A vaccine is any preparation that triggers the production of antibodies to confer immunity. It’s another very often used application of technology. Vaccines are mostly made from killed or attenuated microorganisms. The microorganisms used to make these vaccines are the same ones that cause the disease the vaccine is made to act against but in an inactivated form. It is not unheard of vaccines becoming active once inoculated into patients and causing disease or the vaccine causing some sort of impairment to the patients.
For example in the 1950’s the measles vaccine was said to cause autism in children and an inactive polio vaccine became active once again and infected patients with polio. As seen here the same technology people rely on to ensure their health turns against them and causes more harm (Andersen, O, Oden, C. , Toren, K, Ahlgren, 2009). Antibiotics These are medicines designed to treat bacterial, fungal and other infections. Gene technology can partly be blamed for resurgence of infectious and resistant infections.
This is generally through two main reasons one being the formation of unknown and resistant bacterial and viral strains and the continued misuse of antibiotics in bioengineering. Instead of new technology helping in the fight of these infections its instead adding more resistant and dangerous strains of microorganisms. Drugs It takes technology to develop drugs. A drug is a chemical substance that alters or enhances the functions of the body. Drugs could be for therapy or leisure. An example of a leisure drug is ecstasy.
There is evidence that ecstasy can actually impair neurocognitive functions particularly those associated with working and verbal memory with the effect sizes actually appearing small. Gene Cloning This kind of technology is becoming very popular in today’s health programs. There are genetically modified drugs available or under research for example drugs to treat cancer and diabetes and autoimmune diseases. These drugs are supposed to work by rearranging genes in the body or in other words by modifying of DNA through splicing, transfection and transformation.
This can be looked as mutation and it’s already been established that mutation is one of the leading causes of cancer and other degenerative diseases (Mothersill & Seymour, 2009). So one wonders? Is the drug portraying the kind of effect it was intended for or is it just adding to the current health risks? Conclusion “The recent increase in technology could be doing more harm than good to society health”. Society health and well being is directly related to technology. It can make things simpler if the correct approaches are used.
But the question is can we overlook all the harmful effects of technology and compromise the health of our society over technology and science?
References
Andersen, O, Oden, C. , Toren, K, Ahlgren, C. , (2009) Multiple sclerosis incident in the era of measles- rubella- mumps mass vaccinations, Acta Neurologica Scandinavica:(119) 44-52. Esmi, Reza; Ennals, Richard, (2009), Knowledge management in construction companies in UK, Al and Society: (24) 124-131.
Jung J. H. , Lee J. E. , Lee C. H.. , Kim S. S. , Lee B. U. , (2009), Treatment of fungal bioaerosols by a High- Temperature, Short- Time process in a Continuous- Flow system, Applied & Environmental Microbiology: (75) 41-50. Mothersill, C. , Seymour, C. , (2009), Implications for environmental health of multiple stressors, Journal of Radiological Protection. (29)12-23. Mirja, Puolakkainen, (2009), Innate immunity and vaccines in chlamydial infection with special emphasis on Chlamydia Pneumoniae, FEMS Immunology & Medical Microbiology. (55) 127-138.