Medicine (health)

The Island (2005)

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Thu, 06/19/2014 - 09:51

Clones are big business in the future. Buy your own to supply the parts you require when sickness or injury threaten your life. The Island is a sci-fi action adventure set in the not-too-distant future, told from the viewpoint of two clones as they discover the truth of their existence and work to uncover corporate inhumanity.

Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta are clones living in a safe, controlled world among others of their kind. History tells the outside world is too contaminated for life outside the compound, with only one remaining island clean enough to support human life. The clones live their routine hoping to one day win the lottery and move to the island, where they can live out their lives under the sun. But it's all a lie fabricated to keep them controlled and hopeful, two things necessary for the products, their bodies, to remain healthy.

Afterparty

Submitted by admin on Fri, 06/06/2014 - 12:41

Set in the near future, Afterparty explores a world where psychoactive drugs are printable. All you need is a chemjet printer and an Internet connection to begin printing designer drugs on paper, which is torn up and digested for each hit. The story follows Lyda Rose, one of the five founders of Little Sprout, a group trying to find a cure for schizophrenia, a condition from which Lyda's mother suffered.

The group is successful and Numinous is ready for trials when an event changes their lives. In high enough doses, Numinous permanently alters the user's perception by imprinting a bond with whatever god they believe in, often paired with hallucinations of a holy figure to watch over or even run their lives. Lyda believed the recipe was off the market, but then someone shows up in her ward who is clearly under its effect.

Angered by this, Lyda leaves care early with plans to find the source. With help from a few friends, not all of them real, she goes on a thrilling adventure across Canada and the United States in search of answers.

The impact of life extension

Submitted by admin on Wed, 06/04/2014 - 13:49

Katherine Helmond getting her face stretched in the movie Brazil Promises to extend lifespans keep rising. Some online surveys peg my lifespan between 76 and 88 years old, but specialists are claiming lifespans as long as 140 years for some humans as medicine provides the ability to regenerate, grow, or print and replace human tissue. With ongoing breakthroughs in organ printing, providing they can get bodies to accept the replacements, it is theorized the replacement of every body part with the possible exception brain can be replicated and the limitation with the brain is shifting our persona/character/self/soul into a viable replacement - an advancement that could truly create immortality.

If this turns out to be true, then science is really looking for ways to keep the brain healthy and living for a longer duration. Looking back at Bruce Sterling's novel Holy Fire, the character Mia lives by the rules governing her participation in a lifetime-enhancement program. I'm not certain longevity won't be available to the masses, or at least those who can afford the payments for procedures or insurance to cover the costs, but I do suspect Sterling got it right that longevity will be a privilege and not a right.

Suspended animation and cryonics are no longer science fiction

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Tue, 05/27/2014 - 14:04

A team of surgeons at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are being allowed to place the traumatically wounded victims of gunshot wounds into suspended animation to gain time before blood loss decreases the chance of survival or, in the survivors, permanent decreases in cognitive function and memory loss. The trial will allow this one team to use this technique on ten emergency victims, who will have their body temperatures decreased to 50F (10C) with a special focus on decreasing cellular activity in the brain.

The temperature drop involves forcing cooled saline through the heart to the brain, dropping critical tissue to temperatures low enough, they no longer require an oxygen source to remain intact. Normally, brain tissue begins to take permanent damage after 5 minutes without oxygen. In these trials, patients may remain in suspended animation for up to two hours, giving surgeons more time to rebuild and repair before attempting to revive the patient.

Love Minus Eighty

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Wed, 05/21/2014 - 11:56

Welcome to the early 22nd century. Social media connects the elite in real time, and the digital divide has birthed a divide so complete it has manifested a near-complete physical disconnect. And while our mortality has not been conquered, reanimation has been perfected for those who can afford it. For those who can't, there is 'freezing insurance.' And for pretty, young women who can afford insurance, but not reanimation, there is a partial life in the 'bridesicle' dating service, where if you're pretty and willing enough, a one-percenter might marry you on your deathbed before taking you home as a bride-slave.

Will McIntosh's short story "Bridesicle" won both the Hugo Award and Asimov's Reader Poll in 2010, and was a finalist for the same year's Nebula Award. Love Minus Eighty is based on the short story and a brilliant dystopian look at a future that forecasts many of today's headline issues. McIntosh offers a very engaging world where the storyline shifts between High Town and the suburbs, contrasting the have's and have-not's of the world. Looking at the social changes, it feels like McIntosh did a good job of taking some of our current systems such as social media and incoming advancements such as life-expansion and autonomous systems forward in ways that are both promising and sour to current tastes.

Using genetic modification to protect ourselves from dangerous species

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Tue, 04/29/2014 - 13:02

Aedes aegypti mosquito Our ancestors consistently looked for ways to eradicate apex predators who were a danger to their tribes by directly hunting humans and also by competing for our food sources. Today, many species of apex predators exist in controlled numbers in places we enjoy them, but rarely come into direct contact with them. To make our world safer, we've done almost too good a job as various species move closer to extinction with every successful poaching.

Protect your DNA

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Fri, 04/11/2014 - 10:52

A young John Lennon John Lennon was gunned down 34 years ago. If still alive, he would be 74 years old. In 2011, one of Lennon's former housekeepers sold one of Lennon's teeth at an auction in England. The winning bid belonged to Dr. Michael Zuk, a Canadian dentist. Zuk is making headlines this week by admitting plans to have Lennon cloned from DNA remaining in the tooth and raising the resulting child as his own. It brings up many questions, including the morality of cloning someone famous and who owns your DNA once you pass on.

The Bourne Legacy

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Mon, 04/07/2014 - 12:33

Sometimes a great look at the future shows up in places you weren't looking. The Bourne Legacy, the sequel to the trilogy with Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye in the Avengers) taking the lead role, is a fast-paced look at posthumanism and one of the better futurist films I've watched in some time.

I'd mostly ignored Legacy, figuring it would eventually hit Netflix, but found it in the library on Blu-ray this week and picked it up. Finding some free time today, I started watching and was blown away as the back story came together piece by piece. Sometimes the best views of the future arrive in a medium other than science fiction.

Stop here if you don't want to read spoilers. But this is a great movie and worth checking out.

New technologies allow us to track everything: should your employer?

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Mon, 03/24/2014 - 14:01

Screen capture from the film Modern Times A short article from Popular Science reports how companies are using new technologies to track employee work habits and lifestyles in order to mold a better employee. Part of the age of new life tracking termed the 'quantified self', they reference three articles on the subject. Here is a list of what is being tracked:

    Sleep
    Distance walked or run
    Diet
    Time spent sitting at their desk
    "Happiness"
    "Performance data" on how well employees communicate with each other and shoppers
    "Tone of voice, movement and even posture when communicating with others"

Can DNA be linked to future crime?

Submitted by Daryl Weade on Mon, 03/24/2014 - 12:21

Leatherface with a chainsaw In December 2013 an assault on Sandy Hook Elementary ended with the sad deaths of twenty children and six teachers, after the killer took the life of his own mother and before taking his own. Andrew Solomon gives us a look at the killer's father (I refuse to print his name - infamy should not be gifted on a killer) and the fall out in his life a little over a year after the shootings.