Very, very few people are at all about scientific accomplishments unless it’s directly affecting somebody they personally care about, and particularly themselves or their kids. The technical accomplishments you list are in fundamental bio or medical innovations that have so far only affected a small number of individuals, so for the time being, virtually nobody will care about them. The reality is that turning the technical accomplishments you list into safe and effect medicines ready for doctors to give to patients have been extremely time consuming, expensive, and limited in scope, or have not yet resulted in bona fide medical breakthroughs in humans.
In biology, innovations in earlier times (vaccines and antibiotics) were cheap, saved a lot more young people and prevented more common and deadly illnesses. mRNA vaccines and gene editing are applicable to much smaller numbers of people, often in more distant countries, often primarily benefitting older people with comorbidities. You can see this in tapering off of lifespan, the growing gap between lifespan and healthspan, and the rising cost of medical care.
You can also see it in the exceptions—how GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide (ozempic), which benefitted numerous young people in the first word in a very tangible way—provoked much more news coverage, popular awareness, and grassroots optimism about progress in this domain, as well as populist anger at high prices, limited availability, worries about side effects, and so on.
I think we will see similar excitement if substantial strides are made in bringing down IVF costs, improving fertility for women in their late 30s and beyond, and ability to predict and prevent or terminate pregnancies when the fetus is expected to show profound autism or other serious cognitive impairments; widespread deployment of xenotransplantation (pig kidneys transplanted into humans), drastically improving antipsychotics or treatments for substance abuse, and continued improvements to GLP-1 agonists and potentially other drugs performing related functions based on insights gained from initial success.
We will also see improvements in the US health situation if congress increases the number of funded residency positions so that we can expand the doctor workforce, as well as through expansion of telehealth. But given everything that’s going on, I think this is unlikely in the near term future.
Very, very few people are at all about scientific accomplishments unless it’s directly affecting somebody they personally care about, and particularly themselves or their kids. The technical accomplishments you list are in fundamental bio or medical innovations that have so far only affected a small number of individuals, so for the time being, virtually nobody will care about them. The reality is that turning the technical accomplishments you list into safe and effect medicines ready for doctors to give to patients have been extremely time consuming, expensive, and limited in scope, or have not yet resulted in bona fide medical breakthroughs in humans.
In biology, innovations in earlier times (vaccines and antibiotics) were cheap, saved a lot more young people and prevented more common and deadly illnesses. mRNA vaccines and gene editing are applicable to much smaller numbers of people, often in more distant countries, often primarily benefitting older people with comorbidities. You can see this in tapering off of lifespan, the growing gap between lifespan and healthspan, and the rising cost of medical care.
You can also see it in the exceptions—how GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide (ozempic), which benefitted numerous young people in the first word in a very tangible way—provoked much more news coverage, popular awareness, and grassroots optimism about progress in this domain, as well as populist anger at high prices, limited availability, worries about side effects, and so on.
I think we will see similar excitement if substantial strides are made in bringing down IVF costs, improving fertility for women in their late 30s and beyond, and ability to predict and prevent or terminate pregnancies when the fetus is expected to show profound autism or other serious cognitive impairments; widespread deployment of xenotransplantation (pig kidneys transplanted into humans), drastically improving antipsychotics or treatments for substance abuse, and continued improvements to GLP-1 agonists and potentially other drugs performing related functions based on insights gained from initial success.
We will also see improvements in the US health situation if congress increases the number of funded residency positions so that we can expand the doctor workforce, as well as through expansion of telehealth. But given everything that’s going on, I think this is unlikely in the near term future.