A Brief Tour of Craig Feied's Mind

We write at some length in SuperFreakonomics about a physician and technologist named Craig Feied, who is responsible not only for a lot of medical innovation but who looks at problem-solving in a resolutely unorthodox manner. The hours we spent with him were among the most fascinating research time on that book.
Now, for the rest of you, here’s a sample: Feied giving a far-ranging talk (about 37 minutes into the following video) at a recent Computing Community Consortium conference. Among the highlights: how a lot of current medical tests are ineffective, and therefore not cost-effective as well; how diseases are often diagnosed too late, after “the plane already crashed”; and how the time lag between research breakthroughs and clinical treatment is shrinking. And how Aum Shinrikyo sprayed anthrax from the roof of its building in Tokyo.

It is no accident that Feied wears a bow tie: he is devoutly vigilant about stemming the spread of bacterial infections, which traditional neckties sometimes enable.