Perhaps all the "low hanging fruit" had been picked and future progress will be much harder.
I think that might have something to do with it. Maybe there's only so far you can go in reducing the cost or complexity of some of the problems medicine has to solve now, or maybe the money in research goes first to the treatments which turn the biggest profit for hospitals?
Also I wonder whether the progress in the tech sector isn't just more visible than progress in medicine. It's a lot easier to see the way the iPod has iterated over a decade than, say, to see the way genetic screening has. Though of course medicine and tech are inextricably linked, maybe it would be better to say 'medical tech' versus 'consumer tech.'
And of course there's the issues of religion and politics. If we could say, clone ready-made human organs for transplant, just handwaving away the 'growing them' part, how long would the technology be held back by public and political squeamishness about the process itself? If it requires something akin to industrial, mass-production of living human tissues and stem cells? Even if it saved a million lives tomorrow, it might take decades to pass into a level of public tolerance that makes it politically acceptable to fund the research.
I think that might have something to do with it. Maybe there's only so far you can go in reducing the cost or complexity of some of the problems medicine has to solve now, or maybe the money in research goes first to the treatments which turn the biggest profit for hospitals?
Also I wonder whether the progress in the tech sector isn't just more visible than progress in medicine. It's a lot easier to see the way the iPod has iterated over a decade than, say, to see the way genetic screening has. Though of course medicine and tech are inextricably linked, maybe it would be better to say 'medical tech' versus 'consumer tech.'
And of course there's the issues of religion and politics. If we could say, clone ready-made human organs for transplant, just handwaving away the 'growing them' part, how long would the technology be held back by public and political squeamishness about the process itself? If it requires something akin to industrial, mass-production of living human tissues and stem cells? Even if it saved a million lives tomorrow, it might take decades to pass into a level of public tolerance that makes it politically acceptable to fund the research.