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In terms of medical advances, there may not have been any major blockbuster disease cures found, but there were several very important advances & innovations. I

In terms of medical advances, there may not have been any major blockbuster disease cures found, but there were several very important advances & innovations. I'll crib from ABC News and call out a few that I think are impressive as a layperson: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Decade/genome-hormones-top-10-medical-advances-decade/story?id=9356853 http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Decade/genome-hormones-top-10-m... - Heart disease numbers dropped considerably: so many heart-related diseases and emergencies that previously would be fatal or have many more severe consequences are now survivable and livable. - Stem cell research: even with the lack of US/federal funding, stem cell research started to bear fruit, and looks to only grow from here. - Improved cancer survival rates for many types of cancers: Huge. We're a long way away from a real cure, but survival rates have never been higher. - Incredible advances in arthroscopic & noninvasive/outpatient surgery & procedures: In 2004-ish I blew out the "terrible triad" of knee ligaments; my surgery scars are just little dots. My brother had similar surgery just about 6-8 years prior to that, and he bears the ugly long scar over his kneecap. That's just gleaned from one decade-end retrospective article, and is just focused on medical advances. But also, stop and think back to the internet in 2000 versus where we are now. There's been a hell of a lot of innovation there, as well; think of all of the things that are now possible or even commonplace to do online that were merely a gleam in our minds a decade ago... If anything, just thinking about the pieces and foundations that were put in place throughout the 00s excites me for the possibilities of this next decade even more. It should be a very exciting time.

PieSquared 17y ago
An anecdote about noninvasive surgery and such. My mother had a similar injury. She blew out ligaments on her right knee in 2002, and then one her left leg in 2008. Look at one leg, you see a big scar from the top of the knee to the bottom. Look at the other, you see pretty much nothing. (Also, it's great. You can endure that type of trauma twice, and still be participating in intense sports such as alpine skiing and such.)
dnsworks 17y ago
I will definitely buy this. Stem cell research might be the one "world-changing" innovation that's happened since the dawn of the internet, but I don't know if we'll have a clear view of that for another decade. Arthroscopic surgery is also pretty awesome. So maybe it isn't all bleak. Maybe it's just the tech industry that has failed to do anything but sell us more crap, invade our privacy, and advertise us into submission.
- evgen 17y ago
  Are you kidding? Let me rewind you to Y2K in case you were still nursing a collegiate hangover or two. Banner ads were everywhere, advertising was in your face, the marquee/blink tags had not yet been banished, and the only way to avoid it was to run an actual http proxy so that meant that only the tech-savvy could get away from it (and almost no one was blocking cookies or other "simple" tracking mechanisms.) In Y2K some of us were still worried about whether or not crypto would ever enter the mainstream (most people had no clue what we were talking about or why we cared) and while the crypto export laws had only been relaxed a couple of months earlier it was still recent enough that including strong crypto in a product was considered a political/legal risk. We were finally to the point where you no longer needed to use a generic crypto library API (so that users could link against a non-US crypto lib) but SSL certs were still rare for most web sites. The tech industry has changed significantly for the better in all of these areas.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    Cute. I've been building infrastructures for almost 20 years now. There's really nothing new under the sun. The last time I drank the koolaid was at Napster, since then I've never been really excited about a company. Fusion-IO is the closest tech that has even made me take pause. Web startups are the worst. I worked at idealab in 2000. We invented the me-too web site business model that is now Web 2.0. It's all kind of a joke. But at least we have new ways to advertise!

PieSquared 17y ago

An anecdote about noninvasive surgery and such. My mother had a similar injury. She blew out ligaments on her right knee in 2002, and then one her left leg in 2008. Look at one leg, you see a big scar from the top of the knee to the bottom. Look at the other, you see pretty much nothing. (Also, it's great. You can endure that type of trauma twice, and still be participating in intense sports such as alpine skiing and such.)

dnsworks 17y ago

I will definitely buy this. Stem cell research might be the one "world-changing" innovation that's happened since the dawn of the internet, but I don't know if we'll have a clear view of that for another decade. Arthroscopic surgery is also pretty awesome. So maybe it isn't all bleak. Maybe it's just the tech industry that has failed to do anything but sell us more crap, invade our privacy, and advertise us into submission.

evgen 17y ago
Are you kidding? Let me rewind you to Y2K in case you were still nursing a collegiate hangover or two. Banner ads were everywhere, advertising was in your face, the marquee/blink tags had not yet been banished, and the only way to avoid it was to run an actual http proxy so that meant that only the tech-savvy could get away from it (and almost no one was blocking cookies or other "simple" tracking mechanisms.) In Y2K some of us were still worried about whether or not crypto would ever enter the mainstream (most people had no clue what we were talking about or why we cared) and while the crypto export laws had only been relaxed a couple of months earlier it was still recent enough that including strong crypto in a product was considered a political/legal risk. We were finally to the point where you no longer needed to use a generic crypto library API (so that users could link against a non-US crypto lib) but SSL certs were still rare for most web sites. The tech industry has changed significantly for the better in all of these areas.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  Cute. I've been building infrastructures for almost 20 years now. There's really nothing new under the sun. The last time I drank the koolaid was at Napster, since then I've never been really excited about a company. Fusion-IO is the closest tech that has even made me take pause. Web startups are the worst. I worked at idealab in 2000. We invented the me-too web site business model that is now Web 2.0. It's all kind of a joke. But at least we have new ways to advertise!