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LITR 4368 Literature of the Future 
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Sample answers
for Part 2:
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Amanda Cowart
04/08/2019
The Future of Medical Technology:
Our Doom or Our Bloom
Will
the rapid improvement of technology be our future’s downfall or our salvation?
Technology has progressed so much just in my lifetime. We went from having our
first family desktop in my childhood home, to having a smart phone with
limitless functions. “Having the world at your fingertips,” as my dad would say
when describing smart phones. With this growing technology the medical field,
has also improved to help make our lives easier. There are now new medical
procedures, mechanical human limbs, cosmetic surgeries and artificial organs. It
almost seems too good to be true, but is it as good as we all make it out to be?
What could possibly go wrong? I
have always been on the fence about what increase of medical technology might
hold for our future. As great as all this high technology progress in the
medical field sound sounds, will this further improve our lives in the future or
will it be our down fall?
The
constant search for new technology in the medical field is not anything new.
Medical science has always searched for ways to cure and improve our lives. The
invention of the first implantable pacemaker was invented in the 1960’s, and was
revolutionary for this time period. The constant improvement of technology has
now increasingly evolved into more intricate devices for the medical field. New
technological devices and procedures has advanced so much in the recent years to
help those who work in the field and ones that are in need of medical attention.
While looking at this increasing pattern of new medical devices over the years,
it is easy to see that the future will hold many new medical wonders. The
wonders may also hold a deadly outcome.
Will
becoming part human part machine be an improvement on human kinds’ future or end
up using them to destroy? Being part man and part machine is often referred in
texts as cyborgs, but can cyborgs really be a part of our future? The answer to
that is yes and that there are already people with robotic limbs. In an online
Article in The New York Times
reports, “Engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab have
developed a next-generation prosthetic: a robotic arm that has 26 joints, can
curl up to 45 pounds and is controlled with a person’s mind just like a regular
arm.” Is it a possibility for our future to be transformed for the better or the
worse through these robotic replacements?
In
the DC Comic Universe, Victor Stone was in a fatal accident leaving very little
of his body intact. Victor was saved by his father, a scientist, by rebuilding
him using mostly machine, making him a more advanced being. These advancements
made him the perfect fighting weapon. Though he used his enhancements to fight
for greater good, Victor now carries sorrow in his soul because he could never
lead a normal life. Similarly in the Marvel comic universe, Bucky Barnes, was
also in a fatal accident during his time serving the war by falling hundreds of
feet off the enemies train. Bucky was presumed dead to his fellow regiment, but
in reality Bucky survived the attack with help of the enemies called HYDRA.
HYDRA brainwashed him along with equipping him with a cybernetic arm giving him
incredible strength. The enemies used Bucky as their weapon of war, leaving him
killing many people. In both cases, using high tech robotic prosthetics had its
downfalls. In our future, I see a
high probability of using this medical procedure of replacing a lost limb with a
high tech robotic limb as a weapon of war.
The
future is skin deep. How deep do you have to cut until it turns out for the
worse? The number of cosmetic
surgery procedures has rapidly increased over the recent years. Cosmetic surgery
has been around since 1915, when Harold Gillies invented a new way to treat the
severely injured and disfigured soldiers in the war. Since Gillies’s medical
innovation, cosmetic surgery procedures have grown in popularity over the years.
One of Gillies’s pupils Ivo Pitanguy helped with the growth of popularity of
cosmetic surgery by making it accessible not only to the rich but also to the
lower classes. Pitanguy stated “Aesthetic surgery brings the desired serenity to
those that suffer by being betrayed by nature.” Soon cosmetic surgery was not
just for the severely disfigured but for fixing a person’s insecurities. The
famous actress, Jennifer Grey from the movie “Dirty Dancing” got a rhinoplasty
procedure done. The result was that she looked so different that she wasn’t even
recognizable to the public eye and this left her a little unsettled feeling her
personal identity was completely changed. Harry Wallop from
The Telegraph stated “ The concept of
beauty has changed in the last generation, and hint at how, in many cultures,
going to a cosmetic surgeon, rather than a cosmetics counter.” Just since the
year 2000 cosmetic procedures increased 200%. In the year 2017 there were 17.5
million cosmetic procedures done in the United stated which was a 2% increase
from the year before. The statistics of the number of cosmetic procedures are
dramatically increasing because of the new innovative procedures and rise of new
technology. People strive to look perfect and to look like the models they see
in the media and now there are procedures to let them do so. People are going
into the procedures and coming out with similar features of the others that
strive to look “perfect”. Without a doubt the cosmetic surgery field will
dramatically increase with new technology along with the people getting the
procedures. Does changing your physical features to meet societies standards
change who you are? The procedures are becoming quick and easy, so would you
change who you are, if you could? If it does change you as a person is it really
for a positive benefit or is looking similar through societies standards of what
is pretty sacrifice your individualism as a person. Where is the line drawn?
