The future of medical science

The never-ending onward march of medical science is a wonderful thing but sometimes carries with it occasional causes to pause for thought.

For me personally, every time I learn of some stunning new advance in research and/or treatment in (to take but two examples as illustration) say cancer or chronic knee conditions, I cannot help but reflect upon those close to me – whether it be thirty years ago or in the present – who either died from cancer and/or may do so before this new treatment becomes available, or in the latter case spent the last decades of their lives struggling with a gammy knee when, if only said treatment had been available back then, they would not have been so afflicted.

Here’s a link to a piece by Josh Gabbatiss, science correspondent, that appears today upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT

One day, and let us leave Artificial Intelligence and robots, let alone cryogenics, out of this for now, it is fair to assume that there will be little in the standard human ‘machine’ (sorry, body) that will not be capable of replacement with a medical/technological artificial ‘something’ that can replicate that which either has ceased to function at all and/or ceased to function as it used to in the days when the individual concerned was in his or her prime.

If holograms projected onto an area of the brain may soon be able to give the bind the ability to see, the deaf to hear and the paralysed to feel and move then perhaps we can project our thoughts forward to a time potentially not too far away when – rather like a car going in for a repair or service – we’ll all be able to nip into a clinic and have our ‘parts’ replaced, reconditioned and serviced and then be on our way, metaphorically as good as new, until the next time our similar ‘service’ is due.

Or even have any given artificial part previously implanted routinely ‘upgraded’ to a later improved version as further scientific advances bring these to the world.

The only aspect of this fantasy future – which I’d venture to suggest has precisely no more and no less chance of coming true as any other – that troubles me as I write is that, if human beings ever manage to it about, we’re all going to live appreciably longer, presumably while retaining – if not actually improving – our faculties and quality of life as we go.

But what about the pleasures, never mind the struggles and challenges, that come with the state of old age?

Like all living things the human body, as developed by evolution, was programmed to go the way of all flesh.

A new dentist I went to for the first time, nearly forty years ago now, slightly stopped me in my tracks when he explained that human teeth were only designed to last 45 years max (I think his statement was in furtherance of encouragement to look after them).

But, my point is, that we humans ‘grow’ as we go through life suffering ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ along the way. All work and no play, or even all good experiences and no bad ones at all (courtesy of science or not), are not what human existence is about.

At any given point in our lives, we are inevitably the product of every experience we’ve personally ever had or gained useful wisdom from learning about.

Take forgetfulness and clumsiness – to which I note I have become progressively more prey in the past five years. They don’t bother me particularly because – as I go along – I learn to allow for them, or live with them, or even laugh at them.

The idea that one day – whatever the physical state I was in by then – science could render me impervious to forgetfulness or clumsiness doesn’t have much interest for me, to be honest. I’m on a ‘journey’ (as it is the fashionable thing today).

I don’t want to stay as I once was. I want to remain forever ‘in the present’ and experience it in the round and as it was meant to be.

Not via some artificial brain inside an artificial body somehow preserved – to the fullest extent that science can manage it – as I once was.