Medicine and the space odyssey

Up to the mid-1960s, science and technology (including medicine) were generally regarded as exciting, beautiful and spiritually enthralling; and the space odyssey seemed a symbol of the optimistic future of humankind. The early seventies saw a growing disillusionment with space travel as part of a mood of cultural pessimism and anti-modernization - and this combined with a resurgence of therapeutic nihilism in medicine. But recent discussions of renewed space exploration and a Mars mission may be evidence of a changing zeitgeist, with Western culture moving towards a bolder and more optimistic attitude. The adventure of space travel, exploration and colonization could be seen as both a barometer of cultural optimism, and an enterprise which would feed-back into cultural optimism for many decades to come. Medical science could also be a beneficiary; since greater boldness and optimism would be likely to renew the goats of medicine to do positive good - as contrasted with the necessary, but relatively uninspiring, requirement to minimize risk and harm. In a modernizing society humankind needs to took outward as well as inward: we need a frontier, and we need to grow. A resurgent space odyssey may be the best way that this can be enacted. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.