Surgeries in Space

A news article today indicated that the number of knee surgeries can be reduced for overweight people by the simple idea that weight is actually a causative factor in knee pain and knee failure. In fact, it was shown that by reducing an individual's weight, the pain in the knee lessened thereby allowing the individual to cancel knee surgery as the pain became tolerable.

IMHO the real causative factor is not the mass the individual carries, but the acceleration due to gravity on the mass itself (the individual). This leads me to thinking that there may be an opportunity to study joint issues in space, to understand the nature of ligature and cartilage breakdown and perhaps design new treatments based on zero gravity conditions.

We, as a human race, are taking our first steps into commercial space flights. There may be an opportunity here to further our medical knowledge on the things that afflict mankind. Perhaps Sir Richard Branson could invest in this most potentially lucrative venture...