Word: next
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...laboratory, Benzer has too much respect for life's complexities to believe in quick cures or fountains of youth. He often works through the night on his mutant Methuselah. He feels that aging should now be studied as a disease, and he would love to spend his next career, he says, "unraveling the facts." But he hates to see the study of longevity being overblown by the press. "I hope the hype will not result in the same letdown as Nixon's all-out war on cancer." Even if there is a central clock, it may be harder to control...
Will we still worry about Alzheimer's disease in the next century? What a question! With the population of elderly expected to double by 2025, we'll be beside ourselves with worry--unless, of course, doctors figure out how to treat Alzheimer's or, better yet, prevent it. A quarter-century from now, the number of people suffering from dementia in the U.S. alone is projected to rise from 4 million to at least 8 million. "That will bankrupt our medical system financially and emotionally," says Bill Thies, head of medical and scientific affairs at the Alzheimer's Association...
Back in her bathroom, Angela turns to splay her fingers under the hand sanitizer. Next she picks up her DentiGuard toothbrush, which checks for signs of gum disease and measures her bone density while it brushes her teeth. During the course of her morning routine, a total of 85 microscopic sensors, in everything from her hairbrush to the medicine cabinet, will keep tabs on her health. Most days she doesn't even notice their presence...
Predicting the future is easy; doing it accurately is a whole different matter. But current trends suggest that the most dramatic changes in medical care in the next 20 or 30 years will spring from a growing reliance on "smart" technology. Computer chips will become ever faster, smaller and less expensive. Medical instruments and sensors will continue to shrink. (One that already has is the formerly big, lumbering machine needed for radiation treatment; today mobile electron accelerators are portable enough to be used during some cancer operations, reducing the number of healthy cells that are damaged...
...problem is, the "cure" for cancer is not going to show up anytime soon--almost certainly not in the next decade. In fact, there may never be a single cure, one drug that will bring every cancer patient back to glowing good health, in part because every type of cancer, from brain to breast to bowel, is different...