The Death of Death…

LIFE (noun): Sexually transmitted disease which always ends in death; there is currently no known cure. Or is there?

Over the last couple of years new concepts have come to the fore, the idea of trans-humanism, of augmented man, of eternal bodily life, of the 1000-year old man. The idea of defeating death is now not just a concept, but in some people’s minds a near reality. Will we live forever? Do we want to live forever?

Of course, as we ask ourselves these questions, I think that most of us know, in our innermost self, that eternal life is still just a concept and not a reality. But at the same time no one wants to be the one who criticizes the next Mozart, no one wants to say something that will be ridiculous in a couple of years, no one wants to be Lord Kelvin, who is 1895 said that “heavier than air flying machines are impossible”.

But I know that the future is possible, I know that if you can imagine it, it is a near reality, I know it is possible because I watch StarTrek. I want to believe…

Statistically, humankind is living longer and longer. On average we add 3 months of longevity to our life expectancy every year. This is due to better healthcare systems, better food, environmental awareness, better education and the basic precepts of civilization. Again statistically a baby born in 2016 has a 34% chance of becoming a centenarian and, get ready for it, 1.66% chance of living to the ripe old age of 130. We have basically doubled life expectancy in the last 100 years (the global life expectancy in 1900 was 31 years old, and it is today 71 years).

And, combined with statistics, we are on the verge of several technological revolutions that will take humankind beyond what we consider “natural” growth. These new technological revolutions will integrate themselves naturally in our every day life, and in a few years will be considered as regular as bread and butter, as the internet, as the smartphone. After all, internet only arrived as an integrated part of computers in 1998, but today, if you buy a computer, you do not ask “Will my computer have internet?” In a few year, technologies such as DNA, as nanotechnology, as Big Data, will no longer be a surprise and will be part of our subconscious thought. They will be accepted as part of the course…

One of the most important revolutions is the Big Data revolution. It is starting to dawn on people that everything that can be connected will be connected. Whether it is a car, a blood pressure monitor, a purse, a key ring or a toothbrush, if it can generate data it will be connected. This will over the next few years generate untold amounts of data that will eventually be used for epidemiological studies, for better service, for research, and for marketing. As Big Data is still in its very early stages, we are still today not yet really using the data. Today, Big Data is more akin to bean counting. We collect data and put it in silos and then regurgitate it in a more palatable format. But the future is close when we start crossing different sets of data to go beyond data analytics and using the data to generate new algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.

Humankind has been on planet earth for roughly 10000 years. In year zero of our Roman calendar, there were about 200 million people living on planet earth. It took until year 1790 to reach a worldwide population of 1 billion people on the planet. Population levels started rising incrementally after the Industrial Revolution in the 1820ies. In the year of my birth, in 1965, worldwide population was at a level of about 3.5 billion people.

In my lifetime of 50 years, we have doubled human population to a staggering 7.4 billion people.

The first “real” computer was built by IBM in 1967. A hugely powerful device that filled an entire room… NASA used two of these computers to send a mission to the moon. Then in 1974, Cray released the first super-computer, a computer so powerful that its performance was measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). A simple iPhone 6 is 1000 times more powerful than a Cray computer of 1974. Therein lies the next evolution of technology… Today (or in the next few years as smartphones become more ubiquitous), basically 7.4 billion people will have access to a device with the computational power of 1000 super computers of 1974. It is easy to imagine that technology will soon also develop at an incremental rate.

The word DNA is also bandied around with great easy by healthcare futurists. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, sometimes called "the molecule of life," as almost all organisms have their genetic material codified as DNA. One could also think of DNA as the instruction book for life. We have recently started decoding DNA and are using it in its basest format for criminal investigations. One could also make the analogy that we have up to now simply deciphered the alphabet of DNA, and that in the next few year we will start writing a new book, the Book of Life. We can well imagine that in the course of the next 10 or 20 years we will be able to manipulate DNA not only to choose the color of the hair or eyes of our children, but also to eliminate certain diseases before they have time to evolve, to do real predictive health.

In 1628, aged 50, William Harvey published his masterpiece – usually referred to as De Moto Cordis – the Motion of the Heart. Its full title in English is: Anatomical Studies on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. This marked the birth of medical human diagnostics, the true turning point for modern medicine. In his book, William Harvey describes the circulatory system of the heart. For the first time surgeons started having an inkling as to how the human body worked. With nanorobotics we will soon be able to inject robots, hardly bigger than pin heads, into the arteries of men. These nanorobots will feed off plaque and cholesterol, cleaning the arteries, basically roto-rooting arteries as it they were vulgar plumbing. This seemed like science fiction a few years ago but is now a near reality.

Nanorobots are still a technology that is considered to be a “future” technology. But robotics isn’t… Robotics are already here, both in form and in function. In form in the sense that more and more body parts are being replaced. Arms, legs, hands and others are being developed to replace missing or damaged limbs. Basically we should be able to replace any body parts in the next 30 years with a robotic prosthesis. Of course these are still poor consolations at the moment because they are still rudimentary, but the technology is being refined at an incremental rate and we can foresee a future where in some cases the replacement might be superior to the original, creating true “bionic” men and women. Robotics are also developing in function, with the creation of robots that are social aids to elderly or needy people, providing innumerable services.

And then, last but not least, is the development of new technologies in 3D printing, where internal organs might in the future be printed in 3D from stem cells. Programs are underway to print new livers from stem cells (Israel) or to print brand new hearts (Russia). It is today possible to print from just about any material that can be melted, and the only material that cannot be melted is wood. But there is also another thing that cannot be melted and printed, and that is intelligence. And there lies the rub… We will eventually defeat the ageing of the body, but we are still a long way off from defeating the ageing of the brain.

There are today about 450 000 centenarians on the planet. But in 2030, if we continue ageing at the current rate, there will be 30 million centenarians on the planet. And today, people do not want to live to be 100 years old; They want to Live (ie. they want to live in good health).

As time goes, with the help of Big Data, artificial intelligence, DNA manipulation, Nanotechnology, Robotics and 3D printing from stem cells, we will certainly push back the boundaries of death, and push average longevity up to 150 years. But is society ready for such a challenge? Most healthcare systems are already bursting at the seams, unable to cope with ageing populations.

It is important to remember that we are not only working on the man of tomorrow, but also on the society of tomorrow. It is still a bit early to predict the future of man. All we know about the future, is that it will be different.

Uwe DIEGEL

www.medactiv.com