Chapter 111: Chapter 83: The Value of the Medical Record
“Uh… I can afford tens of thousands…” Chen Jue said, a little unconfidently. He thought about his bank account; after paying rent and buying filming equipment, he only had a little over 130,000 yuan left.
“Not enough! Not nearly enough!”
“That little bit of money isn’t even enough to cover the research funding for a single data selection in my paper!” Zhou Chuan shook his head, then added meaningfully, “Knowledge is priceless, and healthcare is currently humanity’s most luxurious form of consumption.”
“Brother Jue, do you know what the world’s top billionaires are doing right now? New energy? Chips? The metaverse? Space exploration? It’s none of those! After achieving their life’s purpose and financial freedom, all the top billionaires are pursuing health and longevity!”
“Health and longevity?” Chen Jue was stunned. He considered himself fairly well-informed about current events, but he had never paid attention to news related to the health industry.
The word “longevity,” in particular, was beyond Chen Jue’s imagination; it sounded like utter gibberish to him.
Seeing his reaction, Zhou Chuan smiled faintly and opened a trending news article he was following on his phone. “Amazon’s founder, Bezos, invested 3 billion USD to create the cell regeneration company Altos Labs. His goal is to replace all tens of trillions of cells in the human body, hoping to return his body to an infant state and live his life all over again.”
“Facebook’s founder, Zuckerberg, also invested 3 billion US Dollars to establish the BioHub research center, hoping to find the secret to eternal life. He even consulted Hawking about how to achieve longevity and cure all diseases!”
“All the top billionaires are investing in their own health and longevity, hoping to obtain the secret to immortality, just like Sun Wukong.”
“My research is something I hope to one day sell to these top billionaires.”
“Without money, it’s very difficult to support my research,” Zhou Chuan said, sighing softly.
This was a very real problem. Whether one was an academic ace, a genius, or an academic fanatic, in order to continue their research and see it bear fruit, they could never bypass the issue of funding.
Chen Jue fell silent after hearing this. Compared to these top billionaires, he was leagues behind in terms of material wealth. The only thing he had that they didn’t was a system panel.
“So, have these top billionaires achieved any results with their research?” Chen Jue asked curiously.
Zhou Chuan nodded. “Definitely! Take the Silicon Valley billionaire Brian Johnson, for example. He’s one of the more radical ones. He’s using his own body as a template to initiate a ‘reverse aging’ project.”
“He hired 30 doctors to monitor his body’s data in real-time, spending 2 million USD annually to establish a standardized procedure for reversing aging. It started with a three-generation blood exchange with his son and father.”
“After the blood exchange failed, he switched to a strict maintenance routine.”
“He goes to sleep at 8:30 PM and wakes up at 5 AM. Upon waking, he takes over 100 supplements. Then, he exercises for an hour, and his diet is entirely proportioned according to scientific data. He applies seven different creams daily, undergoes weekly chemical peels and laser therapy, covers himself from head to toe in antioxidant gel, and rinses with tea tree oil after meals to keep his teeth clean, and so on. This is all just the publicly released information; there’s a lot more effort we don’t see.”
“As of now, the 45-year-old Brian Johnson has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the physical fitness of an 18-year-old. That’s the kind of health you get when you throw money and top-tier medicine at the problem!”
Chen Jue was dumbfounded after hearing this story about the longevity-seeking billionaire. He never expected there to be someone on this planet more hardcore than him, a guy with a cheat system.
…
Just as Chen Jue was marveling at the lengths these billionaires went to for longevity, Zhou Chuan was staring at Chen Jue’s electronic medical record, slightly lost in thought. He suddenly changed his tune and proposed, “Brother Jue! I can let you take a look at the excerpt from my thesis about the gallbladder and courage ahead of time! You won’t even have to pay a thing! But I have one condition.”
“What condition?” Chen Jue’s eyes lit up. He had finally managed to pry open this academic fanatic’s mouth.
“I want to track the follow-up treatment for your gallstone disease!”
“Because, Brother Jue, your gallstone shrank by 2 millimeters in a very short time, which is extremely rare in clinical cases. If you could continuously provide me with your medical records every month, preferably with details about your daily habits and dietary intake, I think it would be a great help to my research,” Zhou Chuan explained.
