I'm focusing on an article from the Star Tribune that shows increased rates of patients opting for more expensive robotic surgery, though these surgeries haven't shown any higher rates of success. I decided to use this article because though id addresses the monetary issues of these procedures fairly well, it fails to ask why people are opting for these more expensive surgeries.



Looking at the issue this article addresses, I can clearly see a hole... why are people opting for these robot assisted surgeries over standard the surgeon/scalpel based ones. What social/media forces are pushing this movement to make people think that these surgeries are better for any reason. While no real why is mentioned, I think this article could definitely be expanded to include the social forces pushing this trend, such as the legitimation of robots because of their sterility/perfectibility/etc, and how this makes them seem better than an old fashioned bloody surgeon.