Public health statistics that will be quiet indicators of genuine biomedical technological progress:
Improved child health outcomes from IVF, particularly linked to embryo selection methods. Plausibly, children born by IVF could eventually show improved average health outcomes relative to socioeconomically matched children conceived naturally, even at earlier ages. We may start to see these outcomes relatively early, due to the higher death rate at ages 0-3.
Lifespan and healthspan increases in the highest income tiers. The most potent advances will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, who have greater access to the best care. This cohort is where we should look to understand what sort of lifespan and healthspan biomedical technology is capable of delivering. To get an immediate metric of progress in younger cohorts, we should be collecting class-stratified, ideally longitudinal DNA methylomes and using aging clocks to determine how epigenetic aging varies by socioeconomic class. Obviously these will need to be demographically controlled—a challenge due to the recent takeover of the US healthcare infrastructure by a bunch of blustering bumblers who ctrl+F-delete anything that smells like diversity.
Public health statistics that will be quiet indicators of genuine biomedical technological progress:
Improved child health outcomes from IVF, particularly linked to embryo selection methods. Plausibly, children born by IVF could eventually show improved average health outcomes relative to socioeconomically matched children conceived naturally, even at earlier ages. We may start to see these outcomes relatively early, due to the higher death rate at ages 0-3.
Lifespan and healthspan increases in the highest income tiers. The most potent advances will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, who have greater access to the best care. This cohort is where we should look to understand what sort of lifespan and healthspan biomedical technology is capable of delivering. To get an immediate metric of progress in younger cohorts, we should be collecting class-stratified, ideally longitudinal DNA methylomes and using aging clocks to determine how epigenetic aging varies by socioeconomic class. Obviously these will need to be demographically controlled—a challenge due to the recent takeover of the US healthcare infrastructure by a bunch of blustering bumblers who ctrl+F-delete anything that smells like diversity.
Epigenetic aging before and after Ozempic.