Routine Life - Exploring Insights into Human Nature Health, Wellness, Longevity, and Work

WHEN I FIRST HEARD THE WORD “techmanity” it quickly translated in my brain to its components – the words “technology” and “humanity.” What a fabulous new word! The concept of discussing the interface of technology and humanity must surely be a most philosophical invention. Interestingly, it is derived from the investment and financial worlds and, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, a “market worth more than $600 billion is set to emerge” in the coming years.

Techmanity refers to companies and research that are proliferating in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and genomics. These technological advances are being put to work by biotech, pharmaceutical, and life science companies.

So, how will the market revolution caused by techmanity affect us? It will lead to a higher quality and length of life. Longevity will accompany personalized healthcare delivery that is guided by artificial intelligence and genomics, that is both preventive and precise.

Precision Medicine is defined as “medical care designed to optimize efficiency or therapeutic benefit for particular groups of patients, especially by using genetic or molecular profiling.” The advances in cancer of a particular tumor’s genetic editing are making for novel therapeutic approaches that are effective in curtailing – and eventually preventing cancer. Prevention in genetic diseases is becoming more commonplace and the cost of genetic sequencing has become affordable. Future food solutions such as lab-grown meat and the rise of ‘flexitarian’ diets that reduce meat consumption may improve nutrition.

In “Our World in Data” we can see the advances by following the change in life expectancies. The overall mortality rate in the United States declined markedly over the 20th century, resulting in large gains in life expectancy. In 1900, the average U.S. newborn could expect to live to 47.3 years of age. In 2010, they could expect to live more than 30 additional years of life, with a life expectancy at birth of 78.7. This statistic is improving, though pandemic COVID deaths put a temporary barrier in this trajectory.

It is believed that if you are born today you will have a 50 percent chance of living to 100 years of age.

Brian Patrick Green, a gerontologist at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University,
has concentrated on the potential consequences of this increased longevity. These issues include justice, access, and inequality. There is a lack of ethics regulations for genomics as evidenced in the case of the Chinese scientist that broke all sorts of societal norms to create the first gene-edited babies. As we live longer, we may exacerbate healthcare costs, cause overpopulation, change life insurance actuarial tables, make pension plan funding difficult, and possibly have a static elderly population requiring more care.

In the end, maybe, longevity is not the true end game. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

“The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.”