Societal Needs and Technological Developments

Humans have a very complex society and has developed to newer technologies and scientific discoveries. Much of it is influenced by our needs. New illness and diseases are being discovered everyday. The most common illness and diseases that affect humans are the ones that target the internal systems like cancer, diabetes, pneumonia, and cardiovascular diseases.

As more and more people are affected by them, scientist and researchers begin to study on those diseases which lead to preventions and cures. The most effective solution for cancer right now is chemotherapy, though it does not cure cancer it can reduce the size of the cancer cell that is growing by killing micro organisms. Though it is the most effective solution, there are also side effects to taking chemotherapy, hair loss, decreased production of blood cells, and it can also harm the cells in your bone marrow, digestive track, and hair follicles. Heart disease kill more people in America than cancer. Many people have had to resort to having surgery to treat the disease. To do these surgeries, people have developed technology so that the surgeons are able to work on the patient. There are new machines that are able to simulate the pumping of the heart for surgeries that require the surgeons to stop the patients hear. Open heart surgery is one way to treat mitral regurgitation (MR). Mitral regurgitation is the leaking of blood through the mitral valve into the heart chamber. Open heart can be very risky, and now there are new methods that will treat MR. The mitraclip procedure will treat MR without the risk that open heart surgery has. It is done by inserting a catheter into the femoral vein of the groin and provides access to the mitral valve.

The threat of terrorism caused the increase of safety procedures in airports. People are now forced to go through a thorough padding of the body or step into an x-ray machine which will scan what you are carrying. The study of x-ray machines revealed that it gives out small amounts of radiation. Though it is not enough to harm a person, it is still creating controversy throughout the medical communities.

These were good examples of how society lead to new studies and discoveries of the human body. As more and more things about the human body are being discovered, there will be more technology created.

Sources

• http://home.xnet.com/~ansible/graves.hist.html
• http://www.abbottvascular.com/int/mitraclip.html
• http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful

Comments
Daniel Maznabi
Felix Puguon

The Dangers of Industrial Agriculture

Unfortunately most people don't know that most of the food that we buy from the groceries and eat come from industrial agriculture. Now there are some arguments and controversy about industrial agriculture. while industrial agriculture in a fast and efficient way of producing the foods that we buy at the grocery stores, there are disadvantages of having them. There are many issues that face industrial agriculture and I will point out the main ones. There is more use of pesticides which could cause a higher risk of cancer, unsanitary working facilities where meat and crops could get contaminated with bacteria. Most if not all of the animals that are grown inside an industrial agriculture farm are injected with antibiotic from the start so there would be less of risk of the animal getting sick, hormones are injected for faster growth of fat and muscles and industrial dairy farms inject a special hormone called recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGh) to cows so it would produce more milk.

-Animals in Industrial Farming

There are also environmental issues that concern this topic. These industrial farmers are reducing the amount of genetic diversity of animals and plants because they are only mass producing the species or type of animal or plant that they need to make huge profits from them. The result of this mass production of the same type or species of animals is that these animals will not be able to evolve to be better at surviving in their surroundings which will lead to higher risk or diseases and illness. Also, if there is a disease or epidemic, it will wipe out the whole livestock and crop because none of them have the diversity to evolve and survive against them, if this happens the farmers will put more and more antibiotics and pesticides into their product which will increase danger to the health of the public.

There is an alternative source of producing food that eliminate theses issues that industrial agriculture is causing and that alternative is sustainable agriculture. These sustainable farms produce food without the excessive use of pesticides and chemicals put in plants and no antibiotic or hormones put in animals. There would be a wide variety of species of animals in the farm because one species in not being mass produced and the crops that they grow will be grown naturally and organically without the use of any chemicals. More and more people need to realize where their food come from. Industrial farms may be fast and efficient but it is not a safe way of producing foods. The benefits of sustainable farms is that they don't interfere with the natural genetic diversity of the animals and plants, therefore there will be less risk of diseases and pesticides in our food.
Sources

• http://www.sustainabletable.org/intro/comparison/
• http://www.motherearthnews.com/Rancho-Cappuccino/Industrial-Agriculture-Monoculture-Risks.aspx

Comments

Cris Iconaru and Jefferson Caligner