21st Century Cure
So my mother was watching some of the old episodes of POprah that she had dvr'd and this particular episode was different types of technology and medicine that can help to extend one's life. One of these was tissue regeneration. What doctors do is using a form (usually made from the tissues of an animal that has had the cells removed) and using cells from the patient's body, use it to grow a new organ.
At first, I thought that that was pretty cool. No longer would people have to wait months, even years to replace organs like hearts and livers. No longer would a patient have to take the tons of medicine required after a normal organ transplant to prevent rejection of the organ as it would be technically, your our own organ.
But then I really thought about it....and I got scared.
There is just something waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy to REPO!-ish about all of this. It starts with replacing things like the pancreas in diabetes patients and hearts in people with heart disease. Then next thing you know, your screening Olympic sprinters for designer muscles and then you have people getting designer skin and eyes and as we can see with the current economy, people will always do whatever it takes to keep up with the Joneses and are buying organs just because that's what everyone else is doing. Those whose insurance doesn't cover it and can't afford it out of pocket take out loans. And then we have the same thing start happening with the organ market that has happened with the housing - people start defaulting on their loans and the property gets repoed.
*shifty eyes* This is PRECISELY the reason why I usually avoid science fiction....
At first, I thought that that was pretty cool. No longer would people have to wait months, even years to replace organs like hearts and livers. No longer would a patient have to take the tons of medicine required after a normal organ transplant to prevent rejection of the organ as it would be technically, your our own organ.
But then I really thought about it....and I got scared.
There is just something waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy to REPO!-ish about all of this. It starts with replacing things like the pancreas in diabetes patients and hearts in people with heart disease. Then next thing you know, your screening Olympic sprinters for designer muscles and then you have people getting designer skin and eyes and as we can see with the current economy, people will always do whatever it takes to keep up with the Joneses and are buying organs just because that's what everyone else is doing. Those whose insurance doesn't cover it and can't afford it out of pocket take out loans. And then we have the same thing start happening with the organ market that has happened with the housing - people start defaulting on their loans and the property gets repoed.
*shifty eyes* This is PRECISELY the reason why I usually avoid science fiction....