2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
Many diseases will prove more complex, and more difficult to treat, than we expect. Only a quarter of our groups thought that cancer would be cured by the year 2020; though Pearson & Cochrane's review of the literature suggests that it might, at least, be preventable by that time.
Thus, doctors recognise that they often have to lump together a variety of disease mechanisms under one heading - generally of shared symptoms - simply because they do not really understand the underlying causes. Thus, your family doctor may not be just humouring you when he or she asks you what you think is wrong with you - you may have a better view of the holistic aspects of the situation than he or she has! Thus, there are many different forms of cancer. Some of these, Hodgkins disease and some leukaemias in children have already proved to be treatable. Some, unfortunately some of the most common, have not - and the mechanisms underlying them are, as yet, poorly understood. There is little evidence that any breakthrough in treatment of all of these is upon us - so again we must assume that the effects of such breakthroughs, even if they happen, are unlikely to be observed much before the middle of the 21st century.
In a rather different way, many viruses - especially those reducing the quality of life (such as colds and influenza) - are similarly a mystery; at least in the way that they transform themselves into new varieties - so that, just as we have the answer the last one, a new one comes along! AIDS is, of course, the most-feared example of this, and in one sense we are lucky that its specific means of transmission offers such a weakness that we can control its spread to some degree. There are, though, other similar viruses waiting in the wings - so it would be unrealistic, again, to see the solution to the overall problem being applied in the first half of the 21st century.
Even so, our research showed that most people did expect cures to be found, and - in view of the sums being spent - they cannot be discounted; though this is one area where social expectations may not deliver technological solutions!
Some diseases, which have many forms and especially those which can change over time, will be much more difficult to treat, Thus, some widespread cancers may not be susceptible to effective treatments during the first half of the 21st century - though they may be soon thereafter, in time to meet the needs of many of those already born. Viruses, including those similar to AIDS, may be even more difficult to treat - and may be more susceptible to control of their spread.
This is one area where futurologists may be more optimistic - unduly so - than our groups. Futurologists, who are as we have seen optimists at heart, have rarely pointed out the challenges posed by the large variety of progressions to be encountered in many of these diseases. It is not yet even clear that all those manifestations now given the same name are actually the outcome of the same underlying processes!
15 May 2003
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