The Eradication of Illness – 10 Diseases We’ll Cure in the Next 20 Years

Together with David Pearce and Phil Bowermaster I’ve been brainstorming about which diseases medicine looks set to tackle over the coming two decades. Thanks to gene manipulation, stem cell research and nanotechnology, many of today’s most murderous maladies face brutal annihilation at the merciless hands of medical science.

Three nascent sciences, gene therapy, stem cell use and nanotechnology, will come of age in the next 20 years. Each of these sciences are in their own right pregnant with the seeds of revolutionary change, and when combined they hold the promise of curing nearly every thinkable illness. Whereas these treatments are experimental and expensive today, 20 years from now, they will be common and affordable.

It’s difficult to say exactly how these technologies will converge, but combinations of any or all of these could become panaceas before long.

Stem cells

Stem cells are like blank slates. They’re cells that don’t yet have an identity, a role. But we can assign roles to stem cells, and tell them whether to become a skin cell, a brain cell or a part of any organ we want. Granted, we’re only beginning to learn how to do this, but we’ve already grown functioning livers, bladders, ears, and lungs in laboratories by dripping little drops of stem cells onto molds. So stem cells can be used to repair damages in organs and tissue, or to simply replace faltering organs altogether. They will soon obviate the need for organ donors. We’ll instead have organ factories that make hearts, eyes, kidneys; you name it, on demand and off the shelf. Read about one man who was cured of AIDS using stem cells.

Nanotechnology

Ray Kurzweil has said that computers that used to take up a whole room in the sixties, now fit in his pocket, and that these same computing powers will fit inside a blood cell within a generation. When processors are so small that they can be injected into your blood stream, you can send in billions of them to repair and regenerate tissue as it degenerates, enabling a continuous rejuvenation of all organs. If a malignant tumor is discovered somewhere in your body, a billion strong army of well trained nanobots could be deployed to defeat it. Nanotech will also enable the implantation of microchips in our brains, where they have already cured depression and anxiety disorders in test patients.

Gene therapy

And then, of course, there is gene manipulation, which can take both a proactive and a preventative nature. Through accurate alterations in a fetus’ or baby’s genetic makeup, hereditary diseases would be precluded from ever causing any trouble in the first place. If, upon analyzing your child’s DNA, your doctor finds it predisposed to Down’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, or ADHD for instance, he will have the ability to change or fix the relevant chromosomes. One man was cured of a blood disease through gene therapy.

Which diseases will we cure?

I asked Phil and David to help me with this.

Phil Bowermaster of The Speculist says:

 I'm on the record saying that I think we're within a couple of decades from most forms of cancer being, at worst, something people can live with the way they currently live with being diabetic.

So let me expand the list. Diseases that in 20 years will either be eliminated or that people will be able to live with via treatments:

1. Most forms of cancer.
2. Heart disease.
3. Arthritis.
4. Alzheimer’s.
5. Parkinson’s.

Diabetes may be cured by then, too, rather than just being treatable. Any progress in treatment of degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will lead to a huge demand for faster progress.

This is far reaching, but if correct we will have made tremendous progress in 20 years towards life extension simply by treating these diseases.

David Pearce of Abolitionist.com says:

I think we’ll cure/manage depression, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson's disease.

To these I would like to add blindness, multiple sclerosis, most kinds of paralysis.

So put together we have the following list:

1.Most cancers

2.Alzheimer’s

3.Parkinson’s

4.Blindness

5.Multiple Sclerosis

6.Alcoholism

7.Depression

8.Anxiety disorders

9.Heart disease

10.Arthritis

Many will also rejoice to hear that the continuing developments in stem cell research will likely cure baldness, although that is not, strictly speaking, a disease.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and when looking back in 2030, it could be much, much longer.

Obstacles

Social Darwinists, religious fundamentalists and other skeptics towards game changing science will do their part to decelerate this progress, as they did with in vitro fertilization (which continues to give the joy of parenthood to millions), gene modified crops (which continues make food increasingly affordable to the hungry masses without the prophesized side effects) and on countless other accounts.

But in the end, reason and compassion will prevail, as it always does in time.

Disease eradication goes hand in hand with prosperity. Many poverty stricken populations, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, suffer needless deaths from Malaria, AIDS and Polio. Those are all perfectly treatable diseases (indeed most HIV positive patients from the industrialized world are now able to live full lives), yet, without the most important prerequisite for medical progress – wealth – many Africans remain defenseless in the face of for instance Malaria. They can’t afford to keep their cattle in barns, they have no houses with sealed windows behind which to hide at dusk and dawn, and they can’t afford treatment once infected. Africa will be the last continent to reach economic prosperity, and subsequently the last to enjoy the health benefits that accompany affluence.

But that day too will come - in our lifetime.

