Monday, 9 a.m.. A small group of basic science researchers from the Champalimaud Foundation and other people working at the Foundation who are interested in bridging the gap between science and medicine is scheduled for a “medical class” via Zoom (due to pandemic restrictions) with Pedro Marvão, their tutor in a new course called Fundamentals of Medicine. In one week, they will have to “solve”, together, a clinical case. They will do this, week after week, with a series of other cases. 

Eugenia Chiappe, Principal Investigator of the Sensorimotor Integration Research Group at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal is standing in her office. There is a door, maybe three metres away, and the floor is flat and clear. Eugenia, who intends to walk in a straight line to the door, takes a second to measure the distance and the terrain. She closes her eyes, walks four steps forward, and bumps into a chair to her right. 

Obesity has been linked to no less than 13 cancers, including the two most prevalent (breast and colorectal), as well as to cardiovascular disease, which remains a leading cause of death worldwide. 

Sirens whining, an ambulance brings a 65-year-old woman on a stretcher to a hospital ER. She is conscious, but her mouth is drooping to one side, and she is confused and speaking unintelligibly. These telltale symptoms have allowed a preliminary diagnosis on the way to the hospital: acute ischemic stroke; a blood clot has blocked proper blood flow inside her brain.
 

People are not born racist. But as children grow up, their brains, which are association-generating machines, detect and unconsciously learn, through social interactions, to associate different groups of people to different attributes, which can be positive, neutral – or negative. And when these attributes concern ethnic minorities, negative associations give rise to racial stereotypes and racism. 

It started pretty innocuously. An email from my coordinator popped up in my inbox, asking if I would be available to prepare a piece for the campaign Be Open about Animal Research Day – Get on #BOARD21.