The Howard Line: Virtual Reality and Your Health . . . A look at taking personal responsibility for your own health and well-being and cyberspace by Howard Blum A funny thing happened on the way to National Health Care, Universal Coverage and Health Care Reform. The people said, "yes, we need health care reform" and our representatives in Washington said, "Sorry, we cannot afford that at this time." All we got was a lot of talk and no action. Before we can begin to explore "virtual medicine" and how it can improve our health, I will attempt to define "The Internet" also known as "The Information Superhighway" and "Cyberspace." I promise not to get too "techie." At a speech I recently gave, I described The Internet as "an enormous and vague nonentity, growing exponentially virtually every moment." It is an interconnection of thousands of computer networks to form essentially a "central nervous system" to a vast worldwide information resource. It is estimated that 22 million people currently access "The Net," and usage is growing by 15% per month. I think you are beginning to get the picture. There are many providers of access to the world's largest collective database of information like Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy and direct access providers. There is an expression on The Net that goes, "Oh, that's 10 minutes old." Information is updated constantly and therefore becomes stale relatively quickly. That is why cataloguing and indexing The Net is almost impossible (I did say almost). The point is, you can access a world of information instantaneously from The Internet. So what in the world does that have to do with my health? Ever hear your Grandmother say "A stitch in time saves nine" or your mother say "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."? It is true, especially where health issues are concerned. According to the people who ought to know, like the National Institute for Health, The Center for Disease Control, The American Heart Association and The American Cancer Society, the major killers of our population are in large part preventable. Heart disease and cancer are preventable through proper nutrition, diet, exercise and sensible lifestyles. Okay, so you like the idea of personal responsibility and want to stay healthy. Now what? Well, you can trek off to the library (if you can find one that is still open) and begin to do some research on how to avoid those ever-ballooning medical care bills by staying healthy and fit. Most libraries nowadays are open less often due to a shortage of funds. Less money also means fewer new titles and smaller staffs to help you get what you need. Another problem with libraries is that the delivery system of information has not changed in centuries. I won't get into the latest form of censorship, the beginning of the banning of some controversial books from public libraries to "protect" society somehow. So, you've got a computer and a modem, you're bored to tears with the trendy diet-of-the-month routine and want to take personal responsibility for your own health and well-being. Something that works for you. Where do you begin? Try The Internet. Apart from places to visit like Virtual Med Center, Grateful Med, MedNet and countless other places where you can get information or just compare scars, symptoms and treatments with others in an "on-line" dialogue, you can access an unbelievable amount of data and resources. How about taking a visit to the National Network of Libraries of Medicine? It is 4,000 medical libraries interconnected on The Net. I mean access to over 5 million titles, almost 22,000 serial titles (like magazines) and over 400,000 articles indexed. All without those terrible little reference cards or books checked out and not available. They have over 3,000 medical journals available and you don't have to keep quiet while reading the stuff. If you are doing research on the best diets for people who have primary biliary sclerosis or any other medical condition, you can probably find a Usenet group that keeps an ongoing dialogue on the subject. If you subscribe to the group, every addition to the group collective will automatically be e-mailed directly into your electronic mailbox. Newbies (newcomers to The Net) often subscribe to too much stuff and find themselves receiving hundreds of e-mail messages daily. Want to know what you are eating and what's in it? Gopher over to ZEUS.ESUSDA.GOV 70 and read the U.S.D.A.'s food-labeling information on the product you're eating. The Usenet newsgroup SCI.MED.NUTRITION is a collection of experts in an assortment of health disciplines who discuss the virtues of foods, herbs and even transcendental stuff. I hear it is a very hot newsgroup. The Arizona Health Science Library has a Web page (The World Wide Web) at HTTP://AMBER.MEDLIB.ARIZONA. EDU/NUTRITION.HTM has much information on food, nutrition and diets. The National Agricultural Library, Food and Nutrition Information Center has a bulletin board available to you too. You can find information on exercise physiology and metabolism or any other subject that inspires you. Even a spot for vegetarian junk foods. The real question is, "What will you do with the information once you get it?" The outcome for this wealth of information is, it's only as good as you are if you're serious about taking care of yourself and preventing your own premature demise. Lastly, let's explore some aspects of the future of medicine and technology. To some extent, the future is here now. Many small rural towns are not financially able to buy some of the sophisticated equipment that their urban medical center colleagues take for granted these days. The Internet can fill some of the gaps. An inexpensive X-ray can be scanned and digitized on a new device that costs less than $5,000, including software, that can analyze the slightest of details on an X-ray not visible to the naked eye. The "digitized" image can be transmitted to the urban center on The Net for analysis by the high-powered and expensive equipment. The finished computer output and analysis by the big-town doctor can then be transmitted back to the originating physician. In time I envision us getting a consultation on the state of our health by having a conversation with our computer after it takes a scan of our vital signs. It will synthesize organic compounds in a replicator on our desktop to augment our diets and keep us in balance. Virtual minor medical procedures may become commonplace some day. I'm recalling a saying that was belonging to the "me" generation, the flower children of the sixties and seventies that went, "Turn on, tune in and drop out." I suspect the next saying, remotely similar, and by their children might soon become, "Turn on the computer, log on and zero in to what turns you on." Stay tuned. Howard Blum is an area coordinator for The Concord Coalition, a nationwide nonpartisan group of concerned citizens for America's future. He is a successful mortgage broker in Northern California. Blum self-publishes several newsletters on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and began observing the Fed when he joined E.F. Hutton & Company on Wall Street in 1969. Editor's note: Our apologies to Howard Blum twice, for two errors in Vol. 122, No. 1. Correction in the 4th paragraph of his article, Did you know that the Constitution says in Article 1, Section 4 that "Congress shall meet at least one day a year and that day shall be the first Monday of December.", instead of December 1. Also, for misspelling his last name in the bio following his article. (In Howard's words, "not Bloom, not Blume and not Bum.") Blum rhymes with plum.