Tomorrow's People

by Susan Greenfield

  In any case, this morning all is well. Your wakening has triggered, via your body sensors, a hot cup of coffee, brewed in the machine at your bedside, a remote descendant of the coy little suburban Teasmade from the second half of the 20th century. This is just one simple example of how the deeply ingrained social and sensual aspects of eating and drinking are now meshing with the new technologies with a variety of outcomes. So what is happening in the kitchen?

  All appliances here are for the preparation of food and, irrespective of their actual function, the shared feature is that, of course, they are all ‘smart’. For example, your fridge ‘knows’ when you are low on milk or any other item that you use regularly. In fact, the fridge knows how often you usually use each item and can send orders to the supermarket, via coded identification tags, to restock and charge your account automatically. The barcode on each product is read off, and, as supplies run short, orders are placed and delivered to the door. If you wish to break with your normal habits and order something different, then, as well as the usual and well-established means of internet shopping, you can make a direct visual link to a supermarket and direct a shopper to cruise past each of the shelves on your behalf. You can discuss items with the shopper, who will supply additional information as to the source of the food, best recipes and anything else you might need to know. The shopper is, of course, virtual.

  Nowhere are the old and new more intrinsically combined than in the kitchen. Food remains obstinately in its old-fashioned bulk form. Nutrition pills, so confidently predicted by 20th-century sci-fi comics, exist now, but who would want to eat them? Although technology is able to encapsulate all the nutrition we need in a pill, the enormous pleasure derived from cooking, chewing, tasting and swallowing food ensures that it is still recognizable as such. Food pills are the fallback for fast refuelling, as junk foods were at the turn of the century. However, ever since the fast-food outlets were sued for masses of damages due to the obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases caused by high fat and salt intake, so crisps, hamburgers and sweets are now as obsolete and as reviled as cigarettes had become by the first decade of the century. So now food pills may well be fast, cheap and convenient to eat but producer and consumer alike are very anxious that they deliver the optimal nutritional package.

  Still, food pills are eaten only when you have no time for ‘real’ food. Although much has changed over the last few decades, the notion of cooking as a rewarding way of spending time has persisted. How you cook, on the other hand, has been completely revolutionized. For a start, the physically isolated and extremely clean conditions in which everyone lives have led to a general predisposition to infection and allergies that is far more widespread than in the 20th century. Everyone is now far more sensitive to microbes, toxins and contaminants than they used to be. All the surfaces in your kitchen have been treated so that they are bacteria-repellent. Preparation of food is taken very seriously in terms of hygiene, and you first have to scrub down at the committed hands-only sink in your kitchen.

  You think what you might cook up for breakfast. You could use your ‘flashbake’ oven, which cooks as fast or faster than a microwave, whilst crisping or browning the food in a manner similar to that of a traditional oven by combining microwaves with other heat sources. A screen in the oven-door shows instructions, and an encouraging voice guides you through a recipe; sensors can read the same identification tags on the food that were previously monitored by the fridge. Alternatively, you can request a master-class from a top chef to guide you through the steps of an elaborate recipe. The chef not only explains what you have to do and how to do it but also provides interesting tips and answers any queries you have as you proceed. If you wish to know still more, the maitre will describe the origins and cultural history of the food you are preparing, discuss its nutritional features, as well as suggesting accompanying dishes and wine.

  As you finally serve your meal you access a nutrition read-out regarding calories, fat content and all else necessary for you to appreciate how well, or how poorly, this particular meal fits in with your personal daily dietary requirements. This information has been generated at the start of each day from the amassed body data that was collected whilst you slept. Your recommended food intake is estimated using the database of your usual energy requirements, age, weight and usual intake, and now any small shifts in your weight and fat content that may have occurred overnight, as well as additional information that you are about to spend an unusually energetic or lethargic day, will be taken into account.

  Occasionally you like to break out of normal behaviour patterns and indulge in a ready-cooked meal not anticipated by the smart fridge. So you order a takeaway. Through your voice-activated central computer system, not only can you see your ideal pizza but you can also sample its taste and smell before you order. Even as far back as 2002 there was the fledgling technology to create a desk-top printer that ‘printed’ tastes and smells, by means of a cartridge with hundreds of water-based flavours deposited in specific combinations and amounting to over a thousand different smells.

  Still, all food, whether home-cooked or takeaway or a mere pill, comes from genetically modified produce. You settle down to your meal – this is one of the few remaining experiences that are ‘real’, involving an interaction with the atomic, physical world and a direct sensory experience solely within your physical body, and no one else's. As you indulge in chewing, sniffing, tasting and swallowing – you reflect how attitudes to GM foods have changed in a relatively short period of time. The first GM foods contained the actual substance of the source organism, as tomato purée does; more frequently now, however, they consist of purified derivatives that are actually indistinguishable from the non-GM organism, such as lecithins and certain oils and proteins from soya. Since the GM lecithin is chemically identical to its non-GM counterpart, it is hard to see how it presents any additional health risk.