In the future will everyone
look alike due to ease of changing their image due to these procedures? In Scott
Westerfeld’s book series “Uglies” Westerfeld portrays the future as being just
that. In his series, the city
provides and controls everything. At the age of 16 you must go through a
mandatory cosmetic procedure to make them “pretty”. The surgery makes them
symmetrical with fuller lips and bigger eyes. Almost everyone is compliant with
the surgery because during their early years they are taught that they should be
ashamed of their physical flaws and once they become “pretty” they will have a
better life. Not only are their looks being changed but unknowingly to them,
while they undergo physical plastic surgery the city is also performing a
procedure to put lesions on their brain. These lesions make the individuals
temperate to further help the citizens conform cities society and rules. While
so far there is no evidence of mandatory plastic surgery to fit in with
society’s norms is it really that far off to say that they are highly suggesting
it through media. There are tons of commercials suggesting that if you are young
and beautiful anything can be yours. Even celebrities at a young age are getting
procedures done. Such as Kylie Jenner at the age of 17 convincing other young
people to follow in her footsteps. In today’s culture of the obsession of
retouching one’s own body to conform to look like what society deems perfect, it
is hard to find one’s own ideas of what is pretty and to learn to love who they
are as a person. The urge for the government to have physical conformity appears
in many past tragedies as well as in many futuristic dystopian novels. The
results to everyone looking similar can potentially lead to the loss of
individualism and can lead to the loss of free will. As of the present changing
ones physical appearance usually doesn’t directly change a person’s moral
standards to inflict harm, but what about changing your insides?
It’s
what on the inside that counts, at least in this case the insides are your
organs. Can replacing certain organs with new technology harm the future of
mankind? The inner workings of the
body can also be replaced by new high tech medical technology. At the McGowan
Institute, scientists are researching and testing fully artificial or
bio-artificial organs. The scientists are calling it “Biohybrid Organs”. If an
organ is damaged they would be able to fully replace the failing organ with a
new “Biohybrid Organ”. These new advances in medical technology can be extremely
fascinating yet makes me apprehensive. This type of procedure is no stranger to
the ideas illustrated in futuristic texts and films.
In
“Stone Lives” a man referred to as Stone, receives bionic eyes. These eyes are
not only just to just restore his vision but he is able to change the way he
perceives colors of things, able to look into immensely bright light, and record
and store digitized copies of what he sees and may view it for later use(182).
Also in the story it is mentioned that a company called Citrine Bionics has
found a way to live well past the average human life span and give “near- total
rejuvenation”(192). These medical advancements in the story lead to the fall of
many cities splitting the social classes dramatically. The rich became richer
and the poor became poorer, there was no in between. These types of enhancements
in the story related closely with the bio-artificial research that is done
today. If the research they are doing now succeeds, scientist and engineers
could use bio hybrid organs and improve upon them to add technological
advancements to provide similar functions as the organs in stone lives
The
film “Repo! The Genetic Opera” is set in the mid 21st century and
holds an epidemic of organ failures. The company GeneCo provides an option of
giving the patients organ transplants through a financing program, making the
procedure affordable. This organ financing plan led to a growing trend for the
public to get cybernetic organ enhancements as a fashion statement. The downfall
of this organ financing program was that if you could not keep up with the
payments, GeneCo in turn, will hire repo men to come and kill the person to
retrieve the organ that was not paid for. This program and new fashion trend
lead to more deaths than what it was originally intended for.
Though, in these two examples, the intent of artificial organs is intentionally
used for good, the circumstances do take a dark turn for the worse. In the
future, I foresee a huge technological advancement on artificial organs. Even
though we are in the research phase now of making bio-artificial organs, I
predict we will eventually have technological enhancements of our organs used
for recreational use.
To
think about all of these medical technological advances is so sublime. It amazes
yet, leaves me uneasy, what a tremendous amount of evolution of technology has
achieved. Will the continuous progression of new technology lead us to a
dystopian world or bloom into a new positive high tech world where everything
and anything can be cured or simply fixed by a doctor? I believe advancements of
medical technology can lead us down either path. I believe that the researchers
in the medical field are creating these new medical technologies to help save
and benefit the well being of a person. Yet, if we are not careful these
procedures can potentially fall into the wrong hands and potentially use these
advancements for evil.
Works Cited
“Cyborg.” DC,
15 Mar. 2019,
www.dccomics.com/characters/cyborg. accessed 3 march 2019.
Flippio, Di Paul. “Stone
Lives”. Class Handout.
Furious 7.
Directed by James Wan, Universal Studios, 2015
“Medical Devices and Artificial Organs.” Regenerative
Medicine at the McGowan Institute,
2019,
www.mirm.pitt.edu/our-research/focus-areas/medical-devices-and-artificial-organs/.
Accessed February 2019
The
New York Times. “Prosthetic Limbs, Controlled by Thought.” The
New York Times, The
New York Times, 20 May 2015,
www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/technology/a-bionic-approach-to-prosthetics-controlled-by-thought.html.
Accessed 23 February 2019.
Wallop, Harry. “100 Years of Plastic Surgery.” The
Telegraph, Telegraph
Media Group, 10 July 2015,
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11731223/100-years-of-plastic-surgery.html.
Westerfeld, Scott. Uglies.
Simon & Schuster Children, 2005.
“Winter Soldier.” Marvel
Cinematic Universe Wiki,
marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Soldier. Accessed 21 March 2019.
“What
Is Robotic Surgery.” What Is Robotic Surgery?
| Robotic Surgery Center,
med.nyu.edu/robotic-surgery/physicians/what-robotic-surgery. Accessed February
2019.
