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Replacing Joints, Organs, And Tissues

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Betsy/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2009-26-2012.mp3

I need a knee replacement, but I don't want one.  

I keep thinking if I wait long enough, something new will happen. There will be a great leap forward in technology and knee replacements will become easier or somehow better. 

Think about the level of medical entitlement that implies. I can already get a new knee joint, something undreamt of for 99 percent of human history. But I want a better one? In my life time, heart transplants went from impossibility to reality. Most of the other major organs of the body can be, under certain circumstances, replaced.
 
And there really are great new possibilities -- for regenerating body parts and growing tissue -- on the near horizon. But parts of the organ transplant story are less laudable. Sometimes, we go to a dark place to make a miracle.
 
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us@wnprcolin.

Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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