Medical 
No Comments Future of Medicine
Accelerated Healing
The other day I got a cut on my finger and looking at it I wondered why don’t we have a way of accelerating the healing process? What exactly happens when the body heals itself? Once we know that, then isn’t it possible that we might be able to speed that process up? Imagine a device that you have in your medicine cabinet that would allow you to wave it over a small wound and have it heal almost instantaneously.
Cancer
Cancer scares the hell out of a lot of people and for good reason, but currently our most effective way to combat it is to literally inject poison (chemo) into the host body. Wouldn’t it be great if a person could go have some blood drawn and a compound be produced that would target the specific cancer cells but not damage the good cells?
Fountain of Youth
Of course the holy grail of medicine is the fountain of youth. People hate the idea of death and go to great length to stave off the impending doom. To me the solution is similar to the above healing of wounds. First we have to identify what exactly happens that causes the body to degenerate then develop a way to slow that process down. I don’ t think immortality is anywhere in the foreseeable future but if we could learn to slow down the effects of aging then I could see us living to be several hundred years old. Say for instances if aging is due to cell degradation? Then what if we could surround the cell with some sort of protective membrane? This would come in the form of an injected substance that would cause the body to form a barrier around the cell like a shield. Just a thought.
Interestingly enough, this would have a huge effect on the planet as overpopulation would be a negative consequence of this. Could we produce enough food to feed everyone for hundreds of years. Prisoners might elect to be put to death rather than waste away in a cell for centuries.
Of course the offshoot of this extended lifespan would be great for interstellar space travel and might help us develop some sort of suspended animation type sleep chambers.