International Day of Persons with Disabilities
This year’s theme is “Sustainable Development: The Promise of Technology”
The UN website shares “Throughout human history, technology has always impacted the way people live. The Industrial Revolution ushered in a new age of technology that raised the standards of living of people around the world and their access to goods and services. Today, technology is built in to every facet of daily living. The emergence of information and communications technologies have dramatically increased connectivity between people and their access to information, and further raised living standards.
ICTs have indeed changed the way people live, work and play. However, not all people benefit from the advances of technology and the higher standards of living. This is mainly because not all people have access to new technologies and not all people can afford them.
Today, there are over 1 billion people living in the world with some form of disability. Around the world, persons with disabilities not only face physical barriers but also social, economic and attitudinal barriers. Furthermore, disability is associated with twenty per cent of global poverty, of which the majority live in developing countries. In spite of being the world’s largest minority group, persons with disabilities and the issue of disability has remained largely invisible in the mainstream development frameworks and its processes.”
As regular readers know this blog is very interested in healthcare and technology. You can see a recent example here.
So we would like to know what is the most important development in healthcare technology in the last few years? It would be great if you could share your answers in the comments section below?
Many thanks in advance!
Hello there,
I’m Rebecca Groves, a twenty-six year old multiple sclerosis patient and founder of the new organisation Patients Campaigning For Cures http://www.patientscampaigningforcures.org/ This blog ask a very important question, so please allow me to place my answer within the context of our organisation’s campaign!
We campaign with UK members of Parliament to raise awareness of the medical harm caused by trying to apply results of experiments on laboratory animals to human patients. This issue is increasingly becoming the focus of leading scientific journals; in June this year the Editor in Chief at The British Medical Journal published the Editor’s Choice titled ‘How predictive and productive is animal research?’ The article concluded with a quote from the paper it cites: http://www.patientscampaigningforcures.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Editors-Choice-British-Medical-Journal-June-5th-2014.pdf :
BEGIN QUOTE
“If research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be
expected in humans, the public’s continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal
research seems misplaced.”
END QUOTE
Our recently launched petition supports MPs who are calling for scientists – who continue to claim that laboratory animal models of human disease can allegedly ‘predict’ the responses of human patients – to be held to public scientific account in properly moderated, public scientific debates. Current understanding of evolutionary biology, best exemplified by Trans-Species Modeling Theory, now explains why up-to-date medical teams are working urgently to stop precious funds being spent on such animal models, which have now been shown unequivocally – by the pharmaceutical industry and leading science journals – to mislead human medical knowledge. And of course this scientific position supports our common sense decisions not to visit the veterinary clinic when we fall sick! For more details please visit this link at the leading science Board in its field, which provides our evidence: http://www.afma-curedisease.org/tsmt.aspx
On a more positive note, healthcare technology has played a huge role in helping medicine advance over the past half-century. The FAQS science book, published by the Board which provides our evidence, lists what physicians rank as the most important healthcare technological breakthroughs during the past 50 years or so. Here’s the book! http://www.amazon.co.uk/FAQs-About-Animals-Science-scientifically/dp/0761848495
And here is a quote from page 65- 66, listing the most important healthcare technological breakthroughs, as physicians rank them:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Scanners
such as the MRI and CT and the association of smoking with certain diseases are
arguably the two biggest advances in medicine in the past 50 or so years. They
are examples of nonanimal-based research—specifically epidemiology and
technology-based advances. (Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting
health and illness in populations.) The link between smoking and heart disease,
and between spina bifida and folic acid deficiency, are just some of the fruits
of epidemiological research. Essentially everything we know about HIV/AIDS we
learned from studying humans and human tissues.
Table 4.3
Ranking of medical advances by physicians.
Advances made possible mainly due to advances in technology in the area of
physical as opposed to life sciences are noted with an asterisk.
MRI and CT scanners*
ACE inhibitors
Balloon angioplasty*
Statins
Mammography*
Coronary artery bypass graft*
Proton pump inhibitors and H2 blockers
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs) and new non-SSRI antidepressants
Cataract extraction and lens implant*
Hip and knee replacement*
Ultrasonography and echocardiography*
Gastrointestinal endoscopy*
Inhaled steroids for asthma
Laparoscopic surgery*
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and
COX-2 inhibitors
Cardiac enzymes
Fluoroquinolones
New hypoglycemic agents
HIV testing and treatment
Tamoxifen
Prostate-specific antigen testing
Long-acting and local opioid anesthetics
Helicobacter pylori testing and treatment
Bone densitometry*
Third-generation cephalosporins
Calcium channel blockers
Intravenous conscious sedation
Sildenafil (Viagra)
Nonsedating antihistamines
Bone marrow transplant
END OF QUOTE
Thank you for reading my comment and for highlighting healthcare technology; a vital, life saving aspect of medical advancement on December 3rd; International Day of Persons With Disabilities.
If you want to keep in touch with our campaign’s progress please follow us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpeedUpCures and like our new twitter: https://twitter.com/ScienceForCures
In the hope that scientists from the animal experimentation community will listen and move rapidly forward to speed up the arrival of effective treatments and cures,
Rebecca Groves
Founder and Director, Patients Campaigning For Cures
Website: http://www.patientscampaigningforcures.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpeedUpCures
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScienceForCures