New advances in medical technologies are happening all the time in today’s world. They allow us to fight against and prevent diseases that were once seen as incurable. It has even allowed scientists to create a tool that can engineer desirable traits in humans. These advances are not going to stop so scientists must ask questions and find out where the line should be drawn. These new technologies will influence everyone.  New 3D printing could help build better prosthetics, new organs, and almost anything else imaginable. Genetic engineering brings even more positives, from being able to diagnose diseases in a new born to even curing diseases before they even have a chance of hurting the individual. These positives come with negatives though. That’s where the line gets blurry and everyone who has part in engineering these new technologies need to decide on how far is too far. Some feel that these new technologies should be stopped and that it will only lead to future ethical problems.  I feel like these new technologies are crucial to society, the process that these technologies go through before being used is long and they should be used in the most effective way possible.

Almost everyone has been impacted by the medical field in some way. My dad was the impact in my life. My grandma was hit by a driver while she was carrying my dad and it has impacted his life ever since. When he was born, he was about the size of an average hand and stayed in the hospital for weeks. This led to him having only one functioning kidney. Every 10 to 12 years he has to have a transplant to get another one. This ties in nicely on the topic of new medical technologies. The technologies used to save his life were new to their time just like 3D printing and genetic engineering are new to society now. These changes can’t scare the public away from using them because in the end they will be used to save lives. 

Biomedical engineering and 3D printing has taken our society by storm. It seems like everyday something else is being 3D printed. The most important in many people’s eyes being the ability to print organs. I know from experiences with my dad there are countless tests a donor must go through before they are considered a match and a transplant can take place. This holds true for many transplants. With so many tests having to come together and be an exact match, finding a match is hard to do. Some people wait years on a waiting list. The sad part is that most of these people will never get the organ they need and if they do it means someone else who was a match had to die. That whole process would be thrown out the window if the 3D printing of organs could become more effective. The amount of lives that would save is endless. There would be no more waiting, no more unnecessary time in a hospital, just the manufacturing of another organ that is an exact match.

3D Printers also have the ability to create bone and tissues with blood vessels. Researchers at Harvard have made great progress in bioprinting blood vessels. Which would be a huge step towards printing tissue with blood supply.  A professor at Washington has also made progress in creating pieces that create bone growth in any shape. The goal is to one day be able to implant the bone with bone growth factors so that an implant is dissolved by natural bone material. If these two advances can come together more limbs can be saved in accidents. A prosthetic would only be needed in extreme circumstances. 

Biomedical engineering has brought new, stronger prosthetics to society if prosthetics are the answer though. These new prosthetics would improve the quality of life of amputees everywhere. New prosthetics would not only help the amputees but the families supporting the amputees. Engineers at Johns Hopkins recently developed a prosthetic arm that has 26 joints, can curl up to 45 pounds, and is controlled by a person’s mind just like a regular arm (New York Times, 2015). These new prosthetics can remap the remaining nerves in a limb so that brain signals can be sent to the prosthetic. With each arm prosthetic having 100 sensors, some amputees have even reported being able to feel texture through their new prosthetics (Talbot, 2013).  

The new prosthetics don’t just stop at advances in arm and leg prosthetics either. New hip joint and knee prosthetics have also made many improvements. Lawall prosthetic services has recently made a microprocessor knee that is so advanced that it allows people in the armed forces to return to active duty if they so desired. This new knee is completely waterproof and can be completely submerged. This allows people who were not even able to walk comfortably before to now break barriers they could not have even dreamed of. The new hip joint prosthetics would provide patients with greater comfort, control, and functionality. 

More advantages come with new advances in genetic engineering. New tools in genetic engineering allow scientists and doctors to cure diseases in people of all ages (Chua, 2017). Even in unborn babies who scientists have discovered a problem with their DNA coding. By using this technology, a doctor could go in and simply cut out the mutated part of the gene. Which would in turn reverse the diseases symptoms before they could take a toll on the individual.

