We will be post Arthur C. Clarke’s vision by a factor of 19 earth years, but having already exceeded it, we fall woefully far behind in our conquest of the solar system. However, in some ways, we will have made the visions of Star Trek’s 23rd Century biomedicine seem primitive, in a decade and a half.
I should say that the main caveat to these predictions is a major nuclear or bioterrorist event, which could lead to an urban exodus, due to a lack of faith in the government’s ability to protect large population centers.
First prediction: A Heart Attack Will Achieve Obsolescence
There are genetic factors that predispose to certain arrhythmias, which unlike coronary artery disease, are not a simple plumbing problem. Already, with 64-slice CT scans, we have largely usurped the God of Angiography from his pedestal, by offering a non-invasive picture of coronary arteries. Radiation and risk of contrast material mitigate the use of these techniques, however, advances in MRI, and decreases in CT scanning time, will translate into chronological snapshots that will take the guesswork out of cardiac evaluation. Advances in endovascular repair will be superseded by nanotechnological intervention, which will evolve from clinic-based platforms to constant bystanders, which will monitor and correct defects, such as thrombus, and embolism.
We will find, I am sure, that there is a root inefficiency of the heart, apart from average mortality, that is present irrespective of genetic proclivities to certain arrhythmias. If it can be expressed as a ratio that certain increased activity will translate into sudden cardiac death, for instance, then constant monitoring via implantable devices will become standard. If the heart fails, the time to allocating a new, workable device, either by ingrafting the old with donor matched sells, or quickly rushing the patient to a hospital where a biosynthetic substitute can function as an intermediate. It will be interesting when a biosynthetic replacement will outperform the original – probably not by 2020, but I would not be surprised if one were designed by 2040.
By SHARKRIDE guest author David Harris
