The promise of miracles just around the corner is in the news. But when hasn’t it been? In fact, it keeps being the same miracles that are breathlessly forecast and then indefinitely postponed. Take controlled nuclear fusion, please.
I date myself by admitting that in Junior High School (that’s Middle School to you whippersnappers) we learned the difference between fission and fusion and were assured that controlled fusion was on its way. And it would provide limitless power at little or no cost with no pollution. Utopia indeed.
The process would harness the same power source as the sun without unfortunate side effects, like a planet the same temperature as the sun – 27 million degrees. Imagine, fueling all our material desires with water as a fuel source. Well, we’re still imagining, but according to the New Yorker (“A Star in a Bottle,” March 3, 2014) this time the breakthrough is for real. Since I’ve heard this for over 40 years I’ll refrain from holding my breath this time.
Nor am I rushing out to buy a self-driving car, forecast as early as the 1939 New York World’s Fair. I’m also not lining up to be the first on my block to own a domestic robot, very popular as mother’s little helper in the 1950s, Robby as caterer and dress designer in “Forbidden Planet” (1958) and Flexible Frank in Heinlein’s “The Door into Summer” (1956). But so far the closest we’ve come is the rather tame Roomba.
We do have the equivalent of Dick Tracy’s wrist radio in the form of the cell phone. Cool, but still pretty small beer next to limitless fusion energy and immortality, or at least the cure for cancer promised with the flourish of a pen by the always reliable President Nixon in 1971. Well, 43 years and still counting.
Yet here it comes again. Craig Venter is on the case. He’s the man who galloped ahead of government researchers in the race to sequence the human genome and who recently created a synthetic life form (paging Dr. Frankenstein). His new venture is Human Longevity, Inc.
According to reports from Reuters and The Wall Street Journal the company aims to sequence 40,000 or more human genomes as well as recording the micro-organisms co-existing with them and the environmental factors to which they are exposed. It is supposed that this immense data base will yield unsuspected correlations leading to the prediction and treatment of disease.
The company is modestly targeting cancer, diabetes, heart and liver disease and dementia for starters. Presumably after cracking those it will move on to the cold and athlete’s foot. Call me crazy but I suspect Venter is after this particular big game not just because success would make him rich beyond the dreams of avarice but because he is 68.
If Venter wants to dodge the bullet bearing down on him, he needs to get results a lot faster than Nixon’s War on Cancer did. Since I’m not getting any younger myself, I’m rooting for him. It would be the unkindest cut of all if immortality became a reality two weeks after I turned up my toes, but so far the quest for Utopia in my lifetime can be summed up in two words: Promises, promises.