![Samaritan Inn: Homeless Shelter and Soup Kitchen][1] [1]: http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/H3.jpg **FrankenMedicine: The Horrors of For-Profit Healthcare** by Timothy McGettigan, PhD Professor of Sociology Colorado State University - Pueblo **Abstract** While conducting field research on poverty in Winston-Salem, North Carolina the author acquired alarming insights about the horrors of profit-motivated healthcare. The author witnessed a homeless man dislocate his knee while playing softball. Rather than receiving humane medical attention the homeless man was subjected to hospital treatment that would be better described as medieval torture. The more money that the USA spends on healthcare the more inhumane US healthcare becomes. Although many people believe that money is the key to happiness, in this paper I will argue that the USA’s “profits over people” medical philosophy tends to inspire dreadful forms of inhumanity in the delivery of healthcare. **Author’s Note** This paper reports on a field research project that I conducted in 1998. Why, one may wonder, did I delay so long in publishing these observations? The truth is that the events that I describe in this paper are so alarming that, until recently, I had no idea how to adequately analyze them. Sometimes time and distance are requird to form coherent thoughts. The more disturbing the events in question the more time and distance are required to achieve clarity. **Introduction** People have endless complaints about the USA’s healthcare system (Reid, 2009). Even though Americans pay extremely high prices for healthcare (Swayne, et. al., 2008) those exorbitant expenditures do not translate into a higher quality healthcare experience. In this paper, I will argue that the staggering profits associated with US healthcare (Buchanan, 2009) actually create an environment that dehumanizes the people it is meant to serve. The USA’s “profits over people” philosophy dehumanizes patients by applying a callous economic calculus to human suffering (Morrall, 2009). In the US, even after the implementation of Obamacare, healthcare is predicated on a patient’s ability to pay (Birju and Hellander, 2014; Chaufan, 2015). Pain and suffering hardly factor into the equation. In addition, profit motives incentivize medical researchers to technologize rather than humanize the healthcare experience. A “profits over people” philosophy incentivizes healthcare providers to develop miraculous new medical technologies (e.g., artificial hearts, 3D printed organs, artificial retinas, etc.) rather than improving the overall state of public health (Fasano, 2013; Wright, 1982). As a result, accessing healthcare in the US is more like undergoing auto repairs than a humane exercise in healing (McCarthy and Schafermeyer, 2007; Wright, 1982). **Profits Over People: A Horrifying Example of Medical Inhumanity in the United States** In 1998, as a way of studying poverty (Pimpare, 2008) I joined a homeless shelter’s softball team. The homeless shelter is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and it is called the Samaritan Inn. In addition to encouraging its clients to get some much-needed exercise the Samaritan Inn sponsored a softball team as a way of reinvigorating its residents’ disused social skills (McNamara, 2008). For those unfamiliar with the sport softball is a simplified version of baseball. *Image 1 - City League Softball in Winston-Salem, NC* Middle class social niceties often become a low priority among those who struggle to survive on America’s mean streets (Flowers, 2010). In addition, many of the Samaritan Inn’s residents were in the process of recovering from serious drug addictions (Covey, 2007). That potent combination of harrowing and as-yet-unresolved life challenges made the Samaritans the terrors of Winston-Salem’s City Softball League. Alice Wright, the softball team’s manager, stated that her purpose in organizing the softball team was to provide the players with an exercise in sportsmanship re-training. Elementary as that goal may have been the Samaritans became infamous for their indecorous on-field antics. Each game that the Samaritans played usually devolved into a sprawling comedy of errors, accidents, curses and insults. The fact that many of the Samaritans had been standout high school athletes only amplified their frustrations. The Samaritans’ addiction and poverty-plagued physiques had decimated practically every aspect of their former athletic prowess--save for the agonizing memories of bygone glory days. **Field Research on a Softball Team** Due to their extensive record of unsportsmanlike excess, in 1998 the Winston-Salem City Softball League put the Samaritans on notice. If the Samaritans’ proclivity for on-field discourtesy persisted, parks and recreation officials had threatened to terminate the Samaritans’ membership in the City Softball League. As it transpired, my interest in exploring the grim realities of poverty in