Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Which is it? Does our technological presence and future foretell us as victims or as beneficiaries of
manipulation? In fact, we have seen both. Eugenics has been an excuse for genocide and bigotry.
Medical advances have provided a quality of life to people who a generation ago would not survived.
Engineers find themselves in the middle of this debate. In fact, engineers will be agents who determine
whether the future is the one feared by Zager and Evans in their hit tune,
In
the
Year
2525
, or the
one envisioned by the screenwriters of
The
Six
Million
Dollar
Man
. Humans have never been satisfied
with leaving “well enough alone.” We found the synergy of hunting in teams preferable to that of the
lone wolf. We began to use fire as a protective device and culinary aid. We learned to abide by the
social contracts articulated in rules and dogma, finding these more desirable than constantly competing
with our fellow humans as “brute beasts.”
17
We harnessed botanical and zoological principles, changing
agriculture and farming, thus allowing us to live communally. We learned the laws of mathematics
and applied them in ways to change our environment, such as the Roman's application of Archimedes'
principles of trajectories to develop catapults and calculate missile efficiencies. We continue to fight
communicable diseases with medical treatment and engineering advances (Figure 3.5). Likewise, we are
making medical and scientific progress against previously intractable, chronic diseases like cancer.
It can be argued that our species has made progress, notwithstanding the wars, injustices, immoralities,
and other attendant problems of this advance. The challenge of making this call is complicated by the
subjective nature of progress. Take the word “improvement.” Engineers are familiar with the term as
a euphemism. For example, the wooded area near your neighborhood was likely considered by real
estate developers, engineers, and planners as “unimproved.” This simply meant that it had not yet had
the “benefit” of anthropogenic improvement. But, as a child, most of us recognized the benefit of an
1000
40 States
have health
Influenza pandemic
departments
800
600
Last human-to-human
transmission of Plague
First continuous
400
First use
municipal use of
of Penicillin
chlorine in water
in United States
Salk vaccine
Passage of
introduced
Vaccination Assistance Act
200
0
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
Ye a r
Figure
3.5
Crude infectious disease death rate (per 100 000 populations) in the United States from 1990 through 1996.
Adapted from: Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1999, Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Control of Infectious
Diseases,
Morbidity
and
Mortality
Weekly
Report
, 48 (29), pp. 621-9.
