As we head into the Christmas season, many publications and shows will be looking back at the year that's almost done. But Professor Luke O’Neill and Brendan O’Connor had other ideas: they didn't want to review the recent past, they wanted to preview the near future. What, they wondered can we all expect in terms of developments and breakthroughs over the next few years? The first thing Luke talked about was lifespan:
"We’re all living longer; that’s the good news. But the big question is are we healthy into old age? Lifespan seems to be not quite cracked, but you can live to be 80 probably, on average in Ireland now, for instance."
The focus seems to have shifted away from living forever to living longer and healthier. And a big part of that healthy living is down to our old friends Ozempic and other semaglutides:
"That’s the biggest story of the year, that drug. You wouldn’t believe it [...] First of all, as you know, it was used for obesity initially and diabetes. But now the evidence is Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, addiction, depression. Those four things. It seems to be having beneficial effects there."
There is, Prof O’Neill says, huge excitement around semaglutides and their potential to positively affect the lives of millions – if not billions – of people.
There is a trend among super-rich tech bro types of trying to look as young as possible for as long as possible – Brendan cites the case of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, whose anti-ageing efforts, which he called Project Blueprint, at one stage involved him getting blood transfusions from his son. Prof O’Neill tells Brendan that we’re starting to understand – and maybe delay – the ageing process:
"People like Jeff Bezos is investing massively in companies, Sergei Brin of Google, again they’re putting billions of dollars into research into ageing, so you’d hope we’ll eventually understand it more and more."
Researchers are looking into the links between ageing and illness – your chances of getting diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer all go up as you get older. This prompts Brendan to ask if treatments for the likes of cancer are getting better and whether they’ll continues getting better in the near future. They definitely are improving, Prof O’Neill says:
"The dream in cancer was get the immune system to kill the tumour. That was always the hope because your immune system is very powerful, it can kill infections, as we know. And now, it’s coming true, basically."
The other approach to cancer treatment that’s showing a lot of promise is vaccination:
"There are two massive cancer vaccine trials running as we speak. So, next year we’re going to see the first data from these huge trials that are running with those kinds of approaches."
Next up on our whirlwind tour of the near future is robotics. We’ve already got robots that can vacuum the home, mow the lawn and perform surgery. Now, with robotics and AI, robots can also be companions:
"That’s a really interesting one for older people. You can have these companion robots who’ll decrease loneliness, this kind of thing, so we’re seeing more and more robots coming on stream."
The future isn’t all technological advances and C3-PO keeping you company though. There’s some not-so-great news in Prof O’Neill’s preview of the near future as well. Namely, spermageddon. Sperma-what now, Gay? Let’s let Prof O’Neill fill us in:
"Sperm counts are plummeting. It’s called spermageddon. Have you come across that phrase? Sperm counts have been dropping over the past 40, 50 years. They’ve halved actually in some studies. Which is an incredible drop in the numbers. We don’t know why."
That can’t be good. The main suspects are pollution, microplastics and the like. But if this, ahem, spermageddon continues – and the indications are apparently that it will – then birth rates will fall and your trusty robot companion will be stuck with paying your pension.
An intriguing prediction by Prof O’Neill is that social media will become irrelevant soon. And it can’t come soon enough, as far as the good professor is concerned:
"The worry is, it’s the malignant influence of social media that’s more and more apparent. And the Australians, you may have seen, have banned its use in under-16s. I think that’s a great development. It seems to bring out the worst in us, doesn’t it?"
Prof O’Neill believes that we will come to view social media like we do – or used to do – publications like the Weekly World News, which just made up headlines and stories ("Gay aliens found in UFO wreck!"). People will become less credulous, Prof O’Neill believes and he thinks that a key part of that will be educating children in digital literacy – how to spot fake news and misinformation. That would certainly be a real advancement in civilisation, but we might just see robots taking driverless taxis to buy groceries for their elderly companions first, though.
You can hear the complete conversation on the future between Brendan and Luke O’Neill by tapping or clicking above.