the USA (Iceland, 2013) coincided with the Samaritan Inn’s recruitment drive for new, non-resident softball players. In an effort to prevent their softball team’s expulsion from the City League the Samaritans had added a new coach, a man named Wallace, who also happened to be a drug abuse counselor at the Samaritan Inn. In turn, Wallace recruited a few non-resident softball players in the hope that they would bring a lighter load of personal baggage and, thus, a more even-keeled sensibility to the Samaritans. I was content to play any role that enabled me become better acquainted with the Samaritans and their struggles with poverty. *Image 2 - Post Game Prayer* On Sunday, April 5, 1998 at approximately 4:00pm I attended my first preseason practice session. I had not played softball for years and my athletic decrepitude was painfully obvious. After I botched several easy infield grounders Wallace banished me to the lonely purgatory of right field. I managed to redeem myself by shagging a bunch of lazy fly balls. Lackluster as my first outing may have been Wallace surprised me by making me the Samaritan’s right fielder. To be candid, I was pleased to do more than warm the bench. On the following Sunday, April 12, 1998 at 4:00pm, I returned to the Samaritans’ practice field. When I opened the trunk of my Nissan Sentra a young man approached with a car stereo in his hands. Multi-hued connection wires dangled suspiciously from the small device. The young man informed me that he had just found the car stereo and asked if I was willing to take it off his hands. Sensing that I was being asked to collude in a crime, I encouraged the young man to return the stereo to wherever had found it. He shot me a disgusted look and stalked away. I tucked my softball glove under my left arm, clicked my trunk closed and jogged to the baseball diamond. En route I caught Wallace’s eye and he motioned me toward right field. For the next hour I fielded a steady stream of fly balls and grounders. Ten minutes into practice I began wishing that I had worn lighter clothing. By the time that Wallace signaled for me take batting practice I was sodden with perspiration. Approaching home plate I slowed to a walk and veered behind the field’s decrepit backstop. A Samaritan client, named Bernard, was finishing his turn at batting practice. **There Are No Racists in North Carolina** Although racist segregation is officially verboten in the United States (Hasday, 2007), in communities like Winston-Salem racist segregation remains pervasive. The Samaritan Inn is located in a part of Winston-Salem that has traditionally been occupied by the poorest and brownest residents of the city (Chafe, 2001). *Image 3 - The Samaritan Inn* Curiously, North Carolinians like to claim that their state “is not as bad the rest of the South.” By this they mean that North Carolinian racism is not as overt and ugly as it is in other Southern states. But that is baloney. Racism is every bit as ugly in North Carolina as it is everywhere else in the United States (McGettigan and Smith, 2016; Godwin, 2000). The Jim Crow laws that humiliated, terrorized and oppressed richly-pigmented people throughout the American South (Hattery and Smith, 2007; Rhymes, 2007; Woodward, 1974) continue to inflict much the same miseries on the residents of North Carolina. So, it did not surprise me that the Samaritan’s practice field was more bedraggled than the fields in Winston-Salem’s whiter neighborhoods. But it did annoy me. The hypocrisy of American democracy (Alexander, 2010; McGettigan and Smith, 2016; Zinn, 2003) never ceases to infuriate. While I awaited my turn at batting practice, my heart went out to Bernard. Like most of his teammates Bernard had been a stellar high school athlete. Unfortunately, Bernard had never had been much of a student. Throughout his youth Bernard’s mentors had encouraged him to focus more on sports than books (Smith, 2009). When his poor high school grades knocked him out of contention for college scholarships Bernard’s life disintegrated into a nightmare of addiction and homelessness. Bernard hit rock bottom when he nearly killed himself with a drug overdose. When he returned to his senses after the overdose, Bernard decided to turn his life around. He started attending AA meetings and he also signed up for an intensive addiction counseling program at the Samaritan Inn. Bernard was committed to trudging the long, weary road to recovery, but at the moment his fellow Samaritans were doing their best to humiliate him. As he hacked ineffectually at a series of slow-pitched softballs Bernard sweated buckets. Not only had Bernard fallen woefully out of shape during his long struggle with addiction, but since kicking his drug habit Bernard had gained a lot of weight. In his prime, Bernard had been two hundreds of solid muscle. Now Bernard tipped the scales at more than three hundred and fifty pounds. A significant portion of that newly-added flesh sagged ponderously over