modern triumphs

• Heart transplant


  First performed by Dr Christian Barnard, a South African surgeon, in 1967
• The heart transplant itself actually worked, but the patient sadly died from another illness which he caught as a result of having to take immunosuppressant drugs to stop his body rejecting the heart
• In modern times, transplants have become quite controversial
• Transplants now available


  • Heart
  • Lungs
  • Liver
  • Kidney
• If the patient developed lung cancer after smoking for a long period of time


  Some people might argue it is not fair to give new lungs to someone whose lifestyle was the cause of their illness
• Organ donation


  Should useful organs be taken from the dead unless they opt out
• Chemotherapy


  Patients are injected with many different drugs that either shrink the tumor before surgery, prevent the cancer from reoccurring, or provide relief from symptoms
• Radiotherapy


  Concentrated waves of radiation are aimed at the tumor to try and shrink it
• Radiotherapy can be administered as beams of radiation directed at the tumor from outside the body or by placing a small piece of radioactive material directly next to the tumor using a catheter, but this can have very unpleasant side effects
• Survival rates for cancer today are much better compared to 50 years ago, but there is still a long way to go before we can truly say cancer has been cured
• Gene therapy


  Genetic research is advancing, and some chemotherapy drugs work better in lung cancer patients whose tumors have a certain genetic mutation
• Pharmacogenomics


  The idea of tailoring treatments to a person's DNA
• Some bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, such as MRSA, and are evolving and mutating so that they no longer get killed by them
• Without work to develop new drugs, some illnesses may not be treatable at all, returning us to a pre-antibiotic age
• The life expectancy in the UK is 79, while in the Central African Republic it is only 45, highlighting the inequality in access to healthcare and modern medicines between richer and developing countries
• The progress in medicine over the last half a century has been dramatic, and it is hoped that the next 50 years will bring even more advancements and solutions to the remaining challenges