--- Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/web/resources/articles/lifeinthefuture/MIRACLES%20OF%20THE%20NEXT%20FIFTY%20YEARS.htm > > The year 2000 as viewed from 1950
"...Tuberculosis in all of its forms is cured as easily as pneumonia was cured at mid-century.... Even in 1950 physicians did not know exactly how a piece of beefsteak is converted by the body into muscle and energy�the process technically known as metabolism. The physician of 2000 knows just what diet is best for a patient. This knowledge, coupled with his knowledge of hormones, enables him to treat old age as a degenerative disease. Men and women of 70 in A.D. 2000 look as if they were 40..."
<LOL> Well, then they really did think that they'd figured out how to defeat microbes...but they forgot that *artificial selection* is even more potent than natural selection at forcing change.
Actually, I suspect that many of today's 70-year-olds are as healthy as the 40-year-olds who lived when the article was written.
(If nothing else, recall that the reason the retirement age for Social Security was set at 65 was because at the time relatively few people would live long enough to draw any benefits . . . )
--Ronn! :)
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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