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MEDICINE


	We shall take the point of view that medicine is a technology like
transportation or manufacturing.  Its subject is the human body, and because
of the limitations of present science, medicine has concentrated on the
repair of the body.  From our more general point of view, we shall
consider medicine as concerned not only with the repair of the body
but with its improvement.

	From the individual point of view, the largest single complaint
about life is its shortness, and therefore lengthening life is the single
most important problem for medicine.  At present there is no obvious
way of raising the present 70 year lifespan even to 90, let alone doubling
it or multiplying it by ten.  However, the advance of biology may well
present humanity with such opportunities within 100 years.  Let me express
my personal regret that contrary to my hopes when I was young, this
advance seems unlikely to occur within my lifetime.

	An incresed lifespan will undoubtedly present society with
problems, even assuming that it is accompanied by an equivalent
expansion of the years in which a person can work productively.
Many societies have been and are dominated by the old to an
extent that progress depends on their dying.  Democratic capitalist
societies seem to have substantially solved the problem in that
neither the Presidency nor Congress nor thgovernment or industrial
bureaucracy is dominated by the senile.  Socialist countries have
not solved the problem.  As far as I can see, Stalin, Mao and Ho Chi
Minh would still be the rulers of their respective countries if they
were still alive.  Gerontocracy in business is still common in the
Far Eastern capitalist countries, although their business practices
don't seem to have suffered from it yet to the extent that might have
been expected.  My view is that individuals will want long life so
strongly that society will just have to adjust itself accordingly
when long life becomes possible, and there is every reason to hope
that this adjustment will be possible in democratic societies without
stifling progress.

****

	From this point of view, medicine has one immediately obvious
defect.  It is entirely concerned with the repair of the human body
and doesn't even notice the possibility of making it better.  From
the medical point of view, a human body has a normal state, and the
problem is to correct deviations from that state.

	Admittedly, present science doesn't seem to provide obvious
ways of making the body better than normal, and some of those advocated,
such as the drugs of the 1960s, had serious disadvantages.  However,
even there, there has been an excess of fanaticism.  For example, before
the abuses of the 1960s dexedrine was used for many years to good
effect by millions of people.  Many doctors will tell you in private
conversation that it can still be used to good effect and safely to
increase alertness and physical performance in many conditions.  Of
course, mistakes can be made and addictive personalities can become
addicted.  But the hysteria of the media - including the medical media -
and the government was unselective, and the benefits were lost.  The
dogma of normality played an important role in this.

	Here are some possibilities for improvement:

.item← 0
	#. A person should be able to monitor and control his blood
chemistry in order to improve his physical and mental state.  This
requires imbedded blood chemistry sensors with readouts on the
alread multi-functional digital wristwatch.  Beyond that he needs the
ability to cause substances to be injected into his blood and if possible
to be filtered out of his blood.  The control of the bloodstream should
be partly voluntary and partly automatic but under the control of the
user of the system.

	#. The concept of "medical advice" needs to be rehabilitated.
A doctor must be an advisor not a controller.  Therefore, the individual
needs to have direct access to medicine and medical devices.

	One can certainly find cases where the individual is physically
or mentally incapable of acting in his own best interests, so that
the policy I advocate will harm him.  However, the ideology is such
that the right of a person to control his body is not considered at
all as an independent consideration, and the individuals who have
died when they didn't go to the doctor but who might have lived
had they been able to buy the necessary drugs in the drugstore are
not charged against the current restrictive procedures.

	Note the ideological gimmick that is used.  Instead of asking
whether the individual has the right to buy a drug, the followers
of the regulatory ethic "question" whether the pharmacist or the
drug company should have the right to sell it to him.

	Perhaps the problem would be transformed by the development
of a miniature computer controlled home organic chemistry laboratory
that could manufacture on the spot any drug for which a synthesis had
been published.  A person owning such a machine could key in aspirin
or dexedrine or heroin, and the machine would emit the pills after
a time.  Scary but better than the present situation.

	Helmholtz, the attached memory, merger with machines