Medical Mysteries and Rare Diseases: William Gahl at TEDxCMU 2011

Dr. William Gahl who was called a "super--diagnostician" by the University of Wisconsin School of medicine, leads the Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP) at the NIH and essentially sees patients who lack a diagnosis after years of visits to other doctors. He describes a bunch of intriguing and mystifying cases and goes through the logic and teamwork required to solve them. He also brings to light an important problem as cures and drugs for people with rare diseases are often overlooked because of their unprofitability.

William Gahl, MD, PhD is the clinical director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the US National Institutes of Health. He also studies very rare inborn errors of metabolism and recently encountered a disease so rare that he, essentially, discovered it. The media has often compared him to the fictional Dr. House, but where exactly do the similarities end? Dr. Gahl's work has been featured in CNN, Newsweek, People Magazine, The New York Times, and Nature. In 2011, Dr. Gahl received the American Medical Association' s highest honor, the Dr. Nathan Davis Award for Outstanding Government Service.

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