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June 17, 2008
Robots!
I don't like this one bit. Not at all:
Robotic surgery, no longer something out of a sci-fi novel, has become an increasingly popular way to do minimally invasive operations.
Surgeons at more than two dozen Illinois hospitals, including the University of Chicago Medical Center and Advocate Christ Medical Center, use the "da Vinci" robot to operate on the prostate, heart and other organs while sitting yards away from the operating table. About 85,000 robot-assisted surgeries were performed nationwide last year.
But the field of robotic surgery can only grow as fast as the number of surgeons trained to use the technology. Now, using a new, $2 million training center affiliated with the Walter Payton Liver Center, the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago will be the first Chicago area teaching hospital to train all of its surgical residents in robotic surgery.
Let me get this straight. You're going to let a robot hover over you, your vital organs exposed to the world. You'll give that robot dangerous surgical instruments. Pardon me, but doesn't this sound like the first step in a robot plan to take over the world? I mean, people always say you can defeat the robots by simply turning them off - but you're unconscious! You can't turn them off! Don't you get it?
If I ever have to have surgery, I am telling my doctor no robots. I don't care if my insurance won't cover a human surgeon (cheap bastards), no robots. I've seen Terminator, man. I ain't stupid.
entry no. 1168
Posted at June 17, 2008 10:19 AM