First Cure, Then Augment

Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.

The goal of medicine, in the largest sense, is to ease suffering, treat disease and to make people "better". Thus, it is not such a leap to think in terms of making normal people better still. The idea of augmenting our natural abilities has been one of my driving forces towards science and medicine since I was very young. As our quote from the Six Million Dollar Man above magnificently illustrates, we are not the first to dream this dream.

The awesome part, however, is that we may be the first generation to actually see it happen.

Our friends over at gizmodo alerted us to a press-release about a new artificial retina being developed by Humayun et al., at the University of Southern California and the Doheny Retina Institute along with Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. This device, a 4-by-4 grid of platinum electrodes embedded in silicone rubber with electrodes that are wirelessly stimulated through an external controller hooked up to a head-mounted video camera is just the beginning.

In short, this is right up our alley.

The next step is to think about ways (ideally non-invasive or at lease NPD*) that we can institute such things in folks with 20/20 vision... Clem and I were talking today and he has some ideas... keep an eye on the site!


*NPD = No Permanent Damage