Word: humanity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...20th century lived with the nuclear bomb, and there was great economic and scientific progress and much human happiness. The same can be true in the next century. Our tools for defending against new diseases are improving all the time. Vaccines are getting better. Drugs to fight bugs are advancing. And new devices are coming that will identify an infectious agent in seconds...
...medicine. Any "medicine" that is based on myth, irrationality and deception will eventually be rejected. "Once the public finds out what homeopathy is," predicts Dr. John Renner, head of the National Council for Reliable Health Information, "once they find out that chlorophyll is necessary for plant life but not human life, they're going to turn on these alternative groups...
When patients discover that their "therapeutic touch" practitioner has not been manipulating their "human energy field"--a nonexistent entity--but merely making useless hand motions in the vicinity of their bodies, they will reject mysticism and move toward more rational therapy. And when herbal medicine devotees become aware that any useful ingredient in their unregulated leaves, stem and root mixtures can be isolated and made available as regulated drugs, labeled with full information about content and proper dosage, they will begin making fewer trips to the health-food store...
Which is why I'm not entirely gloomy about our future. After all, what's more human than pursuit of self-interest...
Recycling will gain momentum as we develop materials that are easier to reuse. For example, Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, predicts that architects will increasingly rely on new types of foamed glass that can be made unusually strong but still lightweight. Glass is a very recyclable material made from sand, and it can be crushed back essentially into sand. Ausubel thinks we could see foamed glass replace much of the concrete in today's buildings...