
Ah, the Internet! A new world of pure thought, free of the limits and coercion of the physical world. "Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live," wrote John Perry Barlow four years ago in "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". Barlow had no monopoly on Internet euphoria--the idea that cyberspace is too intangible, too slippery, too ubiquitous to be controlled by
government. Even today, sober analysts make much the same argument in less hyperbolic language, and technologists talk about "building the future" to bypass political barriers. But human beings do not exist apart from their bodies. We are
matter-bound creatures.
The same desires for independence, expression, and identity that cyberutopians like Barlow celebrate in the world of bits operate in the world of cells. People want control not only of their words and thoughts but of their bodies. We're a long way from having such control--our bodies have a nasty habit of failing us--but biology is
clearly the next great technological frontier. Already, medicine has gone beyond the traditional realm of curing illnesses to give us tools for enhancing our capabilities. Rather than hewing to a clear-cut model of "disease," we are increasingly changing
biological conditions we simply don't like. Sometimes we treat these conditions with pharmaceuticals, such as birth control pills, hormone replacement therapy, or Viagra. In other cases, we just wax our eyebrows or dye our hair. Once we leave the disease model, the doctor-patient relationship changes. When a condition does not require a diagnosis, there is less detective work involved, and hence less expertise. Certainly, physicians usually know more than patients about possible treatments, just as hairdressers know more about color combinations. But the Internet makes medical information accessible and abundant, and in many cases patients would rather take care of themselves. They may have already seen a physician and just want more of what was prescribed at that time. Or they may prefer the privacy and
convenience of a Web-based medical consultation to the invasiveness and hassle of a physician visit.
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