his belt buckle. The Samaritans taunted mercilessly as Bernard chopped futilely at the pedestrian pitches. “Hey, Bernard, we’re getting bored out here! When are you going to hit one past the pitcher? My girlfriend can hit better than you! Ha-hah!” With each heartless gibe Bernard grew more furious. Gone were the days when Bernard could crush a ninety mph fastball over the farthest outfield fence. On this day, the best Bernard could muster were pathetic chip shots that barely sputtered back to the pitcher’s mound. Having seen enough, Wallace announced, “OK, Bernard. Last pitch, and then it’s Tim’s turn, alright?” Then, for one fateful moment, Wallace became possessed by the deviltry for which the Samaritans were infamous. With an evil glint in his eye, Wallace taunted, “Let’s see if you can hit this one past home plate.” Stung by this indignity, Bernard snapped his bat to the ready position. Wallace lobbed a quacker over home plate and Bernard swung with all of his might. Predictably, the meat of Bernard’s bat whizzed harmlessly beneath the infuriating orb. Having lost a crucial opportunity to transfer some of his forward momentum to the softball, Bernard’s left foot plunged deep into the sticky mud next to home plate, “Kerplop!” At the same time, Bernard’s upper body pivoted furiously. Physics would not be denied. The irresistible force of Bernard’s pivoting body torqued pitilessly against his securely anchored foot. With a sickening series of pops, scrunches and screams, Bernard wrenched his left knee completely out of joint. The huge man gave out an ear-shattering bellow and then crumpled helplessly to the ground. As Bernard collapsed his foot finally twisted free from the mud with a nauseating slurp. Speechless with horror, I flung my bat aside and hurried around the backstop. At first Bernard was in such a state of blind agony that he couldn’t speak. As he writhed on the ground I clutched Bernard’s shoulder and pleaded with him to hold still. In his state of abject torment I feared that Bernard might do further damage to his knee. When I gathered the nerve to look at his knee, I didn’t like what I saw. Fortunately, there were no serious cuts on Bernard’s leg; just a few superficial scrapes from the gritty soil around home plate. Nor -- I breathed a shuddering sigh of relief -- had any bones punched through his skin. But that’s where the good news ended. I had never seen a more repulsively discombobulated knee in my life. The lumpy, oddly-contorted joint didn’t bear any resemblance to a typical human knee. There was no question that Bernard needed serious medical attention and the sooner the better. Though cell phones were uncommon in 1998, I was relieved to see a man, named Shawn, making a 911 call on his cell phone. Shawn was a counselor at the Samaritan Inn and he was also diabetic. Prior to Bernard’s injury Shawn had been complaining about his blood sugar “being all over the place.” Ironically, Shawn had also mentioned that he might have to call 911 if he started feeling any worse. After Bernard injured his knee, Shawn never said another word about his own discomfort. We tried to keep Bernard as comfortable as possible while awaiting the ambulance, which was not easy. Every minute or so, shooting pains from his tweaked knee caused Bernard to writhe in agony. Following what seemed like an eternity an ambulance arrived with emergency lights awhirl. The medics parked in a gravel lot that was adjacent to the field and trundled a pristine white stretcher onto the softball field. They parked the stretcher next to Bernard and quickly assessed the big man’s injuries. One medic checked Bernard’s blood pressure, pulse and other vital signs while the second squatted by Bernard’s head and gathered his identifying information: name, address, occupation… Now that they had finally arrived the medics didn’t waste any time. Somehow the medics shifted Bernard onto the stretcher without causing him the slightest discomfort. As soon as he was strapped tight to the stretcher, the medics wheeled Bernard off the ballfield and secured him in the rear of the ambulance. I heaved a sigh as I watched the ambulance whisk Bernard away. The nearest medical facility was Deadwood University Hospital, one of the most advanced hospitals in the state of North Carolina. I felt certain that, no matter what sort of complications Bernard’s damaged knee might present, Deadwood University Hospital would be more than equal to the task. I felt confident that Bernard would be back on his feet and hacking away at softballs again in no time. Had I known then how wrong each one of my naive assumptions was, I would never have permitted the ambulance to take Bernard within a mile of the Deadwood University Hospital. **The Horrors of For-Profit Medicine** I did not see Bernard again until the start of the softball season. When I arrived for the Samaritan’s opening game, I found Bernard loitering next to the ball field. Bernard’s injured leg was swathed from