Rangan Chatterjee: How to Make Diseases Disappear at TEDxLiverpool (Transcript)

Rangan Chatterjee

Here is the full transcript of Rangan Chatterjee’s TEDx Talk presentation: How to Make Diseases Disappear at TEDxLiverpool conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio: How to make diseases disappear by Rangan Chatterjee at TEDxLiverpool

Rangan Chatterjee – NHS GP

I can make diseases disappear. To be more precise, I can make chronic diseases disappear. You see, chronic diseases are the long-term conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, depression or even dementia. And there is 15 million people in England who have already been diagnosed with a chronic condition; that means looking out amongst you now there’s probably about 250 people in here who have one of these long-term conditions.

Just one of these alone, type 2 diabetes is costing the UK 20 billion pounds every single year and I’m standing here before you’re saying it, I can make these diseases disappear.

See, I’m not a magician and what the Americans call an MD, that’s not a magical doctor. That’s a medical doctor or what I call a mere doctor. You see the reason I can make diseases disappear is because diseases are just an illusion, diseases are not real. In fact, diseases don’t really exist at least not in the way that we think they do.

So 15 years ago, I qualified for medical school and I was wearing — I was full of enthusiasm, full of passion, ready to go out and help people. But I felt like there was something missing, I started as a specialist, I moved from being a specialist to becoming a generalist or GP. And I always got this nagging sense that I was just managing disease or simply suppressing people symptoms.