1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Summary
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. This is your pilot speaking. We are flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet and a speed of 700 miles an hour. I have two pieces of news to report, one good and one bad. The bad news is that we are lost. The good news is that we are making excellent time.
– Anon.Not so long ago, it would have seemed obvious where medical science was headed. Medicine's historic contributions to human health are legendary – vaccines, insulin, anesthesia, electronic heart pacemakers, the heart–lung machine, and many others. Entire diseases, such as smallpox and polio, have been eradicated, or nearly so. Such impressive achievements gave no reason to question clinical progress; indeed, they fueled expectations for still greater accomplishments in the future.
In many ways, medicine has met those expectations, even surpassed them. Modern medicine's technical capabilities are truly extraordinary. Many major organs can now be transplanted. Mechanical devices can partially or substantially replace a person's failing joints, heart, lungs, and kidneys, and there are synthetic substitutes for blood, veins, and skin. Machinery can sustain bodily functions after vital signs have ceased. Researchers are working on developing fully implantable artificial hearts, lungs, eyes, and bladders, and are experimenting with human brain transplants. Through gene splicing, scientists can modify the genetic makeup of living organisms, literally creating new forms of life with desired traits in the laboratory. We are poised on the threshold of applying these techniques to humans – human genetic engineering.
But amid these spectacular accomplishments are new worries and concerns, troubling signs that all is not well in the house of medicine. One of the most visible is the issue of costs. The United States now spends over I billion per day on medical care.
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- Information
- Worse than the DiseasePitfalls of Medical Progress, pp. 3 - 12Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988