Fix it with sticky tape

This post was inspired by something i saw on TV a few hours back on channel 8. it's a show about celebrities doing charity work overseas, but i can't remember what the name of the show was. in this particular episode, tay ping hui was helping out a charity service for elderly ex-lepers, i believe. the scene that really affected me was when a prosthetics maker doing voluntary work was visiting an old woman with an extremely old and outdated prosthetic leg made with 1970s technology. it was made nearly entirely of steel with no springs or compression cylinders, only a hinge at the knee and a weighted foot to ensure that the foot always faced the ground, which consequently made it much heavier and taxing for the wearer than modern prostheses. there was no proper buckling system for the leg, and the woman basically secured it to her knee-stump by looping a rubber strap around her thigh many times and sort of tying a knot at the end. the footage skipped to the prosthetics maker in his workshop creating a new leg with light materials like plastic and aluminium, and using springs and dampeners to simulate ankle movement. he even used a laser line level to ensure that the foot was exactly level to the ground. in the final part of the scene, he fixes the modern prosthetic leg to the woman's knee-stump and she gives it a test walk.

the sight of a person with a prosthetic, a melding of the mechanical and the organic, made me start thinking about humans and machines. in terms of healthcare, humans are actually much like machines. we start off fine, but soon wear and tear will take their toll and we need to repair and maintain ourselves with medication and treatment. still, eventually the damage will be too great to simply repair and the entire part will need to be replaced. replacement limbs, replacement joints, and even replacement organs are now available today. and with the advancement of modern medical technology, the catalogue of replaceable body parts looks set to increase even further. i think now would be relevant to bring in a joke i once heard:

This axe here was the very same axe that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. Except that the handle has been replaced five times and the axehead has been replaced seven times.

 the ridiculous rate at which the body malfunctions and erodes away as we age leads one to the logical conclusion that humans are extending their lives far beyond their natural lifespan. the continued survival of people beyond about 65 seems to be time borrowed from modern technology. the scene that was playing in my head while i watched the above-mentioned scene was that of a man using the same disposable styrofoam plate for years, and repairing any cracks and holes with sticky tape. when the plate has been used for significantly longer then it's projected lifespan, it will eventually be completely made of sticky tape and also completely unusable as a plate. humans were never meant to last forever; in a morbid sense, i guess we are all made to be "disposable".

so what are the consequences of "cheating the system" and extending our natural lifespans with science? oftentimes, wear and tear in nature is an indicator that your time has come. take the elephant for example: all elephants have a set of incredibly large and hard molars in the back of their mouths, where the primary grinding of the vegetation they eat occurs. these molars develop very early in baby elephants and are never replaced. once the molars have been ground down through constant chewing, the elephant will make its way to an elephant graveyard on its own accord to await death, knowing that it has already lost the crucial ability to eat. many a times, the elephant is still healthy in every other aspect except for its molars.

i've come to believe that many "wear and tear" diseases are just results of people living beyond their natural lifespans through medical aid, which is why it is so rare to find animals in the wild with high blood pressure or osteoporosis. these illnesses simply aren't natural; just like how it is unnatural that a paper cup will spontaneously disintegrate while using it, but it will eventually decompose anyway if left on it's own for years. and of course, our first reaction is to fix the cup with sticky tape.

but frankly, this changes nothing for me and my healthcare plans. who doesn't want to live an extra year or two, even if it has to be borrowed from science?