Modern British Medicine Flashcards
All 27 cards in this deck
Who identified the structure of DNA, and in what year?
Crick and Watson, in 1953. Their work helped doctors understand that some conditions are genetic.
Which piece of technology was essential in discovering the structure of DNA?
X-ray crystallography (Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction photographs).
Give two lifestyle factors now known to affect a person's health.
Smoking and poor diet (also alcohol and lack of exercise).
Name three developments that have improved diagnosis since c1900.
Blood tests, scans (X-ray, MRI, CT, ultrasound) and monitors (e.g. blood pressure and blood sugar monitors).
When was the NHS set up, and what did it provide?
- Treatment from GPs and hospitals funded by taxes and free at the point of delivery, so accessible to all.
What is a 'magic bullet'?
A chemical drug that kills the specific microbe causing a disease without harming the rest of the body.
e.g. Salvarsan 606 (1909), developed by Ehrlich's team to treat syphilis.Give two examples of high-tech surgical treatment in modern hospitals.
Organ transplants and keyhole (or robotic) surgery.
Name two diseases targeted by mass vaccination programmes in Britain since 1900.
Diphtheria (from the 1940s) and polio (from the 1950s); also measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), HPV and Covid-19.
Name two government lifestyle campaigns used to prevent illness in modern Britain.
The '5 a day' healthy eating campaign and anti-smoking / stop smoking campaigns.
What did Alexander Fleming discover in 1928?
Penicillin — he noticed a mould killing the bacteria in a Petri dish in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, London.
What was the contribution of Florey and Chain to penicillin?
From 1939 at Oxford they purified penicillin and proved it worked on patients (Albert Alexander, 1941), then won funding to mass produce it.
Why was penicillin mass produced from 1942–44?
The US government funded drug companies to make it for wounded troops after America entered the war; by D-Day (1944) there was enough for all Allied casualties.
Which technologies are used to diagnose lung cancer today?
Chest X-rays and CT scans, followed by bronchoscopy and a biopsy of the tissue.
Give two treatments for lung cancer that use modern science and technology.
Radiotherapy and chemotherapy (also surgery to remove the tumour, and targeted gene-based drugs).
Give two government actions taken to reduce lung cancer in Britain.
Heavy taxes on tobacco, and the 2007 ban on smoking in enclosed public places (also the ban on tobacco advertising).
True or false? Genetic factors can make a person more likely to develop lung cancer.
True. Work on DNA showed some people inherit a greater risk, though smoking is the main cause.
What was the Human Genome Project (begun in 1990)?
An international scientific project to identify and map every gene in human DNA. It was completed in 2003.
Give one way research into DNA has helped medicine.
Any one: doctors can identify the faulty genes behind some inherited conditions (e.g. cystic fibrosis); genetic testing can show who has a higher inherited risk of some cancers.
Why have blood tests improved diagnosis?
A small sample tested in a laboratory can reveal many diseases, such as diabetes or infection, without surgery, and can track a condition over time.
What was the second magic bullet, who developed it, and when?
Prontosil, developed by Gerhard Domagk in 1932. It cured some types of blood poisoning, and its active ingredient (a sulphonamide) was later used against pneumonia.
Why have antibiotic-resistant bacteria become a problem?
Overuse of antibiotics has allowed bacteria to evolve resistance (e.g. MRSA), so some infections are now hard to treat.
Why did Fleming not develop penicillin further after publishing his findings in 1929?
He had no funding to continue, and he did not believe penicillin would work inside a living body.
Why was penicillin hard to produce in large amounts at first?
The mould made only tiny amounts of the drug, so one patient needed vast quantities, grown slowly in many containers, which was costly.
When did British drug companies begin mass-producing penicillin, and why not earlier?
- British factories were too stretched by war production to take it on, so in 1941 Florey had turned to American drug companies instead.
Who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for penicillin?
Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.
What change to the age for buying tobacco was made in 2007?
The legal age was raised from 16 to 18.
What change to cigarette packaging was introduced in Britain in 2016?
Standardised packs: all brands sold in the same plain packaging with graphic health warnings.