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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 04 February 2022
kilkennyobserver.ie
News Opinion
The Fact Of The Matter PAUL HOPKINS
My spinal tap and the future of medicine There is nothing like a stay in hospital to reconnect one with life and how fleeting it can be. I found myself the other week undergoing surgery on my lower spine, carried out by a man whose incalculable knowledge and sleight of hands I can only bow to. Those wonderful traits and modern science — that the procedure was by way of micro-surgery — saw me discharged from hospital the next day. Recovery mode has given me time to consider the wonders of modern medicine, in that much of what we take for granted today in health care was an unknown 20 or 30 years ago, even a decade ago. We have come leaps and bounds in the diagnosis and treatment of many once-thought incurable illnesses in the fields of cancers and cardiology, muscle and nerve regeneration, and in the fields, too, of transplants and artificial body parts. Consider the American David
Bennett who, at 57, has became the first person to get a heart transplant from a geneticallymodified pig, after a seven-hour procedure in Baltimore. The cross-species surgery — xenotransplant — has been cited a “game-changing moment in the history of medicine” and raises hopes of clinical trials for humans with kidney failure. Now, consider, too, the year is 2040. You go into hospital for routine surgery but, unlike today, this is performed by a surgeon operating remotely from a different continent, using new blood generated inside your own body without the need for a donor, and using medicine specifically designed to match your own DNA. These are just some of the ways futurologist Ray Hammond envisions healthcare will change in the next 20 years and beyond. Although impossible to know the extent of that change, the eminent British scientist, who
has written some dozen books on the future world, sees a tomorrow in which medical care is increasingly personalised, digitally focused and data-driven. Hammond predicts five main ways the healthcare landscape might change: personalised medicine, stem-cell medicine, nano-scale medicine, gene therapy and digital-driven health care. Although these advances are already having an impact on healthcare, they are still at their early stages but, due to advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the decreasing cost of gene sequencing and ‘personalised’ medicine, they are fast becoming key parts of diagnostics, drug development and patient care. In the last decade, healthcare has become increasingly focused on what cutting-edge technology can offer patients and physicians. In the next 20 years, the current ‘one size fits
Cost of living crisis facing households in Kilkenny as Government fails to respond to Central Bank report BY: DEPUTY KATHLEEN FUNCHION SINN FEIN TD FOR KILKENNY CARLOW SINN Féin TD for Carlow Kilkenny Kathleen Funchion, has called on the Government to get a grip on the cost of living crisis facing households, as the recent Central Bank report warned that wages and social welfare payments would fail to keep pace with rising prices. Teachta Funchion said: “The Government are failing to get a grip with the cost of living crisis that is hurting households, here in Kilkenny. “Not only are they failing to respond, they are contributing to the crisis, with rising rents and sky-high childcare costs a direct result of Government policy failures. “Last month’s report by the Central Bank has found that prices will have risen faster than wages in 2021 and 2022,
reducing household living standards. “These price rises are expected to persist for some time. “Increases to core social welfare payments in the Budget failed to keep pace with inflation, meaning those who rely on social welfare to protect their incomes will be worse off. “Higher prices in rents, gas and electricity bills, home heating oil, petrol and diesel face low and middle-income households. “Yet the Taoiseach’s biggest worry is that workers’ wages will rise. “This Government need to get a grip on reality and the financial pressure workers and families are currently under. “Rents should be reduced and frozen, social welfare rates must be increased to at least match price increases, and a comprehen-
sive strategy must be brought forward to respond to the energy crisis.”
all’ approach to medicine could be replaced, thanks to advances in personalised or ‘precision’ medicine. Analysing individuals’ DNA may mean doctors can start to treat patients with drugs tailored to their unique DNA. By 2040, medical science can expect to have collected DNA sequencing data from tens of millions of patients, shedding light on links between particular genes and diseases. By then, too, Hammond predicts every newborn baby will have their DNA routinely sequenced. Stem-cell medicine, which is still at early stages, will become an important tool in everyday medicine. For example, rather than relying on donors human, organs will be grown on demand from stem cells in a lab. Medical care could also be taking place on a ‘nano-scale’. The use of minute materials for diagnosis and drug treatment will have advanced beyond the early stages it is at today. Scien-
tists, also, may be able to manipulate cells at a molecular level, allowing for an even greater level of personalised treatment and cure. Although still an ethical grey area, gene editing, in which the genes responsible for certain medical conditions are deactivated or rewritten, will likely
‘First to get a heart transplant from a pig...
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remain an ongoing debate in the coming decades. In arriving at my need for my routine spine surgery, consultants also discovered that I have the potential for, or disposition to, developing aplastic anaemia, whereby my bone marrow is hindered in creating healthy red blood cells vital to life. Only the potential, mind you. “It just needs ongoing monitoring for now,” says my haematologist. “Old age will likely get you before it does.” Sitting in the sterile consulting room, I say: “My Mother had aplastic anaemia. It eventually developed into a secondary cancer, leukaemia, of which she died 22 years ago.” The consultant smiles. “That was back then. Nowadays, we have a drug to treat aplastic anaemia, a derivative of a drug which enhances an athlete’s performance. We’ll have you running a marathon yet!” And, so, I live in hope...
