This TED Talk features geneticist Steve McCarroll recorded live at TEDMed 2017.

Nine years ago, my sister discovered lumps in her neck and arm and was diagnosed with cancer.

From that day, she started to benefit from the understanding that science has of cancer.

Every time she went to the doctor, they measured specific molecules that gave them information

about how she was doing and what to do next. New medical options became available every few years.

Everyone recognized that she was struggling heroically with a biological illness.

This spring, she received an innovative new medical treatment in a clinical trial.

It dramatically knocked back her cancer.

Guess who I'm going to spend this Thanksgiving with? My vivacious sister, who gets more exercise than I do, and who, like perhaps

many people in this room, increasingly talks about a lethal illness in the past tense.

Science can, in our lifetimes, even in a decade,

transform what it means to have a specific illness.

But not for all illnesses.

My friend Robert and I were classmates in graduate school.

Robert was smart, but with each passing month,

his thinking seemed to become more disorganized.

He dropped out of school, got a job in a store,

but that too became too complicated.

Robert became fearful and withdrawn.

A year and a half later, he started hearing voices and believing that people were following him.

Doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia,

and they gave him the best drug they could.

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