If you can predict your death, do you want to? For most of human history, the answer was a It’s correct. In Neolithic China, prophets practiced pyro-osteomancy, or read bones; the ancient Greeks divided the future by the flight of birds; Mesopotamian even tried to plot the future in the fascination of dead animals. We’ve looked at the stars and the movements of the planets, we’ve looked at weather patterns, and we’ve even looked at physical fortune-telling as superstition. children born with a caul” to ensure good luck in the future and a long life. By the 1700s, the art of prediction had become a bit more scientific, with mathematician and probability expert Abraham de Moivre attempting to calculate his own mortality using equations, but the predictions were really accurate. The body is still out of reach.
Then, in June 2021, de Moivre’s greatest wish came true: Scientists have discovered the first reliable measurement to determine the length of your life. Using a dataset of 5,000 protein measurements from about 23,000 Icelanders, researchers working for decode Genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland has developed a tool to predict downtime — or, as their press release explains, “How much life is left?. “It’s an unusual statement, and it comes with specific questions about our methods, our ethics, and our meaning in life.
A technology that accurately predicts death promises to change the way we think about our mortality. For most people, most of the time, death remains a vague consideration, haunting the dark corners of our minds. But knowing when our lives will end, knowing the days and hours left, removes that comfortable abstraction. It also makes us look at risk differently; for example, we are more likely to try Unproven therapy in an attempt to beat the odds. If the prediction comes far enough ahead, most of us might even try to prevent the event from happening or avoid the outcome. Science fiction often tantalizes us with that possibility; movies like Minority Report, Thrill Seekers, and destroyer The franchise uses cutting-edge knowledge of the future to change the past, averting death and disaster (or not) before it happens. Indeed, when fit and healthy people think about predicting death, they tend to think of sci-fi possibilities – a future where death and disease are eradicated before they can be caught. head. But for disabled people like me, the technology that predicts death serves as a reminder that we are often seen as better off dead. A science for predicting the length of life carries a judgment about its worth: that more life equals a better or more worthwhile life. It’s hard not to see the rampage of a technocratic agency taking down the most vulnerable.
Explore this summer is the work of researchers Kari Stefansson and Thjodbjorg Eiriksdottir, who found that individual proteins in our DNA are involved in overall mortality — and that different causes of death still exist.” similar protein profiles. Eiriksdottir claims they were able to measure these profiles in just one blood draw, seeing in the plasma a sort of hourglass for the rest. Scientists call these mortality-monitoring metrics biomarkers, and 106 of them help predict all-cause (rather than disease-specific) mortality. But the breakthrough for Stefansson, Eiriksdottir and their research team was scale. The process they develop is called SOMAMER .-based Multichannel Proteomic Assay, and it means the team can measure thousands upon thousands of proteins at once.
The results of all these measurements are not exact date and time. Instead, it gives medical professionals the ability to accurately predict the top patient percentage most likely to die (have the highest risk, about 5% of the total) and also the highest rate at least potentially fatal (lowest risk), from a single needle sting and a small vial of blood. That might not sound like a crystal ball, but it’s clearly just a leap. The deCODE researchers plan to improve the process to make it “more useful,” and the effort, along with other projects, is racing for first place in the process. death prediction technology, which includes an artificial intelligence algorithm for palliative care. The creators of this algorithm hope to use “AI’s cold calculation“To drive clinicians’ decisions and force loved ones to have the dreaded conversation — because there’s a world of difference between ‘I’m dying’ and ‘I’m dying right now’.
