But these challenges do not negate the imperative. They underscore it.
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Half my patients are on clinical trials. Many are on drugs never tested in humans before. They inhabit that third space with me because the alternative, waiting for evidence that may never come, is unacceptable.
Digital infrastructure has unparalleled reach; a false narrative embeds itself in millions of minds before the truth can even load. One can try to debunk, with varied success, but the most effective approach is to inoculate against it. Finland provides a compelling example: children are taught to detect deepfakes, fact-check claims and think critically. They’re building a society less susceptible to manipulation, the ultimate competitive advantage in this age of distortion.
To the medical students, junior doctors, and researchers reading this: you’re inheriting a profession built by people who dared to challenge convention. Every breakthrough we now take for granted began as uncertainty in someone’s mind.
This is not a 9-to-5 profession. It’s a vocation that will demand your intellect, empathy and endurance. It will break your heart and remake it many times. But courageous medicine is not singular, it’s collective. It’s the nurse who speaks up. The registrar who questions an assumption. The researcher who publishes an inconvenient result. The student who admits, “I don’t know, but I want to”.
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You’re stepping into an era defined by complexity, by the merger of biology with data science, AI with empathy, human intuition with computational power. Technology will accelerate. But machines will never replace the moral imagination that makes you human. Use every tool at your disposal. But never let technology dull your humanity. Create evidence with your hands, minds and hearts, with transparency, humility and relentless curiosity.
When you find yourself standing in your own third space, uncertain, unready, afraid, remember this: step forward. That’s exactly where you’re meant to be. Because medicine does not just need more evidence users. It needs you to become an evidence creator.
Professor Georgina Long, the 2024 joint Australian of the Year, is chair of Melanoma Medical Oncology and Translational Research at the University of Sydney and medical director of the Melanoma Institute Australia. This essay is adapted from her Lambie-Dew Oration, delivered at the university on Thursday night.
