cure?

The New York Times just reported on the results of a new treatment for atopic dermatitis.  It looks like the biologic worked for severe eczema.

It is a huge advance to celebrate - and I do!  But I feel strangely lost.  I have spent the past fifteen years of my life preparing myself to research skin disease. Instead, someone else discovered the cure, or at least, a very successful treatment.

What this means is that in some sense my obligation, whether real or imagined, to my childhood self (and to other childen suffering from skin disease) is now discharged. I am free to work on any question I want, any idea, any need in the world. I don't have to be a dermatologist; I don't have to do research on skin.

I can study anything I want. I can be anything I want; I can do anything I want. That doesn't mean I won't study skin, but the purpose that has been driving me for so many years has been fulfilled.  Surely, there is much more still left to learn, but I don't know that I want or need to do that.

I feel strangely lost.   I don't have to be a scientist. I don't have to be a physician. I can follow wherever curiosity takes me where life leads me. It is an odd feeling, but a good one. And it's thrilling all the patients who have suffered for so long that there is hope for a cure.  I hope someone is throwing a party for Dr. Emma Guttman, one of the principal investigators, because she deserves it.