| ||Medical Myths || | Calling in the Replacements Last reviewed
October 23, 2012 By Robert H. Shmerling, M.D. Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center The number of body parts that can be
created, synthesized or replaced has grown rapidly over the last
several decades. That's led to predictions that, eventually, all
of our body parts will be replaceable. After all, who needs
original parts when replacement parts work better and last
longer? Does this mean that body parts that are replaceable are
useless or that one day electronic body parts will replace the
original ones? Back to top Is a Bionic Human in Our Future? As a
kid, I used to hear often about the rapidly approaching reality
of a "bionic" human. Television series (including The Six
Million Dollar Man and its spin-off, The Bionic Woman) in the
mid-1970s promoted this idea of super-heroes with bionic eyes,
ears, arms and legs. This notion is still very much alive alive
in action movies featuring human-machine hybrids such as Dr.
Octopus in Spider Man 2. T