The CRISPR is the latest thing that has come out regarding this technology. It is a new tool that is placed in the body and cuts away the mutated genes in DNA. The CRISPR has been tested for years now and recent studies have shown that it can be used as a cure for a rare liver disorder. In addition to treating hereditable diseases, the new tool could even be used for infectious diseases (Riha, 2017). This would provide a way for pharmaceutical companies to make more specific antibiotics. These antibiotics would only target the disease carrying bacteria, not the beneficial bacteria that is usually killed when using a less specific antibiotic. One of the biggest studies surrounding the CRISPR deals with HIV. This new tool and technique could be used to make white blood cells resistant to HIV infection. Although this new technology takes time to be tested and researched further, there is no doubt it will be well worth it. The work that has been done has led to the startup of companies who wish to use the CRISPR technology to treat human diseases.

The technologies named bring a lot of advantages with them, but they also go through a long process before they are used on the first human patient. This should help quiet the concern around these new technologies. The FDA must sign off on anything before it can be used to treat patients. That process takes several steps and can take up to 7 years to complete (Geljins, 1994). Each new drug or tool is researched in pre-clinical tests, a clinical research and development period, and a review with post-marketing surveillance. These steps are long and closely monitored, one wrong move and something could be throw out completely. This would force the whole process to restart from scratch.

Another critical thing that protesters need to hear is that these new tools and technologies are being passed off to good hands. The scientists and doctors who would be responsible for using these tools would be qualified to do so. We must remember that most of these people have been in school for a decade or more. Then the regulations and policies that would need to be signed off on for a certain patient to have a procedure would be there just like any other medical procedure. It is not like procedures for doing non-emergent things would just be handed out to anyone. These new tools would be in the hands of trained professionals. 

 The advantages and precautions taken before these new tools are used are seen but some people still have a problem with them for many reasons. Some argue that tools like the CRISPR are not accurate enough (Wade, 2015), that new biomedical engineering practices will lead to a world that is to robotic, and that further ethical problems will come. This opposition is not unique to this situation. All ideas come with people against them. The important thing is to measure out the pros and cons of the situation and decide if the technologies are worth it. In this case the problems being raised are easy fixes. 

People are arguing that the CRISPR is not accurate enough explain that the tool has no way of knowing if it is cutting the right gene (Achenbach, 2017). If it misses the mutated gene and cuts the good genes, then this could lead to more problems with the patient. The recent advances in biomedical engineering also cause them to fear these new ideas. They feel that these new robotics and prosthetics could lead to a world that is too robotic. That these new technologies will lead to more robotic advances, which will lead to a point that we can’t come back from. A point where robotics takes over our day to day lives. That leads into the ethical problems they think these new technologies will bring. Most people against the ideas feel that the robotic issue is ethically wrong and that advances in genetic engineering lead down a slippery slope. They explain that genetic engineering may start to cure genetic diseases but will lead to completely different things. They think people will begin to abuse the technology and use it to start doing procedures that are not emergent.

While I agree with some of those who have their reservations, I believe that there is a simple solution to all the problems they point out. The CRISPR has been well tested and it would not have made it this far if it was not accurate. Yes, problems may come up when it is being used but things go wrong even in the simplest surgeries sometimes in the medical field. Without any risk there would be no reward. Regarding the robotics problems they bring up leads me to draw parallels to other technological advances. I’m sure that people were and still are hesitant about the advances we have made in technology in the last few decades. The reality is though that those technologies and new technologies improve the lives of people around the country. The ethical problems these technologies will bring can be managed. Regulations can be implemented and what these technologies are used for can be monitored. That line of right and wrong will be drawn and the technologies will be used to treat patients only. That whole problem goes back to who is using these tools. The people who would be using these tools are licensed professionals. Their goal is to help the sick, not accommodate the wants of individuals. They would not risk their license over a procedure like changing the eye color of a baby if there was a rule saying that the tools could only be used to help treat the sick.  

With all the positives, the steps these tools must take before being used, and the people we are turning them over to makes the decision an easy one. These new technologies need to be implemented into our society more frequently. I agree with some of the problems addressed by those who have their reservations and that a line should be drawn on how far we should take this. In the long run though it is crucial to push these new technologies through the process and use them as soon as possible. People around the country are waiting for a cure and these technologies can bring that cure to them. Yes, these changes can be scary, but all the previous medical technologies have been the same way. For example, the technologies used to transplant my dad’s kidneys were once seen as scary just like these are. As a society we just need to bite the bullet on some of the problems these technologies will bring because in the long run countless lives will be saved.
