Could Robot Health Care Be An Improvement?
As the quality and quantity of human workers shrink, cyborg nursing may be coming for all of us.
Nurse Ratched (played by Louise Fletcher, center) in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.’
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As my father reached the end of his life — ravaged by the painful ferocity of final-stage Parkinson’s Disease — I was often outraged by the quality of the US healthcare system and the dwindling number of workers it is able to muster to care for the aged and ailing. The almost daily accounts of carelessness by employees at his facility were soul-numbing. I understand why relatives of the terminally ill go into a willful ignorance of the travails of their loved ones. It helps preserve their own peace of mind, though not lifelong guilt. How can trained professionals and systems run by trained professionals — humans — be so heartless? More than once, I’ve wondered if robots could perform these duties less roughly — like shifting Dad gently in bed so he wouldn’t be bruised. Could cyborgs equipped with a well-calibrated, self-learning AI be more sensitive to human suffering than human caretakers?