Few activities are more fatuous than predicting the future. But as no one seems prepared to say, ‘Who can tell?’, any magazine or newspaper is assured that ‘the planet's most prominent scientists’ [sic] will be prepared to mouth off, themselves assured that they won't be around to be mocked when their predictions are wildly wrong. New Scientist celebrated its 50th anniversary in the autumn with just such a futurefest (reported in the Guardian). Anyone asked to predict so far ahead should first be reminded of Professor Douglas Hartree. In 1951, according toWikipedia, he predicted that just three digital computers would be able to do all the UK's computation. No one would ever need their own computer, which they wouldn't be able to afford anyway. He died in 1958.
Predicted medical advances are always going to occur ‘within the next decade’. Sure enough, according to New Scientist: ‘digits will be regrown within 5–10 years … Within 50 years whole-body replacement will be routine.’ I hope they do better than with artificial blood. When I was studying for my anaesthesia exams in 1979, manufactured oxygen-carrying solutions were just a couple of years off. Artificial haemoglobin is a good deal less complicated than a regrown finger, but we still don't have any that works. Every time I read about it, it's 2 years off.
Beverly Whipple, secretary general of the World Association for Sexual Health, reckons that in 50 years ‘sexual violence and abuse will be eliminated’. Is that just in Surbiton? She also thinks that the spread of sexually transmitted infections will be halted. Presumably, much as tuberculosis has been eradicated now that we have streptomycin.
The Independent's futurefest involved just its specialised correspondents, but they didn't do much better. At a time when there was much anguished discussion about whether we should resuscitate babies born at 22 weeks, because almost all of them die, the Indy told us that ‘the first baby to be created, gestated and born entirely in the laboratory is in prospect’. It seems to me that weeks 0–22 are a good deal more complicated than weeks 22–25, by which time a good proportion live. But, hey! Don't let technical difficulties get in the way of good copy. The same article promised us that the first male pregnancy is a scientific possibility.
There's nothing wrong with science fiction, and there's nothing wrong with hoping for the future. But let's not pretend that it is any more than fiction or hope. And first, let us hope there is a future.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2007.
