It’s not every evening that you find yourself sipping wine while surrounded by Lords, robots and aborted foetuses. Such was my pleasure yesterday when I attended the launch party for the new Sci-fi Surgery exhibition at the Hunterian Museum, part of the Royal College of Surgeons.
The new exhibition presents a small but dazzling array of robotic advances that are transforming medicine. Exhibits range from a prostate cancer ‘Probot’ from 1991 through to miniaturised ‘concept’ robots that can be swallowed like pills before wriggling to a disease site. The ‘sci-fi’ part includes comics, novels and movies that feature robots in a medical setting – from Star Wars droids to the ‘Fantastic Voyage’ miniature submarine.
Prototype robotic camera pill for endoscopy.© The Royal College of Surgeons of England / Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna – CRIM Lab
Lord Darzi opened proceedings – ironic for a man who has pioneered ways to not open people through his work on minimally invasive robotic surgery at Imperial. The peer recently stepped down as Health Minister and jokingly lamented his new reliance on public taxis. London cabbies sport an enthusiastic amateur interest in all subjects, so on learning of Darzi’s destination the driver asked if surgeons will ever be replaced by robots. ‘As a former minister,’ quipped Darzi, relating the conversation to an audience of surgeons, ’I’ve learned how to deny things’.
From the exhibition upstairs it’s not clear whether or not the taxi driver was on to something. Looking at the progress from the crude interventions of the early 1990s to sophisticated robots like the Da Vinci system and the minaturised probes currently under study it’s easy to imagine a future where a precision automaton might, say, excise your appendix more efficiently than its fat-fingered, shaky-handed human equivalent. But could such machines be built infallible? And would there be psychological barriers dissuading patients from undertaking this most clinical of clinical procedures? Some answers might be found in science fiction, where authors were playing out such scenarios even before Karel Čapek popularised the term ‘robot’ in the 1920s. Because of space restrictions, the exhibition’s display of sci-fi material is limited and doesn’t really get to grips with the many questions raised elsewhere. But it’s good to see Darth Vader making his first appearance at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Da Vinci surgical system. © 2009 Intuitive Surgical, Inc.
A visit to the Hunterian is always to be recommended, and I urge everyone reading this to use this new exhibition as a prompt. You can read more about the permanent collections over on my other blog, where the Hunterian is our Museum of the Month.
Sci-Fi Surgery runs at the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields from September to 23 December 2009. Entry is free.