Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Challenges, Risks, and Rewards: Learning to Control Our Biological Fate
- 2 Learning to Breed Successfully
- 3 How Life is Handed On
- 4 Cells in Sickness and Health
- 5 Experiences in Utero Affect Later Life
- 6 Infection, Nutrition, and Poisons: Avoiding an Unhealthy Life
- 7 Signs of Ageing: When Renovation Slows
- 8 Cancer and the Body Plan: A Darwinian Struggle
- 9 Fighting Infection
- 10 Are Devastating Epidemics Still Possible?
- 11 Discovering Medicines: Infinite Variety through Chemistry
- 12 Protein Medicines from Gene Technology
- 13 Refurbishing the Body
- 14 Living with the Genetic Legacy
- 15 Epilogue: Signposts to “Wonderland”
- References
- Index
13 - Refurbishing the Body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Challenges, Risks, and Rewards: Learning to Control Our Biological Fate
- 2 Learning to Breed Successfully
- 3 How Life is Handed On
- 4 Cells in Sickness and Health
- 5 Experiences in Utero Affect Later Life
- 6 Infection, Nutrition, and Poisons: Avoiding an Unhealthy Life
- 7 Signs of Ageing: When Renovation Slows
- 8 Cancer and the Body Plan: A Darwinian Struggle
- 9 Fighting Infection
- 10 Are Devastating Epidemics Still Possible?
- 11 Discovering Medicines: Infinite Variety through Chemistry
- 12 Protein Medicines from Gene Technology
- 13 Refurbishing the Body
- 14 Living with the Genetic Legacy
- 15 Epilogue: Signposts to “Wonderland”
- References
- Index
Summary
Humane solutions to the problems of damaged bodies have always been the realm of surgeons. After the discoveries of antiseptic surgery and anaesthesia in the nineteenth century, surgical practice could make moderately safe and pain-free contributions to improved health care. However, with characteristic boldness, surgeons quickly extended their activities to other predicaments. Blood transfusion became increasingly routine in the 1920s and eventually had an enormous impact on most areas of medicine. More recently, open-heart surgery and organ transplantation have enabled many individuals to overcome congenital defects and chronic disease, extending their lives by many years. Bone marrow grafts have permitted cures of blood cancers and a variety of genetic diseases. Stem cell science and other aspects of cell biology have inaugurated the age of tissue engineering, which may have huge potential for the renovation of nervous and muscular tissues. Spectacular advances in techniques for refurbishing the body are not made without extraordinary audacity and risk.
The Surgical Tradition
The diary of Samuel Pepys describes how, in 1658, after several years of excruciating discomfort, he bravely decides that his bladder stone must be removed. Completely aware of the hideous unpleasantness of the operation, he sees the risks as preferable to the misery the condition will bring to the rest of his life. A few skilled surgeons existed in London at the time who evidently specialised in this operation with reasonable success.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Biomedicine and the Human ConditionChallenges, Risks, and Rewards, pp. 266 - 289Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005