Saturday, August 25, 2012
8/25/12: Life, Uninterrupted
Proposition: By January 1, 2050, the average life expectancy of an American will be at least 100 years.
Odds: Even
Stakes: $100
Bettors: Me, Jake
***
Life expectancy made huge strides over the course of the 20th century; in America alone it jumped about thirty years from 1900 to 2000. Of course, that doesn't mean that people weren't living a long time in 1900--it just means that many more people died young, mostly from lack of adequate medical care and poor nutrition. Now that we've effectively plucked that low-hanging fruit with stuff like antibiotics and sterilized medical equipment and the South Beach diet, it will be increasingly harder to add years to our collective life without some sort of major leaps in technology.
Essentially, Jake is betting that some sort of game-changing medicine is coming down the pipe, and he may have reason to be optimistic. A world where robots diagnose disease, stem cells fight aging, and genetic treatment is standard is not so very far off. Still, even with our medical progress over the last three decades, we've only been able to add about 10 years to our national life expectancy, which stands at about 80 for women and a few years less for men. If we continued at our current pace, by 2050 we'd be several years shy of that magical century mark.
This is one of those bets where I win either way; I'll make $100 or be happy knowing that we've made huge strides in medical technology. Hooray!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment