Day 3: Living to 1000?
One futurist thinks it's possible. Others spoke of bioterrorism, obesity, and the genome project as the conference came to an end.
By FREDERIC GOLDEN
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003
Monterey, Calif. —TIME's three-day forum on the Future of Life ended on a note of extravagant promises about a coming century of startling advances — in personalized medicine, including life spans well beyond 100 years, increasingly smart computer programs that will emulate biological processes, new genetically engineered sources of energy and outreaches into space that will take both humans and robots far from their home planet.
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A different sort of warning for the 400 scientists, academics, artists, clerics and business executives attending TIME's DNA fest was sounded by Vice Admiral Richard Carmona, the new U.S. Surgeon General. Replying to the many scientists trying to get the Bush Administration to lift its partial ban on embryonic stem cell research, he urged them not to get ahead of the American public. People are still quite baffled by this sort of research, he said, and need to be educated about it. "Science must take care it does not leave the public behind," he said.
In a conference-closing speech that recalled his "truly surreal journey" from an impoverished childhood in New York's Hispanic East Harlem to become America's chief doctor, the former trauma surgeon welcomed the benefits from the genomics revolution, but also stressed that America faced immediate and very critical health problems, notably the epidemic of obesity among the young. "It's every bit as threatening as the terrorist threat," he said, adding it would lead to a level of disease and chronic illness that would confront the country with a crushing economic burden.
FULL TEXT AND GREAT LINKS
Time Magazine Online
