While reading a story about 16 year old Patrick Kane who has been fitted with a prosthetic 'i-limb', the boast of the scientists behind it, that the hand is 'even better than the real thing', set me wondering.
As technology in this field advances and we develop artificial limbs and body parts that are better than the ones nature has deemed to give us, will we see people swapping their body parts for better, fake ones?
Take a normal standard eye and consider it against an eye that could do all the things your standard eye could but was also able to zoom in or out or could see in night vision or even could generate an image in your field of vision, there would undoubtedly be takers willing to swap an eye for an upgraded eye.
It may be in the realms of Robocop or the Six Million Dollar Man but we are fast approaching having the technology to not only replicate human body parts but improve on them.
Glasses, hearing aids, dentures and walking sticks are all 'additions' for when the frail human body fails and humans have always strived to live longer. The human heart is designed to last around 70 years, what if an artificial one came with a guarantee to work for 100 years dependent on your other organs not giving up first, it would be a tempting offer.
Artificial body parts are here today, but they still have a way to go before they can rival our original equipment but when they can and when they surpass what we were born with, will there be an industry in swapping what we got for an upgraded artificial version?
Sadly, i'm sure the military would be very interested in a platoon of bigger, better, stronger soldiers with telescopic vision because another human trait is to develop technology and then sadly use it as another, more efficient way to kill each other.
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