Comprehensive Space Medicine for the Trip to Mars
It won’t be long before the habitat on the Moon, and colonization on Mars, will be a definite reality for the whole world–a reality where that particular world will need to learn to handle situations that require medical awareness of emergencies that will always develop. Medical assessments and screening will become important, as theirs will not be a First Care walk-in clinic for instantaneous medical care for emergences that will arise like here on Earth.
Wyle Laboratories has sent out a press review through the news such as SpaceRef.com, stating that an understanding has been recently signed between the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), and the Wyle Laboratories. The purpose is to provide a comprehensive space medicine resource for the entire civilian spaceflight industry, “providing medical assessment and screening services to people considering space flight in an effort to assure passengers remain healthy and well,” said Dr. Vernon McDonald, director of Wyle’s Commercial Spaceflight Service unit.
All three medical institutions are known for their world-renowned experience, and have the ability to bring together their expert and unique skills to the new space medical program for the care for space individuals. According to the article, “the screening, medical management, and special environmental testing will be available to the space vehicle operators, suborbital spaceflight passengers, commercial space ports and other entities involved in the commercial spaceflight industry. ”
The Mayo Clinic in Arizona is known as the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the entire world with the philosophy, “The needs of the patient comes first.” The locations of the Mayo Clinic is in Rochester, Minn,, Jacksonville, Fla., and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz., which served more than half a million people each year, will be a benefit to the space medicine trio for Mars traveling as they already have a history in aerospace medicine that worked on the aircraft oxygen systems and the first G-space suits.
On the other hand, the Wyle’s Life Sciences Group out of Texas leads in preparing astronauts for human spaceflight. Also, it leads in space life sciences and medical operations. It has already trained over 2/3 of the travelers that have traveled to space. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) provides flight surgeons already for the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Constellation Programs, and Space Adventures commercial space travelers–they also provide training for aerospace medicine residents.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 7:16 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, Public Relations, Space Agency News, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