hip to toes in a vast soft cast. Bernard was all laughs and smiles until I asked him about his knee. Bernard shook his head grimly, “It’s better now, but…” Bernard seemed reluctant to say more, so I asked, “But, what?” Dubiously, Bernard asked, “Are you sure you want to hear this?” I nodded and Bernard then went on to narrate the most horrifying medical nightmare that I have ever heard. During the drive to the hospital, Bernard said that the medics were as nice as they could be. However, Bernard said that he developed an eery feeling as soon as the ambulance arrived at the hospital. Instead of being delivered to Deadwood University’s crowded emergency room, the medics transferred Bernard into the care of a young man with a clipboard. The medics cheerily wished Bernard the best of luck and departed. Then, without so much as a “Howdy!” the man with the clipboard began poking and prodding Bernard’s knee without any concern for Bernard’s excruciating discomfort. After completing his examination, and without ever saying a word to Bernard, the young man scribbled some notes on his clipboard and disappeared. Abandoned in a dark, lonely hallway, Bernard had nothing for company save the shooting pains in his knee. Bernard tried to communicate with several passers-by, but they ignored him. Bernard was pretty sure that it was his lack of health insurance that made him persona non grata at Deadwood Hospital. Sadly, Bernard would soon learn that he was better off being ignored by Deadwood Hospital’s staff. Bernard never saw the sullen man with the clipboard again. The next person who paid attention to him was a grouchy female physician, Dr. Sourpuss. Bernard gathered that the grumpy young woman was a physician because, in addition to wearing green scrubs, Dr. Sourpuss also wore a stethoscope draped around her neck. Dr. Sourpuss didn’t speak directly to Bernard, but she grumbled audibly about the iniquity of wasting costly hospital resources on homeless wastrels like Bernard. Bernard was not in any condition to debate Dr. Sourpuss and she did not condescend to inquire after his opinion. Still grumbling, Dr. Sourpuss signaled to a nearby, green-garbed attendant. Together they set off down the hallway with Bernard in tow. At the end of the hallway, the attendant steered Bernard toward the hospital’s main entrance. “No, not that way!” Dr. Sourpuss barked at the attendant. She added huffily, “We aren’t going to admit him.” Pointing toward a disused hallway to the right, Dr Sourpuss explained, “We’re taking him over there.” Bernard had no idea about what was going on, but he gathered the distinct impression that he was not going to receive the same kind of medical treatment that patients with homes, jobs and medical insurance received. Bernard noted that he and his entourage soon entered a region of the sprawling medical complex that looked more like a construction zone than a hospital. Without a word of explanation, Dr. Sourpuss pushed a button to summon a service elevator. Bernard sensed that the dirty, greasy elevator into which his attendant wheeled him was designed to move garbage rather than people from one part of the hospital to another. Bernard’s anxiety increased when his elevator dropped below the main floor. A couple of floors below street level, the elevator came to a halt and its dirty doors slid open. Bernard’s attendant pushed his gurney into a hallway that provided access to numerous large, noisy machines that pumped water, air and energy throughout the vast hospital above. It was at this point that Bernard began babbling, “Hey, where are you taking me?” Dr. Sourpuss pointed toward a room that looked more like a maintenance shed than a medical exam room. Horrified, Bernard protested, “Wait, why are we going in there?” Curtly, the grumpy doctor responded that they were going into the maintenance shed to fix Bernard’s leg. When Bernard protested, the doctor matter-of-factly informed Bernard that he was not going to be treated in a regular hospital room because he could not afford a regular hospital room. Instead, the physician revealed that she would be treating Bernard in a room that the hospital had set aside especially for patients like him; those whom the hospital could not legally turn away, but on whom the hospital was determined to spend as little as possible. Bernard was horrified, but, upon entering the maintenance shed, he was momentarily relieved to discover that the room contained quite a bit of medical equipment. However, Bernard’s relief quickly transformed to terror when, without any further preliminaries, the doctor and attendant began to openly discuss the nitty-gritty challenges of relocating Bernard’s knee. Fearing the worst, Bernard asked the physician if she intended to relocate the bones in his knee without anaesthesia. Dr. sourpuss gaped at Bernard as if he was insane. Then Dr. Sourpuss launched into another tirade about the injustice of requiring Deadwood University to throw its precious resources