Abstract
Is there any reason why the medical world might not change? There are certainly important professors of medicine, politicians, regulatory bodies, groups of consumers, and even scientists who either disagree or are extremely uncomfortable with the vision of a technologically driven medical world as described in this book—despite the fact that any such vision is promoted and ratified by their equally important colleagues and friends. Some remain skeptical about the possibility that medicine will ever fundamentally alter. Others believe that the specter of fresh and frightening diseases will so overwhelm healthcare as to make any technological achievement immediately redundant. A number have beefs with a medical culture that is run on the basis of scientific expertise, even when it promises to be economically effective. If science is to make reasonable headway in resculpting medicine for the better, all these malcontents will have to be addressed.
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Notes
The American Health Information Management Association… American Health Information Management Association, Chicago, IL, press release (24 March 1995 ).
One notorious incident in Florida… “Prank AIDS Reports Prompt Teen’s Arrest,” Chicago Tribune (1 March 1995), News section, 3.
In a quite separate case… Robert Davis, “Online Medical Records Raise Privacy Fears,” USA Today (22 March 1995), 1A.
Twenty-four people in Maryland… Beverly Woodward, “The Computer-Based Patient Record and Confidentiality,” New England Journal of Medicine (23 November 1995), 1419–1422.
Indeed, at the end of 1995… Jill Callahan Dennis, “Confidentiality Bill Introduced Again,” American Health Information Management Association Newsletter: In Confidence (May/June 1995), 5; and Julie Rovner, “U.S. Bill Seeks Rules on Medical Records Privacy,” The Lancet (4 November 1995), 1217.
And the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts… Rovner, “U.S. Bill Seeks Rules on Medical Records Privacy.”
According to the Federal Centers of Disease Control… Federal Centers of Disease Control, as cited by the Associated Press (16 January 1996).
Laurie Garrett, in the best-selling… Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance ( London: Virago, 1995 ).
In California, a Coca-Cola salesman… Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Newsletter (1995).
Stanford University and the University… Alexandra Wyke, “The Genetic Alternative: A Survey of Biotechnology,’ The Economist (30 April 1988), 1–24.
Genentech, the Californian biotechnology firm… Wyke, “The Genetic Alternative.”
The University of Massachusetts… “The Privacy Conundrum,” The Economist (29 April 1995), 128.
According to the late Carl Sagan… Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark ( London: Headline, 1996 ).
According to Joshua Lederberg… Joshua Lederberg as cited in the film Outbreak (director: Wolfgang Petersen; studio: Punch Productions/Warner Bros; released 1995).
Dotted along the horizon… “Hope,” The Economist (29 June 1996), 105–107.
As Professor Sagan pointed out… Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.
Such a notion reflects a growing… Dorothy Nelkin, “How DNA Is Directing Social Expectations,” The Guardian (24 August 1995), 9.
In 1996, lawyers for Stephen Mobley… “Convicted Killer Seeks Brain Test,” The Times (14 February 1995), 6.
As Robert Plomin, deputy director… Robert Plomin, “Untangling the Threads of Nature and Nuture,” MRC News (Spring 1995), 9–13.
In 1995, the California legislature… Oliver Morton, “Unshackled: A Survey of Biotechnology and Genetics,” The Economist (25 February 1995), 1–20.
Nobel Peace Prize-winner. Joseph Rotblat, as cited in Christian Tyler, “A Life Spent Worrying over the World’s Problems,” Financial Times (14 January 1996), Weekend FT, p. 18.
Consider the case of Jeremy Rifkin… “Battling Biofundamentalists,” The Economist (27 June 1987), 101–102.
Films such as The Andromeda Strain… The Andromeda Strain (director: Robert Wise; studio: Universal Pictures; released 1971); and The Boys from Brazil (director: Franklin J. Schaffner; studio: Producer Circle Company; released 1978).
A decade after the first genetic… “Measuring BioAngst,” The Economist (27 June 1987), 102.
In February 1975, at a conference… Wyke, “The Genetic Alternative.”
The feeling is, as Oliver Morton… Oliver Morton, “Unshackled: A Survey of Biotechnology and Genetics,” The Economist (25 February 1995), 1–20.
Though eight months late in doing so… Paul Berg and Maxine Singer, “Recombinant DNA Controversy: Twenty Years Later,” BioTechnology (13 October 1995), 1132–1134.
In 1995, it released Outbreak… Outbreak (released 1995).
At the end of 1995, a coalition… Berg and Singer, “Recombinant DNA Controversy.”
On October 3, 1995, Britain’s… Roger Highfield, “Cancer Screening for Test-Tube Embryos,” The Daily Telegraph (3 October 1995 ), 4.
This, in part, explains why… Alexandra Wyke, “Peering into 2010: A Survey of the Future of Medicine,” The Economist (19 March 1994), 1–20.
Learning the dangers of germ-line therapy… French Anderson, as cited in Wyke, “Peering Into 2010.”
Berg and Singer stress… Berg and Singer, “Recombinant DNA Controversy.”
In 1992, the Roman Catholic Church… Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.
In December 1993, China announced a plan… Wyke, “Peering into 2010.”
In March 1996, scientists from Vanderbilt University… Jeffrey T. Holt, Marilyn E. Thompson, Csilla Szabo, Cheryl RobinsonBenion, Carlos L. Arteaga, Mary-Claire King, and Roy A. Jensen, “Growth Retardation and Tumour Inhibition by BRCAI,” Nature Genetics (12 March 1996 ), 298–302.
In 1990, 18 percent of people in countries… Barbara Beck, “All Our Tomorrows: A Survey of The Economics of Ageing,” The Economist (27 January 1996), 1–16.
In one article, Norman Macrae… Norman Macrae, “Some Moral Dilemmas, 1993–2143,” in “The Future Surveyed,” The Economist (11 September 1993 ), 101–103.
The total pension bill for governments… Beck, “All Our Tomorrows.”
According to Barbara Beck… Beck, “All Our Tomorrows.”
A World Health Organization study… World Health Organization, as cited in Beck, “All Our Tomorrows.”
In 1973, the film Soylent Green… Soylent Green (director: Richard Feischer; studio: MGM; released 1973 ).
But, Norman Macrae, for one, believes that… Macrae, “Some Moral Dilemmas.”
Not even Auguste Comte was infallible… Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future ( London: Victor Gollancz, 1962 ).
Yet, as Arthur C. Clarke, the doyen of… Clarke, Profiles of the Future.
But as Clarke also points… Clarke, Profiles of the Future.
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© 1997 Alexandra Wyke
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Wyke, A. (1997). Against Change. In: 21st-Century Miracle Medicine. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3466-6_14
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