. Body Image I’ve had a certain ache and pain in …

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Body Image

I’ve had a certain ache and pain in recent weeks, and I finally had it checked out. The diagnosis seems to be “ache and pain” with a clinical name. Nothing serious, but the doctor suggested that I have an ultrasound done to make sure.

This wasn’t my usual doctor, but one of my doctor’s six partners. I’d never seen him before, but it would have been a whole month before I could see my doctor. I found out when I went to the front desk to schedule my ultrasound that they couldn’t fit me in for three weeks. I talked them down to one week—and it wasn’t pretty. I could go to the hospital clinic any time, but since it isn’t an emergency, I’d rather wait a week and have it done in my doctor’s office. But there was no way I would wait three weeks.

On the way out, I noticed a sign in the lobby with a picture of my usual doctor in scrubs next to a giant robotic surgery machine. This machine must keep him very busy if it takes a patient in pain a month to get near him.

Welcome to the age of personalized medicine. The government is already working on an electronic medical history data infrastructure that will allow fast access to our personal records throughout the vast American Healthcare System. Theoretically, it will also help physicians who have never looked at us before prescribe therapies catered to our personal genetic soufflés. Meanwhile, the doctor patient-relationship that is, as far as I’m concerned, the heart of medicine, will become as quaint as the automat (which is a bad analogy, given that automatism is part of the problem).

I recently rewrote a Verb-ops post about futurist Ray Kurzweil and submitted it to the magazine I work for as an editorial. It challenges Kurzweil’s vision of humans transcending biology via information technology and nanorobotics. The magazine I work for is a science magazine, and I wasn’t sure the editor would go for it. She actually really liked it, despite its references to the Bible, specifically to the Garden of Eden. Usually this kind of thing is verboten in Science World.

It reminded me that there is a limiting factor to our headlong plunge into a high-tech future. This limiting factor is our humanity. That’s the point of my editorial, really. We have a spiritual connection to our bodies, one that does not preclude the use of ultrasounds, micro-surgery, and biotech medicines. Curing AIDs and cancer is a good thing. Because life is good. But becoming cyborgs is not a good thing.

Life is at least temporally defined by birth and death. The aging process and death, in fact, are important parts of what gives the rest of our lives meaning. It becomes problematic when we focus our energy on achieving something like immortality. It’s foolish, to start with, and it also focuses us too much on the physically morbid aspects of life and death. Life becomes about death in a world with such a focus.

I think, though, that there is a big kickback against all this. Diet, exercise, and meditation are becoming important parts of our lives as we literally strive to keep body and soul together. I think being healthy in the future will largely be a matter of taking charge of our health with the aid of personal, rather than “personalized”, care from professionals—our doctors. We may also look to the “metaphysical” aspects of our lifes for fulfillment and enjoyment.

Meanwhile, rather than trying to transcend biology, maybe we should try a little harder to transcend the bureaucracy, politics, and greed in our healthcare system. Talk about limiting factors! Perhaps Michael Moore will make a movie about this.

Photo: Michelle V. Agnis for The New York Times