2020 vision: live to 120

Sydney Morning Herald ~ November 8, 2004 - 2:37PM


A life expectancy of 120, glow-in-the-dark cats and wiping out diseases with the bite of a banana - welcome to life in 2020.
Scientists say this and more is possible within 16 years.
Craig Cormick, from the federal government's Biotechnology Australia, said today advances in biotechnology had the ability to provide significant lifestyle changes for humans, including the ability to live 40 years beyond the current average life expectancy.
"The fundamental difference is we'll no longer be treating diseases, we'll be treating wellness," he said today.
"If we can sequence a child's genome when they're born, and by 2020, before they're born, you can test a child's genetic make-up while they're still in the womb and undertake corrective measures."
By 2020 it is predicted medicines will be tailored to your own genetic make-up, you will be able to clone your own organs if something goes awry, and have the ability to slow your ageing process.
"These ones are in the realm of scientific possibility ... because they're things we're doing at the moment, they're technologies we're starting with or we're doing them in mammals to some extent," Mr Cormick said.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
A conference in Brisbane this week is exploring visions of biotechnology into the future, including their benefits and risks.
Mr Cormick said those visions included growing crops with vitamins and vaccines to counter health problems such as diabetes, types of cancers, malnutrition and vitamin deficiency.
"We expect by the year 2020 we'll see lots of our foods with increased health attributes," Mr Cormick said.
And the use of biotechnology in the future could mean puss will never be the same again.
"You'll be able to change the colour of your cat or dog," Mr Cormick said.
"We already know you can put genes into rabbits and fish and make them glow.
"People are willing to look for novelty and it's well within the realms of possibility if people want to have a glow-in-the-dark cat or designer dog."
Mr Cormick said it was also possible humans would be drinking recycled waste water as biotechnology processes created certain bacteria which could be used to purify water.
However, scientists were wary of overstepping the mark.
"Every time you're tinkering with life to any extent you worry people," Mr Cormick said.
"There will always be a side-effect or an impact that we have to consider ethically. The best way that's done is through working with the community."

Hola!
Another day down as we plummet headlong towards the weekend. Today was good, though very busy, I barely had time to think. Monday was much the same which probably led to me having yesterday off work... I woke up feeling horrible and burnt out. Just couldn't do it, just shuffled around the house feeling fluey.
I did have one victory though, I managed to get py2exe to generate an exe file from one of my python projects... finally I can do something a bit more useful (at least ina windows environment). I hear that Nokia are working towards releasing python for symbian-based mobile phones. Cool!
Looks like nokia have officially announced the 7710, but no mention of it being available to Australia. Damn. I was hoping to combine my next phone with more pda functionality, doesn't look like that will be happening quite as soon as I had planned.

___today___
m: strung-out but energised.
b: toasted ham, mushroom and tomato sandwhich.
k: 2
l: tomato and capsicum tuna with zuchini and rice.
c: 10
g: 4

I bet $10 on our Melbourne Cup sweep at work for yesterdays race, got nuddin, absolutely nuddin. I think I won $25 last year tho. All part of the game really.

2moro night Lisa is on again at comedy, so I'm going to that, I'm working down at the Rocks on Friday, so will be staying at her place. I'm working Sunday back in the office too, so not much time available to spend with the girl this weekend it seems. She has a photoