| [The Promise of Medicine] | The more that is understood of the causes of illness, the greater the potential for prevention. Preventive knowledge is effective only if acted on, and there is still little grasp of what makes people act as they do and how they can be persuaded to do otherwise. Any form of prevention that depends on behavioral change will, most likely, continue to be overshadowed in science and technology that are now shaping the future of medicine. Nowhere is this more evident than in new approaches to inherited disease. |
| [Robosurgery] | The prospect of lying unconscious while an electromechanical device cuts and probes is disconcerting. However, if computer-controlled machinery can mimic the awareness, adaptability and knowledge of a human surgeon, such a takeover in the operating theatre is actually realistic. |
| [Designer Drugs] | The search for new drugs has traditionally relied on trial and error. Although this method has yielded large numbers of useful drugs, it is wasteful. Much better would be to design drugs for specific purposes. And this has now become a reality. |
| [Monoclonal Antibodies] | By making monoclonal antibodies specific to fetal cells,it should be possible to detect abnormalities of the fetus. A small number of fetal cells cross the placenta and enter the mother's bloodstream but we don't need to worry about catching the one in 5 million fetal cell in the bloodstream. |
| [Genetic diseases] | Over the last few decades, much effort has been put to characterise the environmental causes behind many common diseases but few attempts have been made to identify their genetic basis. Recently the technology for identifying such genes has become available. |
| Kidney disease was once considered as the consequence of evil spirits, wicked deeds, a malicious deity or some other such influence, it is now viewed as a material problem : the failure in the biological organ that should be filtering, cleaning and adjusting the body fluids. | |
| In the 20th century, people in developing countries have witnessed the dramatic impact of scientific principles on high infant mortality and endemic infections. In due course, patterns of mortality in developing countries will begin to resemble those of the developed countries or industrialized nations, with cancer and cardiovascular disease displacing infections as the main causes of illness and death. | |
| In the late 70s, the eradication of smallpox raised the hope of eliminating other infectious diseases. However the features of smallpox sets it apart from other common infectious diseases. It could be easily diagnosed, it had no animal reservoir, it could be treated with a very effective vaccine against it and it was widely known and feared. | |
| It is recognized that any increase in temperature will have an almost immediate impact on health and medicine. The rise in atmospheric temperature would have its most direct effect on the tropics. Many infectious and parasitic diseases are spread by intermediate hosts: insects, snails, and small arthropods such as ticks. These carriers would become more widespread, taking with them yellow fever, malaria, and much else. | |
| [Screening defects] | The number of inherited and congenital disorders that can now be diagnosed before birth is increasing. This offers a further option for termination. Amniocentesis has now been joined by a technique called chorionic villus sampling which can be done at an earlier stage of pregnency. Another advance in this field is the development of DNA testing by which single gene defects can be idnetified in fetal cells. |
| [Complementary medicine] | Many patients in richer countries are now driven to search for more "natural" methods of healing due to the suspicion of science and of scientific medicine. Some techniques such as acupuncture, osteopathy and chiropractic now command the respect of many doctors. |
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