Medicine Horizons

Medicine is always advancing, every time a problem presents itself for humanity then soon after medicine creates a cure. However I find it difficult to find any information on what medicine will cure next, I mean when medicine does make advancement in any field it will most likely immediately be published in a news program but it won’t be documented before it actually is prov en to be successful. For this reason I am instead going to have to look into more loosely based definitions of the future of medicine

To elaborate on what I have just said I feel that I have proven mostly that to research medicine It is better to look into the problems that medicine will be facing in the future or to look into the cures that medicine will soon have. I have also proven that medicine is one of the best producers of the fears which make the best horror films, with this in mind I will be gearing my horizon scanning towards problems that medicine will have to face, technology which will be coming out and the fears which may be developed.

However before I define my search parametres I want to see if i can find anything a little more random to add to the research.

So I put medicine into amazon and checked the books that will be coming out in 2012 and found this:

(Engel F, to be published 2012)

This book seems to be coming out to talk about the possibilities of using stem cells to repair the human heart. According to this book the human heart scars instead of healing properly, which is a major problem from a medical standpoint. However zebras and newts have been proven to be able to repair such damage to their organs using stem cell cultures, the tests show that it is possible for stem cells to repair damage to a mammal’s heart so it should theoretically work on humans also.
(Engel F, 2012)

This would be a boon to anybody who suffers from any sort of heart condition. This shows that in the future more of the causes of mortality will be eradicated or at least easier to treat, this also represents the future of steam cell research as it becomes more applicable in medicine.

This book's existence shows that the topic has a definite popularity, as does the fact it is already on sale in amazon online.

Now let’s think, it’s more likely that before you hear about the medical answer to a problem you'll hear about the problem. So it would be much more effective to look at the problem in this part of the blog.

(Rogers P and Leal S,  2010)

Ah, a new crisis. It appears that if the population figures continue to project as they do into the future of humanity we will actually run out of water. Since the population is rising uncontrollably we are actually getting to the point where we are running out of drinkable water for the human race, it is not due to poverty that people won’t be able to get clean drinking water soon. (Nusca A, 2010)

The existence of this book shows that there has to be a lot of media presence for this problem, as the book wouldn't have been written if there was nothing to back up its claims and projections.

This is one of the few problems I do not believe medicine can solve, because it is one of the main causes of the problem.
Now, back to a topic I have looked at in quite a few posts before now.

Overpopulation.

Image of Barak Obama

(August Review.com 2009)

According to a recent speech Obama gave to America it seems that in his own words:


"The basic promise that no matter who you are or where you come from, what you look like, that you can make it in America if you try — that vision is on the line" (Obama B, 2011)

It seems that to compete with the industrial advances of china and other such countries America would have to lower its minimum wage. Something that Obama is not willing to do, as he says that his country doesn’t agree with survival of the fittest, more of survival of the nation. (Bruce M, 2011)

This shows that the resources are getting strained slowly among the larger population, this is another example of a problem that will face medicine. Medicine as a whole is a very expensive industry and pursuit especially for the patients, if the financial strain continues it will start to become a redundant medium as more and more people cannot afford any medical help.

The quote from the presidential speech recently shows the media presence and popularity of this topic, as does the web article on it.

Image of the world

(MailOnline.com, 2008)

 

So boiling this all down, it’s quite obvious that the main problem that medicine in the future will face is simply that it worked. Simply put it allowed the population too exponentially rise until we became far too many to support ourselves, this is a problem that cannot be solved by medicine at all as the problem is largely medicine's fault.

According to a U.S government projection I found in this recent article published on the daily mail website, population figures are set to hit 7 billion in 2012. This population figure ties into the more dangerous predictions made earlier on (mentioned in my present posts), this is a problem that medicine cannot solve. (Mailonline.com, 2008)


Let’s pick another topic to do with medicine and the future

The 2012 Olympics! But where does medicine fit in?

(Orchard S, 2011)

Drug testing has been a part of the Olympics since the drugs were outlawed, however is this going too far? I mean there seems to be a lot of money going into this process. As much as the 2012 Olympics are important and integral to our culture it’s a phenomenal amount of money to spend for a world which all shares national debt. (Orchard S, 2011)

The concept of thwarting creating is a game of escalation, it seems that the better we get at finding cheaters the better we get at cheating, it’s a money wasting game which gets us nowhere as a whole.
Now a brief look at the advances of technology...or more accurately the projected development.

Presentation Video of the possible future

Sarcastic gamer. (2009).

Project to make realistic androids

(Whitehouse, D. 2005)

The above technology parody preview shows the popularity of the subject due to its existence, the idea of the parody video is to show what the people want to see. The second is a video showing the research being done by a university, again showing its popularity.

The first video is an advertisement video made by IGN.com for what they invasion the future of technology to be, a very beautiful world full of touch technology where all things are intractable and possibilities are limitless. It brings the idea of scientific futuristic technology to the forefront of our minds and keeps us wondering when will it get here? Well the second video is one of the developments being done on android robots in japan. It shows how realistic they are becoming now and that it won’t be too long until we have the robots we have always dreamed of, if nothing else it shows that the future is always speeding towards us!

(Orca S, 2009)

 

Ah yes, nanotechnology again. Well according to an article released in HP magazine if we follow the level of development we have dept. up for the last few decades we should be able to achieve nanotechnology in 20 years. If this is true we will be able to completely eradicate the concept of waste because nanotech robots can reconstruct the molecular structure of anything and reorganise them into...well anything! (Orca S, 2009)


This would be a great stride in all forms of technology and would do wonders for the medical field, it may even remove the need for surgeons, who knows? And it isn’t very far into the future!

presentation about prosthetics

(Kuiken, T. 2011)

Prosthetics have been a large industry for as long as people have been able to survive amputation. However now we seem to be making big leaps in the subject all of a sudden. We have already found a way to reconnect a prosthetic arm to the nerve endings and allow for brain controlled movement, however more recently we have also found we can regain all of the feeling which was in the human hand into the robotic hand!
This market is fantastic and is another way that medical science will advance ever so soon, it’s truly amazing how close the future of technology is isn’t it?


Final medical horizon I think...

(Rowe A, 2011)

A new gadget which has been made to advance neuroscience, this headset can detect and output all of the brains electrical impulses and workings without actually breaking the human skin. This device will make neuroscience much easier and wholly possible, combined with other technologies in the future we should completely understand the functions of the human mind.
(Rowe A, 2011)

Well it seems that the future of medical technology is both bright and fraught with dangers that it cannot solve! This has shows without a doubt popularity of medicine throughout time in the media but also that medicine has been the font of inspiration behind many horror themes throughout history. It seems that what I have learnt most from my research is that the best horror ideas seem to be from medical myths and the advent of future technology.