Last week, as part of my company's investment work in the health care industry, I sat through a marketing pitch from a Chinese manufacturer of low-cost and disposable drug tests, many of which deliver results in mere seconds. They ranged from the familiar home pregnancy tests to sophisticated multi-panel urine screens (for narcotics) -- and even included a mouth swab for measuring blood-alcohol levels, the kind you'll soon be scooping out of a bowl at your favorite bar to check your ability to drive before heading home.
The pitch got me thinking about
our collective future in this era of rapid biological advances: We are heading toward a world in which pharmaceutically enhanced living will be the norm
throughout life, and not just among the chronically impaired and the elderly. Because these drugs, in the future, will play an even greater role in extending lives even longer than they do today, gaining access to them will become an even more contentious political issue -- both domestically and internationally -- than it is today (a good example being HIV therapies). ...