Regenerative Surgery
Utility
Taking advantage of neurals' ability to read and map nerves, regenerative surgery can perform any number of small medical miracles. These include:
- Accelerating healing when injuries are life-altering or life-threatening
- Reattaching severed limbs
- Recovery from nerve damage/spinal injury
- Regeneration of lost/diseased/damaged body parts
- Replenishing blood, bone marrow, hormones, and other biological components that humans require for health and survival
- Repairing damaged DNA in cancer cells, neutralizing the disease
- In-utero correction of some genetic disorders when caught early enough in development
Because it has been determined that a technology that can alter genes and accelerate cell growth is ripe for abuse, strict laws and regulations surround it. Some prohibited uses include:
- Any alteration of genes designed to improve a human beyond their original genome's potential. Artemisia is not trying to create super soldiers at this time. Exceptions to this rule include any number of genes that cause serious diseases or disadvantages that interfere with normal functioning.
- Any research into human development that has not been approved by independent Government panels. Most studies to pass muster are searching for better ways of recognizing and treating serious mental illness and degenerative neurological conditions. (These are somewhat limited by the prohibition on researching the higher mind via neurals). The rest are investigations into pre-natal development, with the eventual goal of allowing same-sex families and infertile couples to have a child with their own genes.
- Any research geared towards eventually learning how to produce more than a single human, for any purpose other than adoption by the family who contributed to that human's genome. Again, Artemisia is not interested in producing super soldiers at this time. In the eventuality of successful human cloning, a preemptive law states that said clone would be afforded the same rights as their natural-born gene donor. Artemisia has no interest in slavery, either.
Social Impact
The ability to survive and fully recover from grievous injuries, along with the high level of accessibility to treatment, has had a generational effect on Artemisian society.
The majority of people still prefer not to suffer serious injury, because it can be months before all of the nerve reattachments are finished, and also it still hurts. But just the fact that what doesn't kill you makes you a tiny bit healthier actually, because there's no wear and tear on a regenerated elbow joint, has rendered some otherwise serious injuries more annoying than scary. It is a fairly common response to a boss ordering an unsafe operation, "Go ahead, buy me a new arm. This one's getting arthritic."
To a certain extent, this attitude--that injury is immediately unpleasant and difficult to go through, but not inherently terrifying--has affected all kinds of people who would use violence to intimidate. It may be part of why enforcers in Artemisia are less likely to use bodily harm as their go-to threat. Short of threatening actual murder, it's not as intimidating to most adults as it was back when medicine was more primitive. On the other side of the law, even the worst people in modern law enforcement--which unfortunately has never stopped attracting personalities that want to make things happen their way, thank you very much--seem to have recognized that implying they'll beat someone up is less effective than it was in the old days. This--perhaps even more than official regulations--is likely why even the bullies lean on technologies that stun or slow down suspects, with bonus points if it's one of the ones that are unpleasant to experience and/or carry a non-zero chance of incidental death.
These more-relaxed attitudes have even crept into the internal workings of organized crime. As threats of physical harm have gradually lost potency, most of the underworld has assumed the thwarted bully's attitude of "Well, I didn't want to anyway," and adjusted their strategies. Which is not to say there's no coercion or enforcement of the code anymore--they just use death threats, drugs, and VR to be evil to each other now. Perhaps because the appearance of power remains so important, they act like this shift in tactics was in fact their idea, and generally look down on anyone who resorts to beating up enemies/miscreants as "primitive," uncreative, and too backwards to recognize that the threat of mental and emotional damage is equally exploitable.
Incidentally, this also reflects a generations-long shift in how crime wields power. The blunt displays of violence are still paid lip service, but guile and social engineering are the levers by which the vast majority of objectives are achieved. Everyone there has known it for decades. So a person who would be called a "good" crime head is one who is very adept at giving the impression that they will deal out death with little provocation, while secretly networking and pulling strings in a way that means they very rarely end up doing so.
In conclusion, physical violence has not disappeared from Artemisia, and may still be resorted to in a pinch. But it has lost some of its instinctive bite, and the bullies have moved on to new technological and psychological tools. In the modern day, an Artemisian's worst concern about an injury or illness is whether or not it will kill them in the time it takes to get to the hospital.
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