Yes sir Frankenstein did it too, he came to life when they shocked back through his artificial neck bolts xD. But actually, everyday technology is getting more advanced and our lives benefit from them, from the things we want to the things we need. Our world is becoming more dependent on wants then needs from our expensive iPods to our fast food habits to our laziness and non active lifestyle. What do we need most? (No, the answer isn’t love) realistically, it is our bodies and for them to be healthy.
One of the most important parts of our body is our circulatory system, it regulates the blood flow throughout our body and it is pretty much the engine of our body. Canada reduced deaths from 584 per 100,000 population in 1960 to an estimated 149 in 2006.
What can possibly go wrong with your circulatory system? You could be the healthiest person in the world, you could be eating right and exercising on the regular but if you’re not the hygienic type then, you could be in serious danger if you simply don’t brush your teeth. Sure you may think brushing your teeth is simply cleaning your teeth but it also prevents you from getting plaque build up in your arteries, and slows your blood flow. Add stress and high blood pressure to the equation and you got yourself fatal heart attack. Although people only realize they have a clogged artery after a heart attack, they also soon realize there are ways to treat it. Thanks to technology we have developed an operation that opens the artery through angioplasty. The first balloon angioplasty was performed interpretatively during bypass surgery in May, 1977 in St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco, California. On September 16, 1977 German surgeon Andreas Gruentzig (1939-85) performed the operation on an unsedated 37-year-old insurance salesman in Zurich, Switzerland.
My father had the exact same situation, during the operation the sedated him and inserted a tube in my father’s leg with a little balloon on the end with a stent (kind of like a metal fence) around it. This tube then travels the vein in his leg into his artery. The balloon is then placed between the clogged arteries and then it inflates and the stent is fits to the walls opening the artery. The tube is then removed and over time cells will grow over the stent which makes it perfectly normal. Now how ‘bout them digestive systems?!?
Biotechnology is probably not as pretty in the digestive system but it is definitely needed. Let’s move onto our next topic the endoscope.
Endoscopy is a procedure that is used to examine the inside of a person's body using a device known as an endoscope. It is a medical device consisting of a long, thin, flexible tube which has a light and a video camera at the end. Doctors use an endoscope to examine the interior surfaces of an organ or tissues. The images of the inside of the patient's body can be seen on a screen, and the entire procedure is usually recorded so that doctors can check it again.The first endoscope, of a kind, was developed in 1806 by Philip Bozzini with his introduction of a "Lichtleiter" for the examinations of the canals and cavities of the human body. But the endoscope was only introduced into a human in 1822 by William Beaumont.
The endoscope later evolved into the commonly used endoscopes of today that can even be fitted with certain mechanisms enabling biopsies and the retrieval of foreign objects. Many different types of endoscopes have been developed that are used to examine everything from the colon to the inside of the nose and even the lungs and other structures in the chest cavity. The endoscope is a non-invasive alternative to surgery and is a useful medical tool to help us see and thus better understand the interior cavities of the body.
If tubes aren’t your thing then giant pills are!
A capsule endoscopy involves swallowing a pill about the same size as a multi-vitamin that has a camera attached to it. The patient swallows this pill which wirelessly sends images of inside their digestive system. Of course then you have to make it exit your system which will be pretty disgusting!
Basically Biotechnology is the reason many people can still live today and with further research continuing we will have a lot less worries to think about. Thanks to angioplasty my dad’s life was saved and if I could I would thank Andreas Gruentzig personally, but that is physically impossible. Biotechnology is working wonders on people and we should be grateful for it.
PEACE!
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/health/mortality-circulatory-diseases.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angioplasty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endoscope#History
http://laparoscopy.blogs.com/endoscopyhistory/chapter_6/index.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/153737.php
