Medical Advances, Including Cord Blood, Herald A Golden Age Of Medical Advances

We live in amazing times when it comes to medical advances. In our media-centric world, we have a tendency to focus on disease outbreaks or what seems like ever increasing odds of contracting cancer, but we never really stop to put these facts in context. Certainly we have seen some significant outbreaks. SARS was a major concern only a few years ago, causing chaos in many parts of the world, including North America. But the death toll was measured in hundreds, perhaps thousands worldwide. The H1N1 (or Swine) flu, declared a pandemic influenza by the World Health Organization, generated a year and counting of anxious parents and nervous governments. Again, the death toll, considering the scope of the outbreak, has been extremely modest. In comparison, the 1918 influenza pandemic killed anywhere from 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. Was the 1918 flu any more virulent than H1N1? Possibly, It likely wasn’t any more deadly than SARS, though. So what explains the dramatically different death tolls, especially since conditions today are even more favorable for disease transmission (i.e., rapid and frequent travel along with increased population and greater population density). The answer is advances in medical treatment. What about that cancer, dementia and Alzheimer’s? It seems that the odds of being stricken by cancer in your lifetime has increased this century and recent studies have warned about the overwhelming numbers of patients expected to be diagnosed with dementia and related afflictions in coming years. If modern medicine is so effective, why are we seeing this? Once again, a little context goes a long way. It’s not that modern medicine is failing us. On the contrary, there have been so many medical advances that more people are now living longer. And in living longer, their odds of being affected by conditions that are known to strike most frequently in elderly individuals -dementia and cancers being perfect examples- have been increased. In other words, some cancers and Alzheimer’s seemed less common fifty years ago because people were dying before they’d lived long enough to be affected. Medical researchers have already begun to tackle these age old scourges and progress continues to be made. Diseases like HIV, which were a virtual death sentence only a few decades ago, are now largely manageable. Stem cell research holds a great deal of promise in the treatment of a wide range of diseases and conditions ranging from cancer to heart disease, diabetes and spinal cord injuries. And then there’s the potential of nano technology. I predict that many of us will look back on this century as the golden age of medical advances.