Anthony Woods speculates on where some of the big medical breakthroughs of future medicine might come from. Humanity has made huge medical strides in recent centuries. Many diseases that once killed millions have been completely eradicated. The lives of millions more have been saved and improved by breakthrough medicines such as Penicillin.
Like most modern antibiotics, it was derived from soil microbes. The advancements in modern healthcare have increased the average global life expectancy from 47 in 1950 to 73 today. In Ireland, life expectancy is now 82 – one of the highest in the world. However, there are concerning clouds on the horizon. In recent decades obesity has become a global epidemic. Life expectancy in the USA has fallen to a new low of 76. Time and time again human ingenuity has risen to meet challenges, and will continue to do so in the future.
Germs
Let us begin with the smallest creatures on earth – microbes. Science has spent decades fighting a ‘war on germs’ only to realise that our individual health is enormously dependent upon the microbes in our body. A microbe is a tiny life-form that you need a microscope to see.
Until very recently using microbes for healing was considered the stuff of crackpots, pseudoscience and the insane. Pioneers in the field were subjected to the usual treatment of academic ridicule, funding cuts, and career assassinations reserved for those mavericks ahead of their time.
How the tables have tuned in recent years as modern medicine is more and more willing to embrace the power of microbes. There are two sides to nature’s coin. While some microbes obviously cause disease (Yersinia Pestis caused the great plague, Coronavirus caused the recent pandemic etc) there are countless microbes that both prevent and heal illness.
Your body contains more microbes than human cells and they have an interdependent relationship. The microbes in your body digest food, break down toxins, and are an absolutely critical part of your immune system.
Microbiome
In recent years it has become increasingly obvious that our immune system is hugely dependent on our microbiome – the trillions of microbes in our body. So is our digestive system. When we ingest food, it undergoes several different stages of microbial breakdown.
Our internal microbes break food down into smaller pieces, which other microbes break down further into even smaller pieces, and on and on it goes. The exact same process occurs in the soil and we could accurately say that our microbiome is our inner soil.
Soil Health
The health of the world’s soils and its microbes plays a huge and underappreciated role in global health. It’s no coincidence that humanity has experienced huge increases in degenerative diseases at the very same time as the world’s soil has been degenerated by industrial farming practices.
The soil contains a treasure trove of microbes and it’s estimated that humanity knows about less than .0001% of the trillions of unique microbes on earth. These “germs” all have unique properties that can be used for multiple applications including developing medicines. Penicillin, the wonder drug of the last century, was derived from soil microbes.
Most of our modern advanced medicine is also derived from soil microbes. And yet there remains trillions of undiscovered microbes for which humanity has little to no knowledge. Imagine what medical treasures remain to be discovered in the earth’s soil.
Extremophiles
The earliest form of life on earth were ‘extremophiles’. These are incredibly tough microbes that can withstand the most extreme environments. They can break down toxins into easier-to-manage parts, which other less-extreme microbes can decompose as part of the food chain. The same process occurs in our bodies.
Perhaps we will someday discover that people with a highly diverse microbe population that includes extremophiles are a lot more equipped to deal with environmental toxins and are therefore less susceptible to cancers and other diseases. We might also find that these extreme lifeforms can be used to treat extreme illnesses such as cancers.
Modern medicine is more willing to embrace the power of microbes.
Phages in Medicine
In the coming decades, we can also expect the use of all different types of medical microbes (even viruses!) to become mainstream. The general population has the perception that all microbes are bad, and viruses are especially bad. However, that’s simply not the case.
The most abundant life form on earth is a type of virus called a ‘phage’ and this virus regulates all other microbes. There are trillions of phages in your gut governing the trillions of other microbes. Without them, you simply couldn’t survive. So effective are phages at killing unwanted bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella that they are regularly sprayed on food to prevent disease.
This is a practice food companies prefer to keep quiet. The beauty of phages is they are highly targeted. They only kill a specific microbe and nothing else. To borrow a military phrase, they can perform a very precise surgical strike by eliminating particular unwanted microbes while not affecting any others. In certain parts of the world using phages has been a common practice for decades.
Antibiotics vs. Phages
However in Western medicine, they have largely been overlooked in favour of antibiotics, and considered a crackpot idea. However, the overuse and downright abuse of antibiotics in agriculture and medicine has led to the relentless rise of dangerous antibioticresistant superbugs.
