The past decade has seen remarkable progress in the field of medicine. Since scientists with the International Human Genome Project released a rough draft of the human genome to the public in 2000, the impact of science and technology on medicine has arguably been more salient than ever. New discoveries and inventions have opened up new possibilities in both the treatment and prevention of human sickness, so far that diseases that were once instant death sentences like cancer and HIV/AIDS, while still potentially fatal, a little less horrifying.
Sickness, of course, still exists, and so do the material burdens of medicine. Over the past thirty years, America’s health care system has seen the steady increase in consumer costs that have marginalized consumers and burdened states; the U.S. Census Bureau reported that a record 50.7 million residents (which includes 9.9 million non-citizens)…
