The Advancement of Technology in the Medical Field
Technology in general has greatly improved in the last 50 or 60 years, but especially in the medical field. A lot of what drives the medical field today is computers. Computers have gone from being the size of a small room to being able to fit in the palm of your hand. The first computer was actually a calculator. With the advancements in being able to reduce the size of the integrated circuit or IC chips, also known today as microchips, they have gone from being able to fit a couple transistors on a chip to being able to implement billions of transistors on a single chip about the size of $.50 piece. With this we have really been able to advance the technology in the medical field. We have also been able to improve microscopes to be able to better see inside cells and to identify the different bacteria and viruses that infect humans and other plants and animals. Being able to better identify what is causing an illness, treatment can be greatly improved. Today there are cameras the size of a pill that you can swallow and a computer outside the body records it for the doctor to review. This makes it more appealing to the patients since it is less invasive.
Technology in the medical field has come a long way in the past century. We have went from tonics that some Dr. and concocted in his office to being able to perform the major transplants that we can today. 50 years ago people would've never thought that a doctor would be able to operate by a robot; remotely from another location in the world or that a major surgery could be performed through an incision only an inch long. The first organ transplant was performed in the 1930s by a Ukrainian physician, but ultimately ended in failure due to the recipient’s body rejecting the organ. At this time there were no drugs to suppress the immune system to prevent their bodies from rejecting the transplant. In the 1940s a scientist by the name of Peter Medawar, was working for the National Institute for Medical research and improved the understanding of rejection. The First successful organ transplant was in 1954 J. Hartwell Anderson, this was a kidney transplant between identical twins, since they were twins, and the recipients’ body did not reject the transplant. By the 1980s doctors had transplanted about every organ in the human body including the first double transplant in 1984. Transplants had been attempted clean back in the second century. With today's technology, doctors are able to perform invitro fertilization, and even facial transplants.
Not everything in the medical field is always good. Ever since the discovery of antibiotics in the 1940s, doctors have overprescribed them, now there are antibiotic resistant infections, known as “superbugs”, like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA). Doctors believe these superbugs have developed from the overuse of antibiotics over the last 60 years. The bacteria mutated into the resistant antibiotic forms. Since this has happened hospital started using disposables of about everything you can imagine to try and prevent the spread of the superbugs and other infections. With all these disposables comes a lot of waste that needs to be disposed of in one way or another. Some of it is dumped into landfills; others are burnt in incinerators that put smog into the atmosphere. Among one of the big advances in the medical field is plastic surgery. In a lot of cases plastic surgery is a good thing, but not always. For someone that has been in an accident, or was born with an anomaly, it is a godsend, like the lady that had a facial transplant when her monkey chewed her face off. In other cases it can be abused to the point of Michael Jackson. A lot of times people become addicted to plastic surgery and get one plastic surgery after another. Plastic surgery is so popular in Brazil once you turn 18 you get one free plastic surgery in your life. Especially for women in Brazil, if you don't have a perfect bottom you’re an outcast. This can be detrimental to one’s mental health and in turn cause social issues. This is not just an issue there though, it is all around the globe.