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organs will cause difficulties. So as to be independent of family and religious taboos when vital operations have to be performed, we shall collect human organs for future recipients in 'organ banks’. Today there are blood banks in hospitals all over the world. Why has no one made a fuss about them? For blood is still the sap of life and far more mysterious than the heart pump. Of course, blood is donated voluntarily. Why should not this ultimately be true of organs, given by men who know that they are going to die or by their relatives? I believe that organ transplants, too, are only a transitional stage. If scientists eventually succeed in programming the DNA double helix in the nucleus with information for the construction or reconstruction of organs, the Frankenstein methods will soon be forgotten. The Russian scientist L.V. Poleschayev is already able to make a damaged scalp regenerate itself independently and he has even managed to make amputated limbs start to grow again. One day there will be gene surgery as well. Sheer fantasy? I do not think so, because I know that Doctor Teh Ping Lin of San Francisco succeeded in giving a mouse's egg an injection as early as 1966. A mouse's egg is only one tenth the size of a red corpuscle and cannot be seen at all with the naked eye! Professor E.H. Graul, Director of the Institute for Radiobiology and the Medical Use of Isotopes at Philips University in Marburg, and the cyberneticist Dr Herbert W. Franke gave a forecast of medicine and its fringe areas in the years 1985 and 2000 in the Deutschen Arzteblatt: ¢ Mastery of transplanting animal and human organs, elimination of immune reactions. ¢ Routine use of artificially made organs and/or biological systems (artificial organs made of plastics and/or electronic components—on cyborg lines). ¢ Marked progress in the gerontological and geriatric field. The average expectation of life is about 85 years. ¢ The ageing process will be manipulated advantageously, the degeneration inherent in old age will be slowed down, both physically and psychically. ¢ The first positive conclusions about the production of primitive forms of artificial life. ¢ Biomedical electronics will influence practical medicine (for example, electronic artificial limbs, radar for the blind, limbs with servo-mechanisms and many other things). ¢ Deep-freezing of men for hours or days. ¢ Determination of a child's sex before birth. ¢ Possibilities of transplanting all organs. ¢ The correction of hereditary defects. ¢ Continuous genetic manipulation of animals and plants. ¢ Production of artificial forms of primitive life. ¢ Use of X-ray and gamma type Laser beams. ¢ General biochemical immunisation against diseases. ¢ General diffusion of the cyborg technique (artificial organs). ¢ Manipulation of organisms by electric stimulation of the brain. ¢ Drugs for the control of man's emotional states, chemical aids for the improvement of memory and Forecast for the year 1985. Forecast for the year 2000.