So desperate doctors are now more open to phage therapy. In Belgium, phages have been shown to effectively kill superbugs and their use is becoming a lot more accepted. Humanity’s current knowledge of phages is extremely limited however as our knowledge increases we can expect a revolution in healthcare.
There is no reason that phages and the wider microbe community cannot be used over time. Not only can they kill pesky disease-causing microbes such as superbugs, but they might be able to eliminate pretty much anything else we wish to terminate such as cancer cells, fat cells etc.
Add in Psychology
Let us now turn from the physical to the metaphysical and examine mental health and the field of psychology. There is no greater mystery in science than the nature of the mind. It has perplexed man since very ancient times.
Take biology for example. We discover that the key to health and optimum functioning is ‘homeostasis’. Essentially, it is maintaining a healthy balance. Naturally the same applies to the mind – a healthy homeostatic mind is balanced – it sees both sides of nature’s coin, while an unhealthy mind is imbalanced.
Ultimately the aim of healing, be it physical or mental, is to restore homeostasis – to return to a state of balance. Throughout history many different methods have been used to balance the mind, some effective, some flawed, and some truly shocking.
Medicine in the Past
It’s extraordinary to think that as recently as 1967 a lobotomy – the physical disconnection of one part of the brain from another – was considered an acceptable treatment for mental illness. One famous case was Rosemary Kennedy, a sister of US president JFK who aged 23 underwent a lobotomy in 1941. It left her incapacitated and institutionalised for the rest of her life until her death in 2007.
Thousands like her were turned into zombies by perhaps the most barbaric medical procedure of all time. It literally involved hammering an icepick through the patient’s eye socket before wriggling it around to sever the brain connections.
This practice is consigned to a barbaric past. However what practices of today will be considered barbaric in the future? For example, electroconvulsive treatment, also known as electric shock treatment, was all the rage at the same time as lobotomies. It is still used in Ireland and the Western world today. Surely an advanced civilisation of the future would develop a true understanding of the mind and leave such primitive therapies in the past?
What practices of today will be considered barbaric in the future?
A Balancing Act
It might eventually be discovered that the mind is a balancing act. It’s like an equation that needs to be balanced. Maybe mental disorders merely require appropriate treatment to neutralise both positive and negative electrical charges to return to homeostasis.
Perhaps we will discover that when positive and negative thoughts collide in the mind, they create enlightenment. Maybe this principle can be used to treat mental illness by neutralising both the positive and negative delusions of the mind. The mind and body use both positive and negative feedback loops. A positive feedback loop takes one away from balance.
A negative feedback loop brings one back towards balance. A healthy use of both is required to maintain homeostasis. Perhaps the mental health professionals of the future will use the power of both positive and negative feedback loops to help patients balance the mind, achieve homeostasis and ultimately enlightenment.
Medicine Nano Machines
A lot has been written in recent years about nanomachines. They are microscopic little machines smaller than a grain of sand, that could help perform medical procedures. Science fiction has a habit of becoming science fact.
It’s safe to assume that as the relentless march of technology continues, doctors will soon be able to use ever-more advanced machines to perform medical procedures. Technology has already been developed which enables certain doctors to remotely perform surgery by controlling an operating machine from the other side of the world.
We can expect the merging of humans and machines to increase. We can also expect that the size of these machines will decrease in the coming decades, as the tasks they perform get more and more complicated. Imagine a little machine that could be inserted into a patient to accurately diagnose medical conditions, unblock arteries, or remove unwanted cells such as tumours or fat cells. This technology is not too far in the distance.
Science fiction has a habit of becoming science fact.
Sound Therapy in Medicine
We all know that certain pieces of music can quickly change moods, and minds and help with healing. Perhaps healing soundwave technology will one day be developed that can both balance the mind and heal the body. This would be a breakthrough that at its core, will be possible by understanding and applying nature’s universal mathematical laws to the art of healing.
In conclusion
We may also discover in the not too-distant future that the scientific and mathematical principle of entropy – the movement from order to disorder – is the basis of all illness. The opposite – syntropy – is the movement from disorder to order. This is the basis of all healing, and life itself is a synergy of these opposites, a dance between nature’s duality.
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