away on patients who couldn’t pay their own medical expenses. If, the green-garbed sourpuss opined, she put Bernard under anaesthesia, then the hospital would have to absorb the costs of monitoring Bernard while he was unconscious -- which, as far as Dr. sourpuss was concerned, was strictly out of the question. Even weeks after this horrific experience, Bernard was still visibly shaken by the memory. Bernard pleaded with the young, angry physician, but to no avail. Bernard said that even before Dr. Sourpuss and the attendant started yanking on his injured leg, he began to scream. He screamed not because he hoped that anyone would take pity on him--he had long since given up that hope. Bernard screamed simply because he needed some way to vent. If Bernard hadn’t screamed, he feared he might lose his mind. Yet, in the midst of all this terror, a rational thought popped into Bernard’s mind. Bernard suddenly realized why Dr. Sourpuss had taken him to this subterranean shop of horrors. He was in Deadwood University Hospital’s “Scream Room.” The scream room enabled Deadwood University Hospital to carry out more sinister treatments on indigent patients than anyone had witnessed since the Dark Ages, and to do so with impunity. There were no cameras and no witnesses in DU’s scream room. Hell hath no fury like profit-hungry doctors who must treat indigent patients. **Hell Hath No Fury** Scream though he might, no one took pity on Bernard. He screamed and he cried while Dr. Sourpuss and her assistant did their worst. The grouchy doctor kept at it until she succeeded in wrestling Bernard’s knee back into a state that, at least externally, seemed to resemble a properly functioning knee. Her dreadful work complete, the surly doctor disappeared without so much as a fare-thee-well. It fell to the young man who had assisted the doctor to find a wheelchair and deliver Bernard to the curb in front of Deadwood University Hospital. As he secured the brakes on Bernard’s wheelchair, the attendant informed Bernard that he would need to find his own way home. Then he left Bernard all alone on the sidewalk. Deadwood’s one kindness was that, because it would not do to dump Bernard out of his wheelchair directly in front of the hospital -- an act of such unvarnished malice would not go unnoticed -- the attendant permitted Bernard to remain in his wheelchair. It remained, however, up to Bernard to figure out how to get back to the Samaritan Inn. Lacking money or a cell phone Bernard was forced to beg for help from passers-by. Eventually, a kind soul took pity on Bernard and agreed to call the Samaritan Inn on his behalf. When the Samaritan Inn learned of Bernard’s plight, they immediately summoned a taxi which collected Bernard from the hospital and whisked him back to the Samaritan Inn. At the homeless shelter, sympathetic staff did their best to make Bernard as comfortable as possible. In the days following Bernard’s nightmare at DU Hospital, members of the Samaritan Inn’s staff contacted hospitals throughout the county for other treatment opportunities. Ultimately, they identified a hospital, Forsyth Hospital, that operated a variety of tax-funded community health programs. With some trepidation, Bernard agreed to visit Forsyth Hospital. To help soothe his nerves, a Samaritan Inn staffer remained at Bernard’s side throughout his hospital visit. Fortunately, Bernard was able to report that the physicians at Forsyth Hospital had been much kinder than Dr. Sourpuss. It was the Forsyth doctors who had swathed Bernard’s knee in a soft cast and provided him with a pair of over-sized crutches. Though it alarmed the Forsyth physicians when Bernard described the treatment -- if such medieval torture could truly be described as treatment -- that he had received at Deadwood University Hospital, they reserved comment. However, Bernard’s Forsyth Hospital doctors were openly alarmed by the extensive damage that had been inflicted upon his knee. Bernard’s dislocation had been horrid enough, but the rough treatment that he had undergone at DU Hospital had only increased the damage to his knee. X-rays also revealed that there was a worrisome bone fragment in Bernard’s knee that would require surgery to repair. After their initial examinations, the doctors at Forsyth Hospital had scheduled a battery of more extensive evaluations of Bernard’s knee. Repairing Bernard’s his knee was going to be a long, complicated process. Bernard was resigned to whatever course of therapy his Forsyth physicians recommended, but he was adamant about one thing. Even if it was the last hospital on earth, Bernard would never set foot in Deadwood University hospital again. **Inhumane Medicine** Torturing poor people like Bernard is about as inhumane as for-profit healthcare can get. Fortunately, such inhumane treatment is uncommon, and Bernard’s is the only case of outright medical torture that I have ever encountered (Alcena, 2011). If money buys happiness, then one would expect