Political Issues on the Horizon, Part 1

Americans went to the polls last Tuesday and, for the third time in as many election cycles, delivered a sharp rebuke to the incumbent party. No doubt concerned that the economic recovery seems to be stagnating and that unemployment remains high, the voters gave the House of Representatives back to the Republican Party. In the wake of the midterm elections in the United States, this is a good time to consider political issues on the horizon.

I generally shy away from making specific predictions about politics or the economy. Voters are fickle and economies are unpredictable, especially compared to the relatively simple trends that scientific and technological developments usually follow. However, I think we can at least speculate on the types of issues that are likely to become important, if not the precise way that they will be resolved by the voters and the government. In my next few blog posts, I’m going to explore some of the political issues that I think will grow in importance over the next decade, as well as a couple of oft-cited (and perhaps overblown) issues which may soon fade from the American political landscape.

Privacy. For the past couple decades, whenever a political gasbag has asked a judicial appointee about his or her views on “privacy,” it has typically been a code word for abortion. However, I believe privacy will soon become a political issue in its own right, spurred on by technological advances which encroach more and more on our privacy and demand access to sensitive information. Already, there have been court cases to determine if police can tag an automobile with a GPS tracker without a warrant, but this is just the tip of the iceberg of what is to come. RFID chips, which will soon replace bar codes on products, will be embedded in nearly everything we buy, allowing for constant surveillance and tracking of products (and by extension, of customers) from their point of manufacture to their point of disposal.

Additionally, we are probably no more than a decade from the point where sensors and face-recognition technology are commonplace in many public establishments, as in Minority Report, making it virtually impossible to step out of our own homes without appearing in a database somewhere. In the slightly more distant future (probably 10-20 years), insectoid-sized robots are on the horizon. DARPA is already designing them for use in military and spying applications, but eventually their spread to the general public is a virtual certainty as the cost of computing drops, allowing for practically anyone to monitor practically anyone.

In light of all of these emerging technologies, some erosion of our privacy seems almost inevitable. The extent of it remains open to debate. Will our governments pass privacy laws regulating how all of this information can be obtained and used? Or will our governments be part of the problem? Only time will tell.

Bioethics. The first decade of this century saw two important bioethical debates in the United States and Europe. In the United States, stem cell research was hotly debated in the first few years of the Bush presidency, but now seems to have decisively concluded in favor of scientific progress, as the huge benefits of stem cells become more obvious and the moral objections have fallen by the wayside. In Europe, the main bioethical debate of the past decade – genetically modified foods – is still ongoing. Many Europeans are concerned about the possibility of genetically modified foods wreaking unintentional havoc on the environment and public health. Although these fears do not have much scientific support, the controversy has nevertheless succeeded in quashing the industry in Europe, at least temporarily.

These are merely the first of many bioethical debates we will face in the 21^st century. Some will be relatively trivial. For example, concerns about athletes on steroids may soon give way to concerns about professional athletes with enhanced body parts. A few years ago, Tiger Woods opted to get superhuman 20/15 vision through Lasik surgery, and the range of upgrades available to those who can afford them will soon be much wider. If athletes are able to buy improved bodies, it will make it difficult for “natural” athletes to compete. Will we have separate leagues for enhanced athletes and natural athletes? Will we ban these superhuman enhancements entirely, and if so, what qualifies as a superhuman enhancement?

Other bioethical concerns will be much more profound, and the government will have to take a stand. For example, if the technology exists and is widely available to screen for genetic abnormalities, would it be child abuse to not tinker with a fetus’ genome to prevent birth defects? And if preventing birth defects is morally acceptable (indeed if it is the ONLY morally acceptable option), why not preventing other undesirable traits like ugliness, propensity to violence, or low intelligence? Where does one draw the line? Eugenics, long discredited due to its ties to Nazism, may make a comeback in a world of easy access to genetic therapy.

Many of the questions related to human augmentation and genetic engineering have no easy answer, and any government decision is bound to leave many people feeling morally queasy. Look for political parties to become increasingly divided along the lines of these bioethical questions, with conservatives preferring a more restrictive approach to avoid creating ghastly new moral quandaries, and liberals favoring a more open approach to improving humanity through reengineering our own biology.

To be continued in another blog post…

The Future of Sleep: Entirely Optional

Why do we sleep? This seemingly simple question is one of the longest-standing unsolved mysteries in biology. As bizarre as it sounds, there is no obvious reason why we are inactive for a third of our lives. National Geographic and TIME have both tackled this subject to explain some of the most predominant theories, but the bottom line is that no one really knows. Some scientists believe that sleep restores some as-of-yet-undiscovered substance in our brains, which is depleted while we are awake…or that it removes some as-of-yet-undiscovered substance that accumulates while we are awake. Some observers have noted that getting REM sleep is necessary for our learning of new tasks. Although this is true, it fails to explain how sleep helps us learn or why it is necessary for us to be dormant during this process. Others have theorized that the reason that mammals sleep so much compared to other animals is an artifact from the age of the dinosaurs: At the time, most mammals were nocturnal. Perhaps sleep forced mammals to keep quiet during the day, to avoid becoming dinner for a hungry Tyrannosaurus.

Last year, biologists identified a rare gene which allows people to feel rejuvenated after only a few hours of sleep, indicating that it should be possible – at least in theory – to modify the amount of sleep we need in the near future. As the Genomic Revolution picks up in the next year or two, there will undoubtedly be many other genes identified that govern our sleep processes. Understanding them may unlock the key to understanding sleep.

