by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright August 2014
Science in the 21st century is solving many mysteries in biology and life sciences. The direct fallout of that is much better understanding of how our bodies work, and how we can intervene to keep ourselves healthy and make our bodies work better. This healthcare revolution is going to continue for decades, well into the Post-Snap era.
What follows are some speculations on specifics of the changes this revolution is going to make in how we live Post-Snap.
Disease scares people deeply. For this reason disease fighting gets a lot of support from the community. This support ranges from supporting medical research into things such as fighting cancer through supporting government supported, controlled and regulated health care programs designed to give everyone access to at least basic health care.
Another widely held aspiration is the desire to make our bodies work better when they are healthy. We would like to be physically and mentally stronger in many ways. This is an aspiration, not a scary worry, so the style of support it gets is quite different than the style of support disease fighting gets. Supporting this aspiration shows up as personal fitness, self-help and motivational programs.
How to do both of the above, fight disease and make the body work better, is going to be enhanced by more and more implants of various sorts. In the 2010's we take a lot of drugs orally and a few by injection. In the Post-Snap environment most drug taking will be handled by implants. If nanotech continues to advance, what will be taken orally is nanotech. These will inhabit the digestive system and both monitor and adjust the intestinal environment.
The gene mix of our bodies will be subject to some modification, but it is likely to be minor. Genes are so complex that altering more than one or two traits at a time is going to be difficult. It will be easier to deal with body problems, or enhancements, by adding drugs or nanotech than twiddling genes.
One of the areas people will spend lots of time and attention on is baby making. This is an area people are instinctively interested in, and there will be a lot of choices available. Designing a fetus is an area were people will be interested in doing a lot more with genes, so fetus design will be at the forefront of genetics research and development.
Becoming super human is going to be a constant aspiration, and temptation, in the Post-Snap era. So much will be possible! But the full effects, positive and negative, will be so uncertain!
This area will become much like mind altering. There will be a lot possible, there will be strong worries about bad consequences, there will be lots of regulation, and there will be lots of disenfranchisement caused by the regulation. Those who want to indulge will consider those who want to regulate worrywarts.