 

Comments

[MARK PLUS]

Uh, guys. Real chemists discredited this "nanobots" fantasy a decade ago:

Of Chemistry,Love and Nanobots, by Richard Smalley:

http://cohesion.rice.edu/NaturalSciences/Smalley/emplibrary/SA285-76.pdf

The Once and Future Nanomachine, by George M. Whitesides

http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~porath/NST2/Lecture%2013/The%20once%20and%20future%20nanomachine%20-%20Whitesides.pdf

We've given Eric Drexler's "nanotechnology" idea 30 years to incubate, and we have nothing to show for it despite all the propaganda and a considerable amount of time and money spent on it, apparently because Drexler got the physics wrong. By contrast, look at all the technologies which have developed quickly in our lifetimes because they exploit the right physical principles, like lasers, computer chips, computer memory, LED's, solar electric panels, MRI, etc. And look at the technologies based on molecular biology which have also shown progress. If I had a son and he told me he wanted to pursue Drexler's "nanotechnology" as a career, I'd advise him not to waste his life like that.

[Rich Rob]

This is an inspirational article. I'm especially interested in whatever works for people who have already lived for at least a few decades. We don't have the luxury of being genetically modified before birth, after all.

[Hervé Musseau]

So, Mark, did they prove that life cannot exist? DNA, RNA, ribosomes, proteins, ATP, etc, the naturally-evolved nanobots, have been discredited as a fantasy by real chemists, eh?

[Mr. Muhammad Zamiluddin Khan]

I am optimist about "us' who stress "humanness' before embarking with the Tech. savvy medicinal cure that many more things may be acheived but the question is what would be the "Governing Ethics" and its "Enforcement Regime' when this tech-induced medicinal cure become easy to access.

[waltinseattle]

You are confusing symptom management with curing the underlying "disease." Furthermore, you probably commit the now discredited falacy of believing in one gene, one "fault" leading to one "disease"

Herve', you are correct to diss the naysayer on the issue of possiblilties with nanao-bots. I would base my disbeliefs on the underlying medical model itself. I rather think the Chinese have it better formulated. Of course there is lots of room to expand with genetic learning. But it's best to have the foundation right before you expand. And Our system does not have it right.

@Rich, ah, we are all modified before birth. In the womb, true its mostly phenotype, but that is another dogfight.....see the paragraph above.

[lsp]

Aging itself is just a few years further down the road. And after that, cryonics damage.

[Atwas911.wordpress.com]

Yeah, and as soon as we get rid of the WORST sickness of all (The Religious) we can actually get some real work done on the rest of them.

[alcoholism disease]

Science is getting new thing day by day as new diseases are found new medicines are found may b in next 20 years many diseases can still come around our scientists spend all his life in research so that that we people should be safe i really liked this post thanks for sharing

[Nupyiscucky]

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

[Sparky McBiffster]

Hmmm, considering that Big Pharma and the medical establishment haven't cured a single thing in the last 50 years I wouldn't hold my breath on waiting for any "cure".

[That Guy Who's Always Right]

Dude if you think modern medicine is in the business of curing anything these days, you're deluding yourself.

They learned decades ago that the money is in the treatment, not the cure.

[nike 2011]

The memory foam mattress found itself in the market sometime during the 1990's where it was received with anticipation and excitement.

[jebsy]

I think the explosion of technology will stomp out big pharma. They have been going for a power grab on all levels of medical advancement, but that doesn't extend into all technologies which medical technology relies. (computational tech, etc.) So I for see them failing and losing their grip on medicine and science as a whole. Even social networking will have a place in this advent as the information of tech and benefits reaches the masses before the message is bastardized by Pharma.

[Sandy]

You may want to READ some research before you speculate. Arthritis research is funded primarily by individuals and companies. The use of Stem Cells or gene therapy is is not likely to happen in the next few decades, the regulations for IN Vivo trials are strict, mostly insurmountable, due to the number who died previously.

Maybe you should think about solving things like the population problem, and famine.

[Herve Leger]

Well said. I appreciate your thinking

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[Alan Robinson]

well i really hope we can cure them

[Sandals Online]

If you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big.

[žogi]

The title shou;d say "Diseases we will probably cure in 20y" :)

[Discount Oakley Sunglasses]

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Thanks for your content and I will go back again soon because this place is so interesting .

[Barry Waterfield]

With reference to all the common disease's that we are going to be able to cure in twenty years time,there seems to me to be one major fly in the ointment. Just take Cancer and Heart disease, cure these two and you'll have an older generation that could go on, if not indefinitely, then certainly for twenty or thirty years over and above the present generally agreed upper limit. Assuming that we continue with our present birth rate just how are we going to pay all the long life pensioners. Could it be that retirement becomes unrealistic with such a vastly increased elderly population. Whilst it might be nice to talk about getting rid of what more or less amounts to built in obsolescence, it could mean the end of any true retirement on purely economical grounds. It's certainly hard enough to pay pensioners today without having them add another twenty years to their already increased lifespan. Think about it.

[Leah]

curing all these diseases will save money by having healthy pensioners instead having to pay out millions for heart conditions and such so having people live longer won't cost anymore it will save money as they will be healthy .