What is the Future of Diagnostic Medicine? - Popular Science
The concept of personalised medicine is a very exciting one from a Transhumanist point of view. Customising medical treatments specifically for you... testing everything that can be tested to as to be able to predict future medical problems and stop them before they start.
Proactive beats reactive every time.
The biggest question I have, as is mentioned in this article, is what about the Medical Insurance companies? Will they be as eager to fork over the cash for preventative medicine as they are for treatments of exisiting conditions?
Sure, Discovery Health and a few others in South Africa make a big deal about promoting general healthy living by providing discounts for gym memberships and other healthy lifestyle activities, but that's cheap in comparison to full-body CT scans, genome sequencing and goodness knows what other tests can be performed for each and every one of their clients.
I'm fairly confident that I will live to see the 22nd century, but then I live in a somewhat privelaged social class. These kinds of advances are meaningless if they can only be provided to the rich... who is going to pay for the CT machines and geneticists to examine the millions, or possibly billions of those folks who are living below the bread-line around the world?
Captalism, the true expression of the 'survival of the fittest' ethos, is going to result in a speciation... I can see it coming.
The humanitarian in me becomes outraged at the mere thought of it, but he is soon calmed by the cold logic of my inner Neitzcheist.
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