Medical Advancement and Society
Medicine is the most important field in society. One could say that having health is the hope that humanity clings to and resource will always be allocated to advancing the medical field. In fact, it would be fair to say that medicine has an even greater impact on the world than technology does. Without modern medicine, nearly all of humanity would die at infancy from infectious diseases and other ailments which we have now largely eradicated through vaccination programs and advances in medical knowledge such as DNA mapping. It’s the core of society and paramount to survival in some sense.
However, there are still many diseases which have no cure. The most recent example is the current pandemic. As of 2020, COVID-19 is still rampaging through society and a consistent vaccine, while on the horizon is still a ways off. We could also look at Ebola, where over ten thousand people were infected with the disease in 2014.
Medicine is also a field which has received more than its fair share of criticism, with many people saying that modern medicine is an industry based on selling unneeded products to increasing populations. However, the fact remains that almost all human beings today who reach adulthood live well into old age. This is in stark contrast with pre-modern times. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t be critical of the various products that flood our markets.
In general, we can say that medicine is a field which has improved the quality of life on Earth in immeasurable ways. Perhaps the greatest achievement of medicine is that it has allowed us to live longer than ever before. There was a period where people would die in their early thirties, but now we can expect to live into our eighties or nineties. In conclusion, I would say that medicine is a field which has improved the quality of life for all humans and will continue to do so in the future.