Flash Forward: medical technology and life abundant

I just finished watching a New Year's program called "Flash Forward" that highlighted some of the techology that was in its infancy 10 years ago which is now mainstream and has changed lifestyles immensely. The program went on to talk about ideas and technology that are just being invented and ironed out now which are predicted to make massive changes in the next 10 years (much of which is medical).

I'm drawn back to the same tension I've thought, blogged, and talked about before.

Techology does some amazing things. Some technology does actually trickle down. X-ray machines, vaccines, MRIs, just to name a few. Even if you don't have medical insurance, the general public does have access to these things, provided they know where to go to get them. No, they aren't distributed evenly, but overall, these are examples of technology that have vastly benefited almost all of society.

The process of researching, discovering, and inventing new technology also teaches us new things about ourselves, the world, and environment (and, I would say, sometimes even about our God).

But I don't think that new technology is always the answer. I don't think that changing our genes is necessarily better than changing our lifestyles. And our medical technology doesn't always (often doesn't) trickle down. It is an entirely different thing to ask if our technology should always trickle down to the general public. I am uncomfortable saying yes and no to that question.

It is hard for me to hear about all the crazy new technology that focuses on changing genes, super high tech procedures, and trying to double people's life spans, when there are so many people who may never have access to that technology (or at least not for a long time). What would help them now is not better technology, but health care professionals who are freed to spend a little more time with them in each visit to focus on lifestyle changes and prevension. This would require those health care professionals to be better paid (avg. primary care physician in an underserved area gets paid the same as a plumber...hard to sign up for that when you have 200,000$ + in loans). And then there is the question if all the new technology is actually what is best for us. It may be what we want, but is it what we need? Sometimes. Sometimes not.

How do we decide when to spend money on research and new technology, and when to use that money to address healthcare disparities? Is it possible to do both at the same time? When is medical technology the best solution to someone's health, and when is it something else? How do we use medicine to not just extend life by certain number of days, but to actually make that life abundant? Is that even the role of medicine?

I start the New Year stuck in the same tension between "life" as medicine defines it, and "life" as I have understood it through Scripture, felt it myself, and observed it in others. And in the tension between expensive medical advances and high profile medical care, and an increase in services and care "for the masses."