Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
include moderately normal forms of behaviour as an illness so that
drug therapy comes to be seen as a desirable, and necessary, option
(Lexchin, 2006).
The international bestseller
Listening to Prozac
(Kramer, 1994) was
one of the first accounts of this tension between patient expectations
and the consumption of particular medicine being linked to a happier
life.
Listening to Prozac
(Kramer 1994) recounts instances where
patients undergoing psychiatric treatment report feeling 'better than
well' when on Prozac, to the point where some of them want to
continue taking it even when they are 'cured'. This is the dilemma of
the topic: for the psychiatrist author the question becomes, to what
extent should he comply with the patient's wishes (Kramer, 1994)?
On the one hand, the drugs are therapeutically useful. Yet on the
other hand, he asks, how could a psychiatrist trained to deal with the
psyche allow a drug to chemically alter someone's personality without
any actual clinical need (Kramer, 1994)?
This has important implications for stem cell therapies too. The
most obvious areas of application of stem cell therapies as lifestyle
options are in instances were the use of stem cells will improve
function. While the whole point of stem cell therapies is for the
improvement of function in the treatment of injured or diseased
body parts, it is only a matter of time before healthy individuals start
to think about using stem cell treatments too. Some news coverage
is already indicating a trend towards such applications, with reports
of stem cell facelifts, breast enhancements, buttock shaping, and
hand treatments reportedly taking place in different locations
worldwide.
An article in the Australian edition of the women's magazine
Cosmopolitan
draws attention to the possible application of stem
cells as a lifestyle option for the predominately wealthy (Anon.,
2010). In this case the stem cells are derived from a patient's own
body fat and used for breast enhancement. The
Cosmopolitan
article
suggests that this form of stem cell breast enhancement would
provide both 'a more natural' effect than traditional breast
enhancement procedures and have '… an added bonus of a flatter
tummy or slightly trimmer looking thighs' (Harvey, 2011). Given
that cosmetic (rather than reconstructive) surgery has often been
