The atomic age.
We have been cheating death for some time. Once prayers weren’t seen to be as reliable as we once hoped, we started to take my direct, hands on action. There are still religious groups who oppose such interference with ‘God’s will’, such as the Jehovah’s witnesses, but more and more we see such life sustaining advances as acceptable, desirable, the norm.
Post Humanism and postponing death go hand in bionic hand. We can of course go further back than the 1950s for examples of this, but it gives us a relatively recent anchor, a point from which to start this brief study; this is merely research project into post-humanism, what it means and what it could mean. The ramifications can be lifesaving, sustaining and utterly world changing.
Inventions and Milestones
- 1951 – First heart-lung machine allowing open heart surgery
- 1953 – Discovery of the vaccine for poliomyelitis
- 1954 – First successful kidney transplant
- 1955 – First oral contraceptive
- 1957 – First external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker
- 1958 – First commercial food irradiation (spices) at Stuttgart, Germany
- 1959 – The internal pacemaker invented by Wilson Greatbatch