Cut science funding and our remarkable progress against devastating disease will stall Ara Darzi

The recent news of a gene therapy that appears to slow the devastating march of Huntington's disease is, without question, a moment of profound hope.

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For the first time, a treatment has altered the course of this inherited neurodegenerative disorder, offering a glimpse of a future where such diseases might be managed, not just endured.

Though “breakthrough” is an overused word, this surely qualifies. It is a clean, powerful narrative of human ingenuity triumphing over affliction. Yet the very idea of a sudden breakthrough is a deeply problematic illusion, one that obscures a more crucial truth about how science works and, in doing so, endangers its future.

What looks like sudden progress in reality represents decades of painstaking work, failed experiments, and incremental advances that never made headlines. This is not a new problem. When the first Covid-19 vaccines were developed in record time, the speed of their creation became a source of public scepticism. The false idea that they were “rushed” and therefore unsafe took root, ignoring the fact that these vaccines were built on a foundation of more than 50 years of patient, often unglamorous, scientific research.