At the end of the 19th century in Western Europe the life expectancy was an average of 37 years. Today, the world average is 66 years. However, in the close future this figure will surely increase even more as technological and medical advances give people new ways to prolong their lives.
A couple of years back there existed heart pumps that could keep you alive in a hospital for some time until you found a heart donor. Today, there is a heart device that after being installed will let you walk out of the hospital as if you are perfectly fine. A 65 year-old Quebec man, received a long term mechanical heart last month (Nov 23) and now is well enough to leave the hospital. For people in the past this procedure would be surely described as the “walking dead”, and be as freaky as it gets. For us, today, this procedure is not weird at all, except for the hefty pricetag of $100,000. With the lifespan for the mechanical heart being 10 years, this guy has just bought more time for his life.
Unbeliavable, I assume in another 30 years there will be such devices for every problem we can die of, and a couple of rich people living on them up to 120-130 years of age. Forget immortality pills, who needs them?
This entry was posted by Tommy Morris
on Sunday, December 17th, 2006 at 4:58 am and is filed under Science.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
