Doctors are kind-hearted and medical ethics comes first. ——Dong Linsen
In 1986, a Chinese doctor successfully developed a drug to treat "acute promyelocytic leukemia". This doctor is called Wang Zhenyou. When he developed a drug, he did not rush to apply for a patent. Instead, he chose to use the drug for clinical use at a low price of 13 yuan. Many patients have been saved because of his medicines, and this doctor has also been widely praised by the public. Let's take a look at the story of this great man!
Strong belief in studying medicine
This doctor is called Wang Zhenyi, who was born in Jiangsu in 1924. During that turbulent era, Wang Zhenyi followed his parents to live in Shanghai. Wang Zhenyi has eight brothers and sisters. He comes from a well-off family and lives in a small Western-style building in Shanghai. His parents attached great importance to education and often taught them the importance of knowledge. Therefore, all eight of Wang Zhenyi's brothers and sisters later became intellectuals.
Wang Zhenyi has been very close to his grandmother since he was a child and always sticks to her. When he saw his grandmother being tortured by illness, he couldn't do anything to help her when she was in pain. He was so anxious that he wanted to help his grandmother relieve her pain, but he was still helpless. He secretly made up his mind to study medicine. He didn't want to have to watch his relatives suffer from illness in the future. In the end, my grandmother couldn't hold on because of her old age, and left in pain.
Wang Zhenyi has always been sad about the death of his grandmother. At the same time, his idea of ??studying medicine began to quietly sprout in his heart... Having determined his goal, Wang Zhenyi continued to work hard. In 1942, Wang Zhenyi took the exam. Entered the medical major of Shanghai Aurora University. Later, he obtained a doctorate and served as a resident physician at Guangci Hospital.
Continuously sum up experience
When Wang Zhenyi was extracting teeth for patients, he found that some patients usually did not have bleeding symptoms, but they had bleeding symptoms after a minor tooth extraction operation. This made Wang Zhenyi was confused. So Wang Zhenyi began to engage in blood research. In his research, he discovered that the level of coagulation factors in plasma is the key to bleeding. After overcoming a series of difficulties, Wang Zhenyi's research solved the problem of unexplained bleeding in clinical practice.
Wang Zhenyi did not pay too much attention to the small achievements of the experiment, nor was he proud of these achievements. Wang Zhenyi did not stop after the experiment. Instead, he stepped forward when the country needed him. During the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea in 1958, Wang Zhenyi signed up without hesitation to join the medical rescue team and devoted himself to the rear hospital on the battlefield.
As a doctor doing blood research in the Department of Internal Medicine, Wang Zhenyi encountered "tuberculous meningitis" on the battlefield. The patient coughed up blood severely or had massive bleeding. These problems were treated well by the team led by Wang Zhenyi, and the patients were well treated. Many diseases that appeared one after another also allowed Wang Zhenyi to accumulate a lot of experience and lay the foundation for subsequent research on leukemia.
After the war, Wang Zhenyi and his team proposed a plan to "conquer leukemia in three years" in his subsequent clinical medical work. However, during the "Great Leap Forward" period, Wang Zhenyi was forced to leave his post to teach in a medical French class, which delayed the progress of the research.
Restarting the research plan
In 1973, Wang Zhenyi was able to return to work in the hospital. But the focus of his work is not on treating patients, but on research on "blood" issues. After years of work and observation, acute leukemia has become a lingering shadow in Wang Zhenyi's heart.
If leukemias are classified in detail, there are about 300 types, which are divided into chronic and acute. Chronic leukemia cannot be cured and requires long-term drug treatment. Patients rely on drug treatment to survive. But acute leukemia is much more dangerous. Since it is called acute, we can understand that acute leukemia is sudden and has a high mortality rate. Generally, most patients die within one day after onset of the disease, and the latest death time is one month.
Such a dangerous condition makes Wang Zhenyi worried. He has seen too many patients in their state of illness. He felt helpless in the face of such a patient, as if he had gone back to the time when he watched his grandmother suffer from the disease. He didn't want to watch patients die like this in front of him, so he began research on this disease.
In 1978, 49-year-old Wang Zhenyi made "acute promyelocytic leukemia" the focus of his research.
After working hard and forgetting to eat and sleep, Wang Zhenyi discovered after five years of research that all-trans retinoic acid can transform acute myelocytes into normal cells.
This result satisfied him so much that he immediately put the drug into clinical use. The feedback received is that severely ill patients were saved from danger because of Wang Zhenyi's drugs, and many patients have improved due to the effects of the drugs. This feedback makes Wang Zhenyi very excited. He is very proud that his many years of hard work have been applied at this moment.
Indifferent to fame and fortune
In clinical practice, the drug resistance is not very good, which was gradually exposed to Wang Zhenyi. Wang Zhenyi led the team to continue improving the drug. Wang Zhenyi proposed using arsenic acid and all-trans retinoic acid contained in arsenic to make an oral liquid.
Everyone knows that arsenic is poison. Wang Zhenyi’s idea was naturally refuted and questioned, and various voices continued to come out. Everyone felt that Wang Zhenyi was wrong, so Wang Zhenyi had no choice but to use the research results to convince everyone. He put this question into practice. After formulating the drug, no one dared to try it when it was used in clinical practice.
After all, it is difficult to take the first step. This improved drug was finally used on a patient who was seriously ill and was about to die. This is completely treating a dead horse as a living horse. To everyone's expectation, this improved drug has a great curative effect on "acute promyelocytic leukemia". Not only does the drug resistance increase, but it also has a therapeutic effect on some "blood cancers". "The cancer cells in the patient's body have subtle effects. Wang Zhenyi's special medicine has brought many patients back from "the gate of hell" and has also been recognized through practice.
Wang Zhenyi spent half his life researching this drug, but he did not apply for a patent for this drug. From the time this drug was developed and put into clinical practice, Wang Zhenyi did not even apply for a patent. Moreover, the price of this drug has not been increased because of its efficacy, and has remained at the affordable price of 13.2.
As the saying goes, "Sickness comes like a mountain," and many families go bankrupt because one person gets sick. The cost of medical treatment has devastated countless families, and high medical expenses have forced many people to die. They also want to live, but seeing their loved ones suffer because of them, they don't want to drag their loved ones down like this.
High medical expenses are the biggest headache for patients, but in recent years various medical subsidies provided by the national government have also played a significant role. With the development of the times, the medicine invented by Wang Zhenyi is no longer the original price. But his spirit of being indifferent to fame and fortune is still worthy of praise, and his research spirit is worthy of our study.