From: Kris Ganjam (krisgan@microsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 15:32:08 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: Library News Service
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 1998 3:44 PM
To: Daily Newswire Subscribers
Subject: Industry: Bill Gates' Column (NYT Syndicate) 7/1/98
Q&A: Will Life Spans Increase or Decrease?
by Bill Gates
The New York Times Syndicate
07/01/98
Q. In the future do you think the average life span will increase
or decrease? Greg Thomson ( pthomson@efni.com <mailto:pthomson@efni.com> )
A. Without a doubt, the average life span will increase as biotechnology
makes progress against the most prevalent fatal diseases. Over the next 20
years many of maladies that often interfere with living out your potential
life span will be preventable or treatable.
There's a distinct possibility that cancer will be largely
curable in the next 20 years. In one promising new approach a combination of
two drugs, angiostatin and endostatin, was recently shown to kill cancer in
mice by cutting off the blood supply to cancerous tumors. The drugs shrink
tumors out of existence by depriving them of nourishment.
The approach is very clever because it's an attack on infrastructure. If it
works, the cancer cells can only defeat the attack by coming up with a new
way to get blood-which is very difficult to imagine. If the cancer cells
don't have a blood supply they can't form solid masses.
I'm decidedly optimistic about the potential of this treatment but it's too
early to know whether the promise will be realized. Scientists haven't been
able to make the drugs in meaningful quantities yet. Once they do, clinical
trials may show that the therapy won't work in humans or has unacceptable
side effects.
In any event curing cancer is only one of many challenges facing the medical
and biotechnology industries.
More people die of heart disease than cancer. Cancer has a high profile
because it's prolonged and painful.
As cancer, heart disease and other major killers are brought under control,
a growing percentage of people will live into their 60s, 70s, 80s and
beyond. At these mature ages, degenerative problems of the brain, such as
Alzheimer's disease, become major issues. The medical and biotechnology
fields must find answers to these problems-and will in many cases.
Average life spans will rise but it's less clear whether the potential life
span of the human being will increase. Throughout recorded history, some
people have lived to be 100 or more. So far improvements in medicine have
increased the percentage of people who live out their potential life spans,
but virtually nobody lives to be more than 110.
I believe that medical advances in the decades directly ahead will allow a
very high percentage of people who have access to good medical care to live
out the potential human life span. Whether that will ever be more than about
100, I can't say.
Q. Can you please share a few of your thoughts regarding cloning and its
role in biotechnology? Brian Schmidt (brschmi@ci.long-beach.ca.us)
A. I'm against cloning humans. It's such a disturbance of the natural order.
My aversion is not based on a belief that we're in collective peril as a
result of cloning-it's not likely to generate massive disease. My distaste
is more a moral thing.
Genetic diversity is the natural roll of the dice in the process of how
parents' genes are put together. When you manipulate that, you're really
toying with something quite fundamental.
I endorse bioengineering of plants, however. Great benefits will be derived
from plants that are improved through careful engineering.
Q. Aren't you afraid the people who would stop development of cloning
techniques would impose restrictions on AI (artificial intelligence)
research, and eventually on all "thinking machines" science? Ivan-Assen
Ivanov (assen@earthling.net)
A. It's not inconsistent to be against cloning and still believe in working
on AI software. The issues aren't tied.
Today's artificial intelligence software enables computers to recognize
patterns, improve with experience, make inferences, execute complex tasks
and perform other functions that may give the impression of actual thought.
In reality, AI software as we know it today doesn't give computers true
intelligence in any sense.
Computer software and hardware may someday be sufficiently powerful and
clever to perform functions that approximate human thought, thereby
achieving actual intelligence. If somebody were really making progress
toward that goal today, it would be controversial-but not quite the same as
manipulating or cloning genetics.
Q. Will electronics one day allow scientists to replace certain sensory
organs and make it appear to the brain that those senses are still there,
only with stored instead of real sensory data? In other words, a sort of
"virtual reality" fed directly to neurons? Don Terrien, Richmond, VA
(dat@visi.net) A. Bypassing the eye or the ear and directly stimulating the
brain is an arresting but extreme idea. There are people striving to connect
digital electronic devices to neurons but I don't expect big advances soon.
For one thing, it's hard to attach stimulation devices into the neurological
system and have them stay hooked up.
Somedaytechnology of this kind will most likely offer significant benefits
for people who are blind or have other sensory deficiencies. In the
meantimethe best hope is for improvements in how existing sensory organs are
stimulated. For example modern hearing aids can do a remarkable job for
people who have even a small amount of hearing capacity left.
For most people the easiest way to experience virtual reality is watch a big
screen and have the data come in the normal way. It's not as portable or
potentially as realistic as a futuristic device that could directly
stimulate the brain but it has the advantage of being available.
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