Consider the first recipient of a successful organ transplant, or the initial subject in a CRISPR gene-editing trial. Before them, the path was dark. After them, millions see light. Their luck is historical. They were sick at the exact moment the puzzle was solved, and they possessed the courage to say, "Try it on me."
In a just world, we would build statues to these pioneers. Instead, we often cloak their identities in privacy agreements and clinical codes. But the next time you take a routine antibiotic, receive a standard vaccine, or benefit from a laparoscopic surgery, remember the first person who lay down on that table.
Lucky Patient 1 is the first domino. They fall so that the chain can begin. Their fortune is our future.
In the annals of medicine, we often celebrate the discoverer of a cure or the surgeon who performs the impossible. Rarely do we pause to consider the individual who makes that discovery possible: the first patient. While "luck" is a fragile word to use in the context of illness, there exists a unique category of fortune belonging to "Lucky Patient Number One."