  The problem at the turn of the century was the impossibility of guaranteeing the purity of each substance. Nowadays, focused tests are still needed to ensure that alien additional sequences are not absorbed by human tissues or into gut micro-organisms. GM foods have now, for several generations, been part of the culture with no disastrous consequences, so the public is more accepting. Opinion first began to change when people realized that there was simply no alternative way to feed what was then known as ‘the developing world’, that vast majority of technologically disenfranchised humanity that cast such a shadow over the achievements of the early part of this century; according to UN estimates of the time, 800 million around the globe were undernourished. As well as combating mass starvation, the use of GM foods has reduced the number of children suffering from blindness due to Vitamin A deficiency from 100 million to zero. 400 million women of childbearing age no longer suffer from iron deficiency, which had increased the risk of birth defects. Rice is now routinely engineered to contain beta-carotene, ready for conversion by the body into iron and Vitamin A. And pests had been a problem for crop-growers: for example, 7 per cent of all corn had had to be destroyed. The use of GM crops, engineered to be pest-resistant, eliminated such wastage, as well as providing an attractive alternative to highly toxic pesticides.

  However, the biggest incentive for wholesale acceptance of GM foods ended up being, quite simply, personal gain. Interestingly enough, the gain now has nothing to do with health or nutrition. You look out into a world that is no longer composed of the muted mists and shades of previous centuries. Instead, because much of your time is spent processing artificial, heightened and bright colours screened on the windows and walls of the home, even the bright colours of unmodified carrots, spinach or tomatoes would appear dull and unappetizing compared with their iridescent modern counterparts. Now that food has become the main vehicle for that rare and prized phenomenon, direct stimulation of the senses, manufacturers have realized that by genetically modifying the non-essential features that sledgehammer the senses they can make their consumers happy. />
  For a long time, the taste of each ingredient has been genetically engineered to be much more intense. Any edible substance can take on the flavour of any other. This flexibility is just as well since the production costs of ‘real’ chocolate, for example, preclude it as a viable product, as do the prohibitive amounts of sugar it contains. The colours of foods, too, are far more vivid and standardized. And not just colour – the physical form is more attractive too. Food also comes in a vastly more varied range of shapes and sizes. Thanks to genetic engineering, as well as precision manipulation of the atoms that constitute matter (nanotechnology), you can now choose to have cuboid vegetables or meat in geometric shapes. So bulk stacking in the fridge is easier, and the fridge can monitor consumption rates more easily, as the scanning tags are all in a uniform position.

  Another advantage over ‘natural’ food is that everything is now bio-engineered to be easier to prepare; for example, grains now come with encapsulated liquid that is released when microwaved. Dripping, messy sauces are also a thing of the past and are now integral, not free-flowing but magnetized so that you can rub them off with a fork or a finger. Moreover, it is almost impossible to obtain food that has not been enriched with vitamins, minerals and other agents such as fish oils that ensure optimum body maintenance. The neutroceuticals industry is flourishing as never before. Potatoes are engineered to combat constipation; cucumbers come in a purple variety, with as much Vitamin A as cantaloupe melons; carrots are maroon in colour because they contain beta-carotene in massive amounts to improve night vision; and salad dressing will lower cholesterol with regular use. Particularly popular is the bespoke neutroceutical option: food is custom-engineered for you, not just to deliver your particular taste preferences but also to cater for your particular health requirements. Your personal medical profile is monitored and fed into a continually updated programme that engineers foods with supplements according to your particular needs. Yet, like everyone else nowadays, you cannot easily draw a line between the genetic engineering employed to produce interesting food that hyper-stimulates your now cyber-jaded senses and that designed to optimize your health by direct intervention at the genetic level, be it for prevention or cure. Then again, everyone now is aware that it is prevention, rather than cure, of disease that is very much the dominant medical strategy.

  Gene therapy is now finally in common clinical use, whereby rogue or aberrant genes linked to disease are modified, ideally before they can realize their unwelcome potential. The main genes for cancer have been identified, and there are now various ways in which it is possible to intercept and block tumour growth. As well as manipulating genes there are a variety of alternative ways to manipulate their end-products. The new class of monoclonal medication has proved more powerful for tackling cancer cells than the naturally occurring antibodies of the immune system; in addition, there are the angiogenesis blockers that starve a tumour of its blood supply, as well as ever more vaccines.

  Everyone acknowledges now that cancer is triggered by a range of factors, such as tobacco, diet, toxins, radiation and oestrogen, and lifestyles have therefore changed dramatically to reduce these triggers. At the beginning of the 21st century, 70–90 per cent of all cancers were deemed to be related to environment and lifestyle. Now, fear of cancer is really a thing of the past. Even by 2020 there was a complete encyclopaedia of all the genes linked to cancer, that either triggered or prevented the growth of a tumour.

