Welcome to the Not Old Better Show. I'm your host Paul Vogelzeng and this is episode number 311.

Today's show is brought to you by Blinkist.

As part of our Smithsonian Associates, Art of Living Inside Science Series, our guest today from

the Pulse of Modern Medicine program is John Tisdale MD.

Dr. John Tisdale is Chief Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics Branch

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, one of the 27 institutes within the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. John Tisdell will be the featured expert presenting as part of the Pulse of Modern Medicine program, January 15,

2019 on the subject of Sickle Cell Disease, which affects 100,000 Americans and millions around the world.

Sickle cell is an inherited disease which affects the hemoglobin in red blood cells that

carry oxygen and results in severe pain and early mortality.

Dr. John Tisdale will discuss with us today a new curative therapy for sickle cell

and the work NIH is doing to cure this disease.

Please join me in welcoming via internet phone to the not-old-better show, Dr. John Tisdale.

Dr. John Tisdell, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.

This is a popular program, the Inside Science Program, the Pulse of Modern Medicine.

So it really is a pleasure to be speaking with you. We're going to talk a little

bit about Sickle Cell today as part of the multi-part series included with the Smithsonian Associates program and I wonder if you would

tell us briefly about your upcoming Smithsonian Associates portion of the presentation.

So I'm going to be speaking about our efforts over the past couple of decades actually

to try and come up with a widely available cure for this disease. You know I initially got interested in sickle cell

...