredible have been the achievments of physicists Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg, from France and Germany respectively. They are this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

What did they do? They discovered "how to manipulate the magnetic and electrical properties of thin layers of atoms to store vast amounts of data on tiny disks." So what? Well, this was one of the discoveries that opened up the new field of nanotechnology, the building and manipulating of assemblies of atoms only a nanometer in size. What is a nanometer? It’s a billionth of a meter. And?…Their discovery allowed the creation of now commonplace appliances that record data, music or snippets of video by sensing changes in micro electrical sub-atomic particle fields and converting them to 0’s and 1’s. And that means that iPods and all their derivatives became a possibility. More than that, the discoveries laid the foundations for "spintronics," a process that leading-edge physicists are now involved in where information is stored and processed by manipulating and interpreting the spins of electrons, making further progress a near-term expectation.

Why do I care? Because, as I’ve said before, true health is now data and planning. It is not only a broader concept than the one I grew up on, but involves being able to anticipate, plan, adjust behavior, connect 24/7, monitor and adjust continuously with an eye toward a 100-year lifespan. Al Gore knew that global warming was a threat to the health of this planet and to each of us. He forced us to confront it, and admit it. We’re still trying to work up the guts to do what is necessary to reverse it. As important, Doctors Fert and Grunberg have made possible continued expansions of efficiency and cost-effectiveness in data collection and storage, and enabled generations of new devices that will convert homes into "healthy homes." with continuous data loops from home to care team and back to home. Health is now global, but it’s also local. It’s coming home. And Gore, Fert, and Grunberg are all exemplary health care leaders of the New Millenium. Each richly deserves a Nobel Prize!