We all know that medicine is advancing more rapidly every year. Unfortunately there is a sort of balance between medical advances and new diseases. It will probably not be possible to knock out all diseases in the future, but we should certainly be able to make a big dent. Somewhere in the future we may be able just to replace a diseased body part. There is an awful lot of research going on right now, where scientists are studying how to grow new organs and limbs and there seems to be some success. This field is called regenerative medicine and there have been some astonishing results. A special powder has been developed that can actually re grow severed finger tips and toes. It has been used with great results. While a finger tip or part of a toe is not an arm or leg, it is progress and it may not be too much longer before those arms and legs can be re grown. The time factor was also amazing, it only took four weeks to grow back the complete finger tip and it was as good as the original.

Right now there are scientists that are actually growing tissue and not just one type, but almost every type imaginable. Here is the strange part of the tale, one doctor uses an ink jet printer, the same type that many of you have connected to your computers, to spray cells. He has used it to create a mouse heart. He believes that it will only be a matter of time before he will be able to grow a human heart. He goes on to say, "The cells have all the genetic information necessary to make new tissue. That's what they are programmed to do. So your heart cells are programmed to make more heart tissue, your bladder cells are programmed to make more bladder cells." An artificially grown bladder has already been transplanted into a human. It was grown with his own cells and the operation was a success. One of the worst things that can happen to a person is to get horribly burned. There is a new medicine out that you spray on the burns and it is conformed to contain the patients own cells and prompts the burned areas to grow new cells.

Researchers are now saying that they have a drug that will help Alzheimer patients. Supposedly the drug is so powerful that only minutes after you take it, results are seen, at least that is according to the researchers. This drug is one of the main projects at the Institute for Neurological Research at the University of California. They were not looking for a drug for Alzheimer disease, they were working on an arthritis drug. It seems that when they gave the drug to people that had to sit forward to allow the drug to go right to the brain. To their amazement, within five minutes, those patients that had Alzheimer's showed a marked improvement. The drug has worked in over 90% of all the patients it has been tried on. It turns out that other arthritis drugs are also helpful for those with Alzheimer's. It is just a matter of time before all Alzheimer patients receive the drug.

Some drug companies believe that the future of drugs will lie with maize. It is believed that maize will be the perfect crop, because it is found in so many different areas of the world. The idea is to use maize for antibody production. It is believed that these types of drugs would be of great help to aids sufferers. Some plants are already in use in areas that we least suspect. The plasma companies routinely use tobacco, rape, soya and oilseed. These plants are used in a wide variety of medical products including medicines like vaccines, antiviral substances, growth hormones and antibody production, just to mention a few. Using plants in medicine is a risky business and they have to be tightly controlled, lest they do more harm than good. Along with the improvement in drugs, comes a vast improvement in the machines that the medical profession uses. Sometimes a cancer patient will need radiation treatments and these treatments subject the entire body to high rates of radiation, but this need not be the case anymore. There is a new machine called a CyberKnife. The CyberKnife is a radiosurgery system that applies concentrated radiation only to the area that needs it, thus protecting the rest of the body from destruction. I happen to know someone who had this treatment. He was covered by Medicare, so he didn't have to pay for the treatments, which were held over three days. When the Medicare statement came, it showed that the three day treatment cost $128,000. It is far out of the reach for those without insurance coverage and even those with it might have their private insurance companies deny payment, because of the cost.

It used to be that when someone needed an operation, the surgeon would perform it with the help of a few others. In many hospitals in this country today, operations are conducted by using robotic arms that are controlled by a surgeon through a computer. It is said that this makes the surgery much more accurate and less prone to slips and such. The surgeon is surrounded by monitors on which he can see various views of the person that he is performing the operation on. Robotic surgery was first introduced in 2002 at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. This type of surgery has allowed for much smaller cuts which allow a less invasive procedure. It is said that robotic surgery offers significantly less pain, less blood loss, fewer complications, less scarring, a shorter hospital stay and a quicker return to normal life.

Samsung, the Korean electronics giant has some revolutionary medical devices in the market. One of them is a flat panel X-ray detector. It is used on radiology machines. What makes it so great, is the fact that nothing has to be developed. The invisible X-ray light is turned into digital signals that are then turned instantly into a picture. This allows the operator of a particular machine to see the pictures instantly and also save time and expense by not requiring a photo developing lab. If a hard copy is desired, it can just be printed out..

There are now medical device companies out there that are working on ways to do away with the batteries that are used in implanted medical devices. Since batteries have a limited life, implanted devices must be surgically removed, every so often, to have the batteries replaced. The companies are trying to eliminate this by having the devices tap into the body's electrical system. It is thought that since we all run on electrical current, that some of it could be used for these devices. If this can be accomplished and many think that it can, it will eliminate the need for all those extra surgeries. Samsung has come out with a revolutionary new medical device that is said to replace seven current devices and can perform all those tests that the seven machines would do for only $1,000 for everything. It is also said that this new machine subjects the user to far less radiation than the seven others would.

Lastly I would like to say that if we expect the big drug companies to come out with a drug that will completely cure a disease, we are probably barking up the wrong tree. I really don't believe that they want to cure anything, because it means less revenue for them. What they want to do is make a pill that we would have to take every day to keep a particular disease in check. As for all the new medical devices that are coming out, they are not without their risks. Several books have been written that show all the different things that have gone wrong when these devices are used on people. That is not to say that they are not a great advancement. There is also the problem of doctors ordering tests just to pay off their machines. Most doctors would never do this, but there are some. Then there are medical crops that could easily contaminate our everyday crops, which has already happened with crops that have had their genes altered.