With its mixture of science and social service, medicine is particularly sensitive to the needs of society just as medical and technological advancement greatly impact society. Science increases the understanding of our internal body systems and the related biological problems. How this understanding is applied however, is therefore a concern of both medical technicians and society. Since the dawn of time the longevity of the human life has fascinated and befuddled the human race. Upon further exploration, we discovered the number one threat to human longevity was the malfunction and or failure of the very organs and body systems that sustain us. Thus we begun the exploration of ways to fulfill this societal need; ways to either stop organs from failing or fix/replace them when they do. Billions of surgeries later we arrive at the concept of transplantation.
An organ transplant is a surgical operation in which a failing or damaged organ in the body is removed and replaced with a functioning one. The donated organ can be taken from a deceased person, a living person and now even animals! Xenotransplantation is the transfer of living cells, tissues and/or organs from one species to another. Medical science already uses various animal parts for various therapeutic reasons such as the replacement of human heart valves with ones found in pig hearts. Currently there are a whole bunch of organs that are being mechanically engineered for the human body. Some of them are shown below.
Heart
Currently internal mechanical hearts such as the AbioCor (shown above) are only used as temporary solutions as they have a tendency to form stroke-inducing blood clots. The race is on however for a permanently implantable heart and French transplant specialist Alain Carpenter says his model will be ready for clinical trials as soon as next year and actual use as heart transplants as soon as 2013 - assuming we all survive 2012.
Lungs
Extrocoporeal Membrane Oxygenation is the technique for providing life support in the case that the natural lungs are failing and are not able to sufficiently oxygenate the body's organ systems. Today the closes we've gotten to the artificial lung is the heart lung machine used as patients recover from infections and trauma. However, the Mc3 BioLung is a device that uses the heart's pumping power to move blood through its filters. It works alongside a natural lung to exchange the oxygen in the air with carbon dioxide in the blood. So far it's only been tried on sheep but human trials are expected in the next few years. Check out this site for more info on the BioLung: http://www.mc3corp.com/case_studies/artificial_lung_bio/.
Hand
Today we've come a long way from the days of Captain Hook. Using something called myoelectric linking, prosthetic limbs can now pick up electrical impulses from muscle fibres in the arms and transmit them to fingers and thumbs. The i-Limb , is an $ 18,000 with articulating fingers and thumbs, each with their own motors. Currently in the works is the SmartHand (top right). The SmartHand would be a bio-adaptive hand that could actually feel using 40 sensors that would communicate back and forth with the brain using nerve endings in the arm.
Extrapolation
The possibilities of transplantation are endless as companies are currently ELADs (Extracorpeal Liver Assist Devices) and artificial retinas such as the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis that could actually cause the blind to see. It is important to acknowledge that the development of these devices would not be made possible without the societal need for donor organs. However, it's important to extrapolate these needs and see logical conclusions to be arrived at should these needs increase. To do this, we'll examine this scene from the recent movie Repo Men. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msswu92NflE&NR=1 . The movie Repo Men reminds us of the old saying that while regular people go to church to pray for good health, doctors pray for the sickness of others. Illness is in fact a business.
The possibilities of transplantation are endless as companies are currently ELADs (Extracorpeal Liver Assist Devices) and artificial retinas such as the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis that could actually cause the blind to see. It is important to acknowledge that the development of these devices would not be made possible without the societal need for donor organs. However, it's important to extrapolate these needs and see logical conclusions to be arrived at should these needs increase. To do this, we'll examine this scene from the recent movie Repo Men. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msswu92NflE&NR=1 . The movie Repo Men reminds us of the old saying that while regular people go to church to pray for good health, doctors pray for the sickness of others. Illness is in fact a business.
As social needs in the fields of medicine and technology increase so will the costs associated with the development, production and purchase of these new gadgets. As the ability to increase the ability to prolong people's lives increases, so will the amount of occurrences where a monetary value is placed on the lives of people. Repo Men transports us to a not too distant future - in the year 2025 - where an organization called The Union has perfected the creation of artificial organs, which have replaced organ transplants. A potential customer can apply for an organ, which is sold on credit with a high interest rate attached. If the customer is unable to make payments, a Repo Man is sent after the customer to reclaim their property. This process is usually brutal and often results in the death of the individual.
A recent study on the costs of kidney treatments showed that the average cost of kidney dialysis for one year in the United States is about $44,000! Furthermore, the average cost of a kidney transplant and medical care for the first year after surgery is $ 89, 939. With the size of these costs, we can see that we are not too far from the future depicted in Repo Men. With the United States Congress refusing to convert to a Universal Health Care system, we will find people unable to pay for their transplanted organs should they be able to be artificially generated. The collection of monies and assets to repay the parties involved would essentially leaving the patient bankrupt giving them life but not livelihood. If the organs were to be repossessed, we would find the ethical implications and resultant litigation to create quagmires of epic proportions similar to the situation of Shylock and Antonio in Shakespeare's comedy The Merchant of Venice. Companies trying to get their pounds of flesh would have to get them without shedding blood or extracting any parts of the body that aren't theirs. They'd also have to store and keep alive diseased organs until a patient is unable to pay or pays in full. The entire situation just seems like a bad hyperbole.
Conclusion
To conclude this blog, I will first acknowledge the technological developments in the fields of transplantation that are accredited to the societal need to preserve one's life and the lives of others. It is however important to acknowledge that increases in these needs and the quality of how they are fulfilled cause increases in cost. The rudimentary goal of medical technological advancement is and always should be to ensure the survival of the human race. As the price of medical care increases, society should never be tempted to put a price on the life of human beings as this will only lead to the downfall of society. One should never be tempted to see the cost of preserving a human life as too high as this will lead to the downfall of the human being. It is important to remember that there is art to the practice of medicine as well as science and technologies, and that the warmth, sympathy, and understanding of the human being will always outweigh the surgeon's knife, the chemist's drug, and the creditor's paycheck.