“Track my medical records?”
Chen Jue’s brow furrowed. He recalled that Xu Ping’an had made a similar request.
He hadn’t paid much attention before, because most ordinary people don’t pay close attention to their own medical records.
But after hearing Zhou Chuan’s examples of the value of healthcare, Chen Jue was beginning to understand the value of his own medical records.
“Yes! Tracking your medical records!”
“It’s a very common method for monitoring a patient’s condition in clinical medicine. Some valuable and rare medical records can even be traded in the medical community for a set price.”
“You provide the records, I provide the paper. We share information. It can be considered a fair exchange,” Zhou Chuan said, nodding to clarify his intentions.
Upon hearing this, Chen Jue pondered for a moment. He figured that since Zhou Chuan’s research was recognized by his panel and had triggered a prompt, there must be something unique about it.
So, after finishing lunch, Chen Jue agreed to his request.
…
He added Zhou Chuan on WeChat and sent over his medical records from his various check-ups.
Zhou Chuan, true to his word, sent Chen Jue the gallbladder excerpt from his paper, “A Discourse on the Influence of Geographical Environment on the Function of Inner Organs,” as an encrypted document.
He even used a special, single-use, “read-then-destroy” type of document, which showed just how much he treasured his research.
‘Knowledge truly is a priceless treasure!’
Chen Jue marveled inwardly at Zhou Chuan’s caution.
Back in his apartment, he opened the encrypted document on his computer and immediately took a photo of the screen with his phone to save it. He had used a physical method to exploit a little bug, saving himself from forgetting the contents after just one read.
After pulling off this slick move, Chen Jue began to seriously read the excerpt on gallbladder function.
Besides the points Zhou Chuan had mentioned in class—about decisiveness, courage, and ancient humans consuming large amounts of animal fats for survival—Chen Jue also saw a lot of data in the excerpt about related regional diets and differences between various ethnic groups.
‘No wonder Zhou Chuan looked down on my paltry sum of money!’
‘Just collecting this data must have cost a fortune,’ Chen Jue thought to himself.
This paper excerpt had clearly been backed by a huge investment. Besides being supported by data from a distribution map of gallstone incidence within the Huaxia region, it even included data from foreign countries.
He especially noted the data on people living in the Arctic Circle, like the Laplanders and the Aleut People, as well as the Inuit (Eskimo) who retained very primitive lifestyles and enjoyed eating raw seal blubber. Their incidence rates for gallstone disease were much lower than those of people living in warmer regions, at only a few tenths of a percent.
In addition, Zhou Chuan had also specifically listed data on people in specialized professions that involved working at great heights and required greater courage.
Workers who cleaned the exterior walls of skyscrapers or maintained high-voltage power-line towers and signal towers spent their years in high-risk environments. The courage developed by these specialized workers was greater than that of ordinary people, and likewise, their probability of developing gallstone disease was significantly lower.
“The so-called ‘courage’ is just a derivative concept of ‘gallbladder qi’ in Chinese medicine.”
“The five major organs correspond to the Five Elements and five types of qi. The gallbladder belongs to the Wood element. The more abundant the gallbladder qi (courage), the stronger the gallbladder’s function, and the more effectively it can prevent gallbladder diseases.”
Chen Jue softly recited the excerpt from the paper, a light gradually appearing in his eyes. This hidden content, which hadn’t been mentioned in class, was slowly opening up new lines of thought for him.
Although the paper didn’t explain how to treat gallstones specifically, the detailed research data, when listed and compared, further verified Zhou Chuan’s conjectures about courage and gallbladder function.
“Greater courage is more conducive to the prevention and treatment of gallbladder diseases.”
“Right now, by adding points to [Constitution] and taking special medication, I can already slowly dissolve the gallstones in my body.”
“If I want to speed up the dissolution of the stones, it seems I have no choice but to work on training my courage!”
Chen Jue closed his laptop, carefully mulling over Zhou Chuan’s paper. Finally, his gaze fell upon the [Climbing] Skill on his panel.