As the millenium approaches, doctors are assessing the impact technological changes will have on the medical field. In a special issue devoted to technology and medicine, the British Medical Journal , its American equivalent, the Journal of the American Medical Association , and other journals around the world reveal a brave new world that resolves some medical dilemmas but also poses difficult ethical problems. Predicting and preventing diseases, mostly through technologies that allow us to better understand our genes, will be more of a focus than trying to diagnose and treat them, Reardon said. In fact, some of that future is already here, reports CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews . Already parents with heredity diseases like Huntington's can go to an in-vitro lab for a gene test on embryos just eight cells old.
Doctors can then implant in the mother embryos that test free of the disease.
Knowing your own genetic makeup will eventually be routine and for some it will be a heavy burden. Dr. Charles Wilson, of the Institute for the Future in California and a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco predicts vaccines will have the biggest impact. One paper in the British Medical Journal predicted that drugs and lifestyle changes would be the preferred prescription for people genetically predisposed to a given disease, rather than trying to manipulate the genes themselves. In the future doctors will rely on computer software and extensive data bases to help them make difficult medical decisions and use the Internet to consult with far-away experts. Patients will be better informed and become more involved in medical decisions, relegating the physician to the role of adviser.