I was passing the time not too long ago on one of my work shifts when my coworker sparked up a conversation with me. It was the normal workplace small talk like talking about the boss, how the company should pay us more. Somehow, we got went off a tangent, like most workplace small talk conversations, and she told me something very interesting about her husband. She told me that her husband has his lower spine fused together and a spinal cord stimulator implanted in his lower back. Now I work in the medical field, so I found this very interesting. For those of you that don’t know, the spinal cord is vital in your everyday life. It controls body movement and sense of touch though the Peripheral Nervous System and it also sends important messages to and from the brain. Now my coworker’s husband, let’s just call him Jack, he had damage to his spinal cord where it doesn’t work like it should. It blew my mind when she first told me that it was implanted, however; what further amazed me is that fact that this lifesaving device must be charged, just like our phones that we use every day. Now how does someone supposed to charge their spine? I wondered. The exact same way that I charge my phone. I have one of those wireless mats that charges my phone. Jack, charges his back essentially the same way, he wears a belt that wirelessly charges his Spinal Core Stimulator. And just like that he is good to go, and no one would be able to tell the Jack has that device planted inside him.
I was blown away to this crazy reality of what medical technology. Jack can live a perfectly healthy life with no disabilities that would otherwise some with the Spinal Cord damage. Such as paralysis or chronic numbness, tingling or pain. The more thought about this incredible device It made me question the enormous advances in medical technology. Yes, the advances worked wonders with procedures allowing people with catastrophic injuries and even the new and better medications. So do the advances in medical technology cross a moral or ethical boundary?
Recently, scientists have created an artificial womb, in which they successfully gave birth to a live goat. That’s scary. Not all parents have their children the natural way. Some adapt and some use surrogates if there they are having trouble with infertility. Either way, the child was born in a human being. Homo Sapien. If this new scientific breakthrough got out do the public, woman unable to have their own baby could potentially go out and create one in and artificial womb somewhere in a lab.
The other technological advance in the medication is the development of better medications. I currently am working in the health care field and routinely see patients with long lists of their medications. Each medication seems to be piggy backing off the pervious until the patients is forced into being enslaved by their meds. The pharmaceutical companies invest a lot of money into research and technology to develop all these medications to feed their clients’ (patients) chronic disease. The pharmaceutical companies are making millions of dollars a year off these people who suffer from diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiac and respiratory issues. They are even persuading doctors to prescribe medications to patients that may not even need it All of these issues can be linked together causing the patients to rely on the medications, therefor keeping the pharmaceutical companies profitable. The pharmaceutical companies are crossing an ethical and moral line when they could be investing the technology and money into how to prevent these diseases.
People who suffer from these diseases can control it though an ideally simple change, changing their lifestyle. Most of the chronic diseases people suffer from are not genetic. They obtain these medical conditions through unhealthy life choices such as smoking, poor nutrition and the biggest factor, ignorance. All of these factors, and more, contribute to the development of preventable chronic disease. If you think about it, someone who has a poor diet is likely so develop some type of cardiac (heart) disease. It could be hypertension, high blood pressure, or something more serious such as Coronary Heart Disease which can lead to a heart attack or Congestive Heart Failure will lead for subsequent heart failure. A person is also likely to develop diabetes which effects the way they metabolize food if they consume a poor diet. Most of the time these people also life a relatively sedentary lifestyle with little physical activity.
The technology in the medical field has worked wonders to develop all these medications that help the patient cope with these chronic diseases. It is the same technology that has also taken away the patients’ responsibility of their own life. For most patients, once they are put on these medications, their lifestyle habits hardly change. The medical field has a whole need to look at a more holistic approach to the treatment of these people. Doctors need to utilize resources outside of their practice, such has dieticians and personal trainers. The root cause of these chronic diseases is the combination of a poor diet and lack of physical activity. If the health care system incorporated a system where the registered dieticians and personal trainers worked in conjunction with the doctor to come up with a treatment for these patients, the patients could untimely reduce if not completely get off all of their medications.
The medical field has put a lot of energy and money into the technology of medications that it has relied on prescribing those medications to its patients to maintain their chronic diseases. These advances in medical technology has lead to health care providers lose focus on a more natural approach to patient treatment. By implementing a healthier diet and prescribing some physical activity, health care providers are attacking the root cause of most of these chronic diseases as opposed to just medicating the signs and symptoms.
By incorporating registered dieticians and personal trainers into a patients’ treatment plan, it will hopefully eliminate some of the ignorance that come with living a healthy life. It will lower patients’ doses of medications of not be completely free of all their medications. It will allow these people to take responsibility of their lives and escape the tyranny of their medications and regain full control, so they can live a longer, happier and healthier life. The health care system should have a more holistic approach to patient care, by incorporating resources outside of the typical doctors office rather than trying to profit from these patients conditions.