Quatrovision: A New Way of Thinking about the Future (Part Two)
(continued from Part One)
Our understanding of DNA and life itself is accelerating ever faster. A research team at The Oregon Health and Science University have figured out how to make early-stage human embryos by manipulating DNA taken from people’s skin cells and thenfertilizing it with sperm. The BBC reported that they created “82 functional eggs” using this skin-based method. So, not only will it become easier to be born. It is also becoming easier to live longer.
Lonvi Biosciences, a Chinese startup specializing in longevity medicine, say they have developed anti-aging pills that “could extend human lifespan to 100-120 years”. The NYT’s reports that this tech was the origin of that famous “hot mic” video between President’s Putin and Xi that was “quickly scrubbed by Chinese censors, boasted that the hospital was doing pioneering work for the “981 Leaders’ Health Project” — and aimed to extend the life span of senior party figures to 150 years.” “The average life span of Chinese leaders is far longer than the life span of leaders in developed nations,” the video said, pointing to decades of work by the hospital to keep alive leaders like Mao Zedong, who died at 82 in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping, who was 92 when he died in 1997.” It seems that “scientists in Shanghai discovered that a natural compound found in grapeseed extract — procyanidin C1 or PCC1 — increased the life span of mice by selectively killing senescent, or aged, cells and protecting healthy cells. (Lonvi is not connected to the Shanghai scientists.) Mice treated with the compound lived 9.4 percent longer across their lifetime — and 64.2 percent longer from the start of treatment.”
Medecines are also advancing but now arising more and more from the convergence of previously separate fields of study. Check out the recent “Technology Prosperity Deal” between the US and the UK (one of the few areas in which they two countries still seem to be cooperating) that will accelerate drug discovery using AI across biotech, quantum, and nuclear technology. Whatever we thought about drug development before, our mental models need updating. Going forward, we may not even need to do clinical trials on humans. Or, perhaps, by the time we get to clinical trials, supercomputing, computational biology, artificial intelligence (AI), and regulatory science will have already taken most of the risk away. Computational biology alone is undergoing a speed compression. PhysOrg reports that, “Researchers at the University of Notre Dame present a computational process that can scan hundreds of proteins in a few days, screening for pH sensitive protein structures.” Papa Kobina Van Dyck, the lead author of the Notre Dame said, “We’ve managed to condense 25 years of work into a few weeks”.
If you need to go under the knife, Elon is now telling us that humanoid robots will soon be better than any human surgeon and equipped with more knowledge than any human doctor. “Optimus” he says, “will have the level of precision that is frankly superhuman,” he noted, adding that the robot would be capable of “very sophisticated