the spiraling costs of healthcare to result in a very high level of care for all Americans (Deyo and Patrick, 2005). Indeed, the US spends so much on healthcare that there have been dire warnings for decades that, within the foreseeable future, healthcare costs could very well consume the entire US federal budget (Yong, et. al, 2010). That is why Barack Obama was willing to stake his entire presidency on the Affordable Care Act (Altman and Shactman, 2011; Blackman, 2013). Historic as Obama’s healthcare reform initiative certainly is, Obamacare has not reduced the cost of healthcare, it has merely slowed the pace of increasing healthcare costs (Hubbard and Navarro, 2010). Under Obamacare, healthcare will remain a for-profit activity. As a result, the primary goal of the US healthcare industry will not be to improve the overall health of the American public (Cohen, 2013; Okonkwo, 2013). That would be bad for business. The goal of any for-profit industry is to generate as much profit as possible. There is nothing like widespread illness and suffering to inflate the bottom line of the for-profit healthcare industry. **Spending Our Way to Prosperity** The Affordable Care Act will reduce the overall cost of healthcare by encouraging more people to avail themselves of cost-saving preventive medicine (Parks, 2012). People who do not have health insurance have a tend to avoid seeking healthcare in the early--and less costly--stages of an illness (Quadagno, 2005). If more Americans have health insurance, patients will have an incentive to seek healthcare sooner. As a result, ACA can certainly brag that it will contribute significantly to bringing the cost of healthcare under control. Under Obamacare, for-profit medicine is not going to become more altruistic or socialistic. Obamacare promises to make for-profit healthcare more profitable. Medical researchers are willing to invest the time, trouble and expense of developing new drugs and therapies because there are enormous payoffs for doing so. Those who develop long sought after medical breakthroughs enjoy a pop star variety of celebrity, e.g., Jonas Salk and his polio vaccine, Christiaan Barnard’s first heart transplant, and Alexander Fleming’s discovery of antibiotics (Hollar, 2013). Scientists and researchers are every bit as hungry for popularity as any other type of celebrity. They are also incentivized by mountains of cash. The medical industry is one of the most profitable industries in the world (Moynihan and Cassels, 2005). When people are ill--or a loved one is afflicted with a dreadful illness--cost is no object. In part this is because medical “customers” have zero bargaining power (Black and Gruen, 2005, p.113). The urgency and pain associated with dreadful illnesses prevent people from thinking--or haggling--in terms of dollars and cents. For-profit healthcare providers take advantage of their bargaining power and price gouge their customers mercilessly. Further, because for-profit industries are always seeking new ways to increase their profits, there is always a premium on innovation (Callahan, 2009). As a result of the focus on profits, the US healthcare industry tends to pursue solutions to medical problems that are likely to net the largest profits without giving thought to “the better interests” of the people whom the medical community is presumably dedicated to serving. Perhaps the best example of the way that power, privilege and money drive the healthcare agenda in the US is IBM’s Watson project (Kelly and Hamm, 2013). Artificially-Intelligent Medicine IBM developed Watson, regarded by some as the “world’s smartest computer,” to achieve a new threshold in artificially-intelligent computing (Baker, 2011). Just as IBM had developed Deep Blue to outcompete human opponents in the game of chess, IBM created Watson to defeat the most adept human opponents in one of the world’s best known trivia games, the long-running television game show, Jeopardy! (Young, 2012). After thrashing its human Jeopardy! opponents, IBM reengineered Watson to assist medical doctors (Smith, 2013). As medical science advances, the number and variety of new medical studies have proliferated enormously. Given that there are thousands of new reports and papers published daily, it is not possible for individual physicians to stay on top of the latest medical advancements. Even in the Internet-era, the most significant breakthroughs can sometimes take months to percolate throughout the entire medical community. **Enter Watson…** With Watson’s help, physicians can access and cross-reference the very latest and most relevant research findings for each individual patient (Morely and Parker, 2010). There are also indications that Watson will play a significant role in the long-term rollout of Obamacare (T. C., 2013). Indeed, Watson’s future has become so secure and lucrative that Watson now occupies its own building (CNN, 2014). The metaphorical resemblances between Watson and other infamous killer sci-fi computers are striking (e.g., HAL, The Matrix, The Terminator, etc.), however, at least for the moment, no one seems to be overly concerned about such fantasies being transformed into realities (McGettigan, 2011). After all, the dystopian fantasies that have played out on the pages of science fiction novels don’t always come true. As part of the Obamacare revolution, the US federal government has begun digitizing medical records (Ableson and Creswell, 2014). There are a variety of advantages to digitizing all medical records. Doing so will generate a treasure trove of real-time epidemiological data. Digitized medical records will make it possible to identify problematic outbreaks of illness (flu, cancer, heart disease, obesity, etc.) in order to better bring to bear the right type and quantity of medical care for all patients--and thereby improve the overall state of health. **Big Data** An additional advantage of digitized medical records will be that patients’ medical records will follow them throughout their entire lives. In this way, physicians will be able to pull up a patient’s entire medical history without having to devote precious minutes getting to know a patient personally. The reader can decide whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Conceivably, badly-injured patients who are not able to articulate their medical history, will be recognizable by their DNA, or other unique physiological features (e.g., fingerprints, retinal scan, dental impressions, etc.), and, thus, physicians will be able to access their complete medical histories regardless of a patient’s ability to volunteer that information. In an era of pervasive digital medical records, under any given set of medical conditions, physicians will be able to rapidly develop a treatment regime that is finely attuned to a particular patient’s unique medical condition. What could be better than that? **It’s Alive!** Aubrey de Grey has famously stated that the first person to live to 1,000 is already 60 years old (de Grey and Rae, 2007). Digitizing healthcare records will help nations like the US to cater more effectively to the needs of its citizenry and bring us one step closer to de Grey’s -- and other’s (Kurzweil, 2005) -- dreams of human immortality. But what, one may ask, will it be like to live forever in a future that is dominated by mechanized, for-profit, or what might be better referred to as “FrankenMedicine”? Like the fictional Dr. Frankenstein (Shelley, 2008), medical researchers are actively seeking ways to give new life to mortal flesh. Researchers, such as Aubrey de Grey, believe that medical science is just a few short steps away from conferring the gift of immortality upon humans. In their headlong rush to achieve a medical miracle of this magnitude, researchers are much more concerned with the question of how to do so, rather than if they should do so. What are the chances that, like Dr. Frankenstein, medical researchers who strive for the holy grail of immortality will discover that, rather than a miracle, the outcome of their research will be monstrous. In the classic tale, Frankenstein, a mad scientist creates a monster that threatens humanity. Dr. Frankenstein’s motivations are similar to those of the scientists who collaborated on the Manhattan Project (Kelly, 2007): Is it possible for science to solve seemingly irresolvable problems by pursuing seemingly impossible objectives? In some cases, pursuing seemingly impossible scientific objectives (e.g., building a heavier-than-air flying machine, landing astronauts on the moon, developing plans to construct a space elevator, etc.) has generated relatively benign, and, in some cases, even beneficial outcomes (McGettigan, 2011). In other cases, the outcomes of scientific research are almost indisputably destructive and undesirable, e.g., building nuclear weapons, creating biological viruses that could kill billions of people, creating “terminator” plant seeds, etc. Developing mechanistic medical therapies is certainly not comparable to the evil that was unleashed by the Manhattan Project. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that many of the Manhattan Project scientists were convinced that building an atomic bomb was not only one of the greatest scientific challenges ever undertaken, but, as part of an initiative to combat Nazi aggression, the Manhattan Project was actually a humanitarian initiative (Bird and Sherwin, 2005; Rhodes, 1986). What will happen to humanity as we develop increasingly sophisticated mechanistic solutions to healthcare problems, such as, programmable nanobots to correct autoimmune deficiencies, implanted cell phones to remedy communication deficiencies, implanted computers to remedy memory degradation, etc.? If we are comfortable with a gradual transformation towards a mechanized version of ourselves, then there is no cause for concern. Dr. Frankenstein will deliver. 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