Life after 2000

Press, 26 December 1985, Page 13

Life after 2000

It looks like an ordinary microchip, but it may have a life of its own. Someday it could end up inside somebody’s brain. Scientists from the National Institute of Mental Health are growing animal tissue on a silicon chip in hopes that the two eventually will connect and begin to interact. Sometime, probably well into the next century, microchips may be implanted in human brains, where they will link up with undamaged nerve cells and take over functions destroyed by injury or disease.

Other medical scientists . are wrestling with an age-old question: Can human life be significantly prolonged? Researchers on ageing say that if cancer and heart ailments magically disappeared, the average American lifespan would increase by only about seven years. These scientists are trying to retard the ageing process itself, extending the years of robust health toward 100. One theory is that ageing is caused by the build-up of a metabolism’s toxic byproducts and could be slowed by boosting the body’s protective enzymes. A formula for extended youth may never be found, but by 2000, many of the human body’s remaining secrets will have been unlocked. New discoveries are occurring almost daily, especially in molecular biology — the study of the body’s functions at the basic genetic level. The advances will make today’s medicine look primitive.

Technology, some of it extremely costly to operate, will produce unprecedented tools for diagnosing and treating disease. New body scanners, especially the magnetic resonance imager, will produce photograph-like pictures that reveal far more than today’s CAT scanners, without using radiation.

Tiny pumps implanted in the body will take over for ailing organs, shooting out insulin for a malfunctioning pancreas, for example. Lasers will take over most work now done by scalpels, perhaps even making coronary bypass surgery obsolete. Robots will work alongside some surgeons. “For certain functions, robots will be more accurate than people, and they’ll take care of repetitive tasks too, such as suction and retraction,” says Dr Donlin Long, chairman of neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School.

“Teleradiology” will convert future accident victims’ X-rays to digits and send them by telephone to specialists for instant analysis. Doctors will turn to computer terminals, not musty reference books, for guidance on symptoms, treatments, and prescriptions. One futurist predicts that within 50 years many doctors will be replaced by technicians operating