The Industry of Delaying Death is Soon Expected to Rise
Forget about immortality by vampires — the delay of human death currently lays in the hands of corporations working hard to make this a reality much sooner than later
The anti-aging industry could very well take a backseat in the coming years as corporations are making lofty investments to expand the human lifespan beyond 100 years. According to a CNBC report, Bank of America confidently believes the human species is on the brink of having the resources to live longer lives, due to products such as wearable technology. By 2025, the field of genome biology study (“genomics”) is projected to be a $41 billion industry with companies such as biotechnology company Illumina Inc. and Novartis at the forefront of this growing space.
“Medical knowledge will double every 73 days by 2020 vs. every 3.5 (years) in 2010, and genomic sequencing costs have fallen 99.999% since 2003. This has enabled a new frontier in precision medicine to further extend life expectancy, heralding a ‘techmanity’ (technology meets humanity) revolution,” says Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts Felix Tran and Haim Israel.
Delaying human death, also known as “ammortality,” isn’t a new topic of discussion. From scientific debates in the media to movies like Justin Timberlake starrer In Time giving insight on the potential social inequities of immortality, the topic of living longer is potent. What Tran and Israel propose is unparalleled, particularly in the midst of present-day health technology developments like the Reboot Your Age app, built to encourage healthy cognitive aging, and reports arguing the need for government and workplace wellness policies.
Aside from an anticipated boom in genomics and immortality research and clinical findings, we can expect to hear more comprehensive solutions to AI health, food sustainability, and “moonshot medicine.” This all includes improvements to the way food is consumed along with how diseases are both managed and cured. When it comes to AI health and big data, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet are named as organizations leading the charge into the future of delaying human death. WW International and DuPont are looking into the future of food, while Illumina, Sangamo, Vertex Pharma, and Neurocrine Biosciences have become a few of the moonshot medicine vanguards of this new era in human health technology.
In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement about the life expectancy in the United States, revealing its decline for a second year in a row (from 77.0 to 76.1 years). But with the fast-growing progress of medical technology, the race to living longer, and healthier, seems to be just around the corner. It’s definitively only a matter of time to witness how the human race will benefit from this impending techmanity revolution.
