6 Million Dollars

I saw a bit of an article this afternoon by a fellow who's investing in biotechnology to allow the artificial growth of human tendons. I have to admit that I didn't quite follow his discussion -- and this was the simple one, intended for attendees at TED (though TED is fond of pointing out that its attendees are extraordinary people doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary way) -- but the nut of it was that he was interested in a process that would allow tendons created in a laboratory to be used to repair damage that today is repaired by human harvesting. Presumably, that means either harvesting from people who can regenerate the lost tissue, or from corpses. (When I learned that one of the options for the graft to my jaw was to use bone from a corpse, I was a little surprised. Also a little creeped out.) Doing the harvesting from corpses isn't too easy to do -- I seem to recall that you have to get it pretty quickly after death -- and doing it from living people means that they have to go and regrow the stuff, which takes time and puts them out of commission for the duration. So, the idea of lab grown tendons is pretty sexy, hence this guy and his investments.

It brought to mind, as you may have guessed by the title of this post, the old Six Million Dollar Man series, where that kind of prosthetic uber-technology worked so incredibly well. Thank god for freeze-frame and motion camera work! In the real world, it's a lot sloppier and slower, and it costs a hell of a lot more. Which is actually where I was heading with all of this. I wonder, sometimes, how and where the decision is made as to whether money should be spent on technologies like this when alternatives do exist -- not nearly as sexy, of course, and with concomitant difficulties, but they do exist. Why should money be spent on alternatives? I know, no one's making them do it, and the people who first use it will be people who pay for it themselves. But at some point, probably a lot closer than we like to think, someone somewhere who has medical insurance and needs that repair will say 'Why should I go through this painful harvesting, when the alternative exists?' To which the insurance company will reply that its way expensive (they won't say that, but that'll be the driving reason) and experimental; they don't fund things like that. Eventually, though -- maybe not that case, but eventually -- they will start paying for it, because its new, it's sexy, and it's effective. And health care costs will go up.

Is that how it ought to be? I know I'd feel differently if it was me or my family under the knife, but, that not being the case, I have to say that I think: no, it shouldn't. I don't think that mainstream health care should be used to pay for solutions that aren't mainstream. I realize that the way that they become mainstream is through this process, but I don't care for it. I think that if people want a new technology - one for which older equivilents exist - they should pay for it. Insurance companies shouldn't be regarded as Scrooge McDuck (though they often are exactly that warm and loving) with a pile of cash that they don't want to hand out (ditto). They're there for emergencies, for coverage when you couldn't cover it yourself. The coverage that you need doesn't have to be a cashmere blanket when a wool one is ready to hand.

I know I sound as if I'm advocating a return to asylums and leeches. Sorry about that.