Meanwhile, neurologists are making progress in understanding how sleep affects our brain. As electroencephalograms become more and more obsolete, scientists are gaining access to new ways to monitor our brain activity. Improved neural scans should allow scientists to pinpoint which areas of the brain are most affected by sleep, and how.

Perhaps soon we will understand the nature of sleep. Is it vital for our survival in a way that we don’t understand? Or is it simply a relic of our evolutionary past, with no useful purpose? Understanding sleep is the first step to conquering it. Is it possible that we could develop safe medication to mimic the benefits of sleep, allowing us to remain conscious for 24 hours per day, without the nasty side effects of caffeine or other drugs? This would change our world profoundly. We would essentially be living 50% longer by squeezing an extra eight hours out of our days. People could earn much more money by working more hours without sacrificing their leisure time, or alternatively, they could have much more leisure time without sacrificing their career.

Although some people often claim to enjoy sleep, I think most people would prefer to do without it, if we had the option. I have difficulty believing that anyone could truly enjoy something that they aren’t even aware they are doing. For most of us, our “love of sleep” is really “dislike of waking up.” If we could invent a safe way to remain constantly awake while still reaping whatever benefits we get from sleep, most of us would jump at the opportunity.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2030 – Scientists have a basic understanding of the reasons (if any) that we sleep, as well as why it evolved in the first place.
By 2050 – Medication exists that makes sleeping optional, providing people with any benefits of sleep without the need to actually do so, and without any nasty side effects.

The Future of Health Care - The Genomic Revolution

For the first time in decades, we are due for a completely transformational change in health care. We are on the cusp of the Genomic Revolution, and we will start seeing the earliest results in the immediate future. Personal genomics – the practice of tailoring prescriptions, treatments, and lifestyle choices to an individual based on their genes – will soon depose the old paradigm of medicine. No longer will doctors merely give patients the drugs with the highest chance of success; they will be able to predict whether or not the drug will be effective for a specific person. No longer will patients try to base their diet and exercise habits on generic recommendations of what is healthy and what is not; instead, they can determine the healthiest lifestyle for their genetic makeup specifically. Health care will become mostly preventative, rather than reactive.

Why now? What is the driving force behind this paradigm shift? For the first time in human history, we have enough computing power to cheaply and quickly sequence the human genome. In the very near future, nearly everyone will have access to their entire DNA code, which they can carry on their smartphones. When Craig Venter became the first person to have his genome sequenced in 2000 as part of the Human Genome Project, it cost $3 billion and took thirteen years. When James Watson had his genome sequenced in 2007, it cost $2 million and took two months. Today, sequencing a human genome costs about $6,000 and takes a couple weeks. Within the next year, it is very likely that companies will offer genome sequencing for less than $1,000. Some observers view the $1,000 mark as a tipping point: the point at which average people can afford the service, and at which health insurers may start covering it. And after we have $1,000 genomes, $1 genomes won’t be far behind. Let’s not forget that the cost has dropped nearly a thousandfold in the last three years. Fast-forward a few more years, and it is conceivable that the cost of genome sequencing will be essentially nothing. I envision a day in the not-too-distant future when Walgreens and CVS will have self-service genome sequencing machines, as quick, cheap, and user-friendly as self-service photo machines.

Of course, merely knowing one's genetic code is worthless without knowing how to interpret it. While biologists have identified thousands of disease markers, there is vastly more that we don’t know about our genetic code. Some services available now, such as Google-funded 23AndMe, can test DNA to determine one’s predisposition to a narrow range of diseases, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. As the cost of genome sequencing approaches zero, nearly everyone will have it done. As the total number of genomes grows from thousands to millions to billions, scientists will have a treasure trove of data to analyze diseases and patient responses to medication. A machine called a microarray allows scientists to compare different DNA sequences and search for correlations. As more and more human genomes are available to be analyzed, patterns will become more evident and it will become much easier to unearth the specific genes associated with certain diseases. Patients who know the diseases for which they are at risk will be able to modify their lifestyle to prevent them from arising.

Those who are unlucky enough to get a disease in spite of (or because of) their lifestyle will have access to much more robust treatments than those currently available. By pinpointing the genetic location of a particular disease, scientists will be able to understand what caused the disease and how it can be reversed. Think of our genetic code like a computer program: Understanding the cause and location of the bugs will enable us to fix them. In the slightly more distant future, it will be possible to directly repair defective genes, such as those that cause cancer, through genetic therapy.

The next ten years will be the most transformative decade in human history for medicine, as we finally unlock the secrets of our genetic code which have been a mystery since the dawn of humanity. The things I have described here are by no means a comprehensive description of the benefits of the Genomic Revolution, and the new paradigm will not be without problems of its own. To be continued in another blog post…

PREDICTIONS:
By 2011 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less
By 2014 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $100 or less
By 2019 – Over half of all Americans have had their genomes sequenced
By 2021 – U.S. sales of personalized medicine (i.e. drugs tailored to the patient’s specific genetic profile) are greater than sales of non-personalized, mass-market medicine

50 Years of Questions

This is a video I made a couple months ago, entitled "50 Years of Questions." It's my vision for what the world might look like in the future, as well as a look back at how far we've come in the last decade.

Note that I just think these are QUESTIONS people might be asking themselves around this time. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we'll know the answers to all of them by the dates I listed.