  Old age, so rare in nature and in pre-20th-century human history, because of injury and infection, is now the norm. In part old age has been made a comfortable experience by the prevention of diseases, either those inherent in the body, such as cancer, or those caused by external viruses. A central factor in ageing was identified way back in the previous century: the destruction of the fragile membranes of the cells of the body by aggressive molecules known collectively as ‘free radicals’. Despite their exotic, anarchic-sounding soubriquet, these small molecules merely have an unpaired electron, which nonetheless makes all the difference. The once innocuous chemical now becomes very reactive, and interactive, with the molecules that make up the structure of cells. These ensuing interactions (a blanket term for which is ‘oxidative stress’) lead to many unwanted consequences, including the fraying of the protective ends on chromosomes, telomeres, which have been likened to the plastic cap on a shoelace that prevents it unravelling. Once it had been discovered that the famous prototype clone, Dolly the sheep, had shorter telomeres than would be expected for her calendar age – and far more commensurate with the age of the sheep from which she was cloned – people began to be more circumspect about cloning. The debate about how directly shorter telomeres could be linked to physical ageing continued into the 21st century. But though the premature fraying of telomeres was a concern, at the same time a potential retaliatory strategy was discovered: the enzyme telomerase. Telomerase is usually present only in sperm and eggs (‘germ cells’), where it keeps telomeres long, and prevents them from deteriorating like all the other ‘somatic’ cells in the body. This process inspired a new anti-ageing treatment. If telomerase could be arranged to do the same job in the rest of the cells in the body, then they too would have far more efficient, long telomeres. And if chromosomes had long telomeres, then they would not end up sticking together, and the cells that they govern would, in turn, survive for longer; the body that those cells make up would therefore survive more effectively.

  Another common therapy nowadays, pioneered at the beginning of the 21st century, involves stem cells. Stem cells are cells that are in an early stage of development, and hence highly adaptable, depending on the environment into which they are placed: they will become neurons if placed among neurons, or cardiac cells if grown with heart tissue. Technology exploiting the versatility of stem cells had already been realized by the turn of the century, whereby new organs and body tissue might be grown to replace defective ones. The only technical drawback then was that unfettered cell division would continue long after transplantation, leading to an increased possibility of tumours in the host tissue. However, stem cells are now engineered to divide only at temperatures hotter than the body (around 40 degrees), so that when introduced into their new and cooler environment of 37 degrees, further proliferation ceases. The ethical issue about working with human material, like the concerns about GM foods, rapidly dissipated once the clear benefit was established.

  Another cornerstone of late-21st-century healthcare is nanomedicine: miniature devices patrol your body, giving early warning of possible problems or delivering just the right amount of medication to just the right place. These new therapies, combined with advances in traditional treatments and knowledge of disease as well as healthier lifestyles, all add up to longer life expectancy. A thousand years ago life expectancy was just 25 years, but even by 2002, in Britain, men and women could expect to celebrate their 75th birthdays, and a female born at that time already had a 40 per cent chance of living 150 years. By 2050 there were 2 billion people over 60 years old worldwide, with such ‘seniors’ making up a third or more of many populations. Much had happened over the previous few decades for such long lifespans to be truly the norm.

  Everyone now recognizes that ageing is not a specific disease but a general deterioration of the many processes that sustain body function; of these, the most feared is still a decrease in vitality and often degradation of intellect. Now science holds the promise not just of protracting mere existence but also of actually extending active life. For a long time now people have been aware of the need to view the mental abilities of older people in their own terms, rather than in comparison with immature, growing brains.

  Young people show a ‘fluid’ intelligence; as its name suggests, the primary ability here is one of ready adaptation, to learn in a quick and agile fashion. Yet as we age, as we all know, this skill seems to decline. If you compare the speed with which a young and old person learn a task, the elderly, inevitably, will be less impressive. But then there is a s
econd type of mental prowess, ‘crystalline’ intelligence, whereby past experiences are used to assess and interpret the current situation. Needless to say, older people outstrip younger ones in tasks requiring experience and prior knowledge. Perhaps that is one of the reasons, aside from depletion of a ready supply of appropriate brain chemicals and frayed chromosomes, why ‘fluid’ intelligence is harder for the older brain. There could be a neurological sales resistance to accepting any new process or fact without it first being filtered through preexisting associations and values. However, the big problem nowadays is that there seems little need for crystalline intelligence; facts no longer need to be learnt, and there are no new, unforeseen events that require ‘wisdom’ to evaluate them… The brain can be kept agile by stimulation with interactive IT; and older people as a consequence have kept their fluid intelligence for longer.

  But as you stare at your steaming food your immediate concern is how hungry you are. Even though your particular genetic read-out does not place you at any specific risk of a specific cancer, you are obviously keen to ensure that you live as long as possible. Over a century ago now, the effects of dietary restriction on longevity in rats were reported by two Yale nutritionists, Thomas Osborne and Lafayette B. Mendel: they found that rats eating only 50–60 per cent of that consumed without restriction by a comparable group of rats lived significantly longer. Subsequent experiments in more modern times confirmed these findings, and indeed went on to show that the effect was not the result of the elimination of one particular toxic substance, nor was it a simple slowing down of development since the effect still worked in mature animals. Further careful investigation revealed that the abstemious rats were not living longer due to any decrease in body fat, nor due to a decreased metabolism. In fact, the beneficial effect seemed to be generally protective rather than a slowing of senescence.