It's an unfortunate truth that as technology and science progress at warp speed, thousands of stories–and people–get left behind. In this week's Classic, writer David Dobbs explores a perspective that tends to remain untold when medical advancements are unveiled—that of the patients whose bodies enabled such achievements.
Published in February 2019, "The Devastating Allure of Medical Miracles" opens with the story of Sheila Advento, a New Jersey resident who lost her hands and legs to sepsis at 26. Dobbs then follows several patients, including Sheila, who decide to join an experimental transplant program and receive hand transplants in exchange for maintaining a lifetime regimen of potentially system-damaging anti-rejection drugs. Though the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh touted a patient success story born of this new "Pittsburgh protocol" treatment program, the journey Advento and her fellow patients embarked on was less than straightforward.
Dobbs reflects on how clinical trial studies, in hoping to secure the future of the field, tied these patients' stories into neat little packages. Some, who still took the drugs for years but later had their transplanted hands removed, got left out entirely. It's something he says happens far too often across the field of medicine. In the pursuit of an achievement that they hope may change thousands of lives, doctors and researchers lose sight of how the lives of their trial participants have changed—and whether they have changed for the better. By the end of the piece, I was thinking about other technological achievements and the silent participants behind them, like cobalt miners and overnight AI trainers. Certainly the number of lives saved and changed by medical advancement are incalculable, and the benefits of the AI revolution are still unfolding, but Dobbs' story reminds me that at the very least, stories like Advento's should be part of those narratives.
This week I want to hear more untold perspectives. Has someone in your life suffered as a result of technological progress? Do you have a favorite WIRED article that similarly pulls back the curtain? Let me know in the comments below the story or email me at samantha_spengler@wired.com.
See you next weekend.
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