8B medical by Johan Nayar https://padlet.com/nayar/8Bmedical1 Made with charisma en-us 2016-09-05 11:32:00 UTC 2016-09-05 11:34:14 UTC hello@padlet.com Medical Change in the Future   The last centuries have seen an explosion of new medical opportunities and we cannot help but wonder what changes the future will bring. Will we be able to design babies to our own liking, will we grow organs as necessity arises and will it be possible to diagnose diseases well in advance? Designer Babies as the New Social Darwinism "I would predict that by next year, we will have determined eye colour with about an 80 percent accuracy rate," said fertility specialist Dr. Jeff Steinberg, director of Fertility Institute. Some months ago, Chinese researches started to pass a new ethical line: They used a recently developed method, called CRISPR/Cas, to modify the genetic codes of embryonic cells. In all these cells there was a mistake in a specific sequence of the genome, and if the cells had developed to a human organism, the children would have suffered under a serious disease, probably they even wouldn’t have been able to survive. The aim of the scientists was to use this CRISPR/Cas-enzyme system in order to cut off the wrong genetic sequence and to replace it by a right segment. If this measure is successful, it could be possible to eliminate several hereditary diseases in the next few years. The first attempts have shown that there is a huge need on improvement as many unexpected mutations appeared. Nowadays, there are strict regulations on experiments with embryos especially in Europe. However, this new method could revolutionise the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PIGD). PIGD includes all procedures performed on embryonic cells before they get implanted in the uterus of the mother. Screening embryos for genetic diseases and selecting a health one is already quite common, and it is likely that even modifying and designing their genetic code will become reality. Some scientists, such as Dr. Jeff Steinberg, predict that based on this development parents will be able to choose the eye and hair color of their baby, for example. This leads us to a big ethical debate about designer babies and Social Darwinism: Should parents have the right to design their child like you design your house or your car? Who's to say what the better trait is? Has a blue eyed baby with blond hair more value than one with brown eyes and black hair? What if this has a false expectation on children as consequence? Parents may pick a child to be smart, and if he or she doesn't succeed, they could become upset because they invested money and didn't get what they wanted. Could children be considered as just a product you can buy? Should we stop these researches, or better asked, can this development still be stopped? Technologically Produced Organs According to the Guardian life expectancy in the UK now exceeds 80 years, with the number of over-65s expected to double by 2030. A side effect of increasing life expectancy is that body parts and organs deteriorate. Finding fully functional replacements is important for an aging population to spend their last decades fit and healthy. Annually 300,000 hip replacements are now performed worldwide, offering patients a pain-free life. But implants just cannot measure up to a healthy joint, because they do not contain cartilage, which is both flexible but also maintains its integrity. Looking to create implants that grow and repair themselves, big advancements have been made in engineering artificial cartilage. This tissue is made up of chondroblast cells, which maintain a three-dimensional internal skeleton of collagen fibres that give cartilage its properties. They have been grown in labs before, the problem rather lies with injecting them into the joint, because the bone structure, their natural habitat, is often destroyed as well. In the 1960s Professor Larry Hench pioneered the idea of using scaffolds, a temporary platform on which the stem cells can grow and divide themselves with a minimum of mechanical stress. These scaffolds can be designed to dissolve over time, leaving the chondroblast cells to rebuild their habitat. Life Science reported that the same idea has been used by Russian scientists to construct a working oesophagus, which was later implanted in rats. Scientist from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin also managed to grow fallopian tubes, which connects the ovaries and the uterus. In a statement, they described the resulting organoids as sharing the features and shapes that are particular to its original organ. Left: Oesophagus at Kuban State Medical University, right: fallopian tube at Max Plank Institute Tissue engineering is not yet in widespread clinical use, but has been applied to provide bone grafts. In the future organs like livers and kidneys could be regrown using this technology.  At the moment the major problem is to keep up the blood supply for the artificial tissue. Preventing Diseases before their Manifestation Using recent data acquisition methods in medicine like computed tomography (CT), ultrasound and electroencephalography (EEG) it is possible to get detailed insight into different regions of the human body. As a consequence, one can localise and precisely analyse fractures of bones, cancer and several other types of injuries and anomalies. This allows an accurate diagnosis and gives rise to appropriate and targeted treatments. An emerging trend goes in the direction of permanent tracking of our healthiness. Computer systems (e.g. in form of mobile apps) are used to record how much sport we do, what we eat and drink and on how many days per year we stay at home due to colds. Some even measure the speed of our heart beat. It is obvious that this permanently collected data allows us to deal with certain kinds of illnesses in a different way to before. The additional information can make it far easier to classify diseases and even better it might be possible to recognise them much earlier. https://padlet.com/nayar/8Bmedical1/wish/121584647 2016-09-05 11:33:57 UTC https://padlet.com/nayar/8Bmedical1/wish/121584647