By the end of the session, most students realize that the technology they wrote about is already here, she said. We just haven t put it all together. The patient replies that her husband died recently. She has trouble sleeping. But last night, a friend gave her an herbal tea that seemed to help.
Bells go off in the nurse s head.
The woman can t remember the name of the tea, so the nurse calls the friend on her computer and gets a picture of dried herbs over the screen. She sends it to a toxicologist at a nearby hospital and an on-call herbal specialist in another state. The herbalist responds first. When mixed with one of the patient s medications, an ingredient in the otherwise harmless tea causes a life-threatening reaction in some people. The woman s genetic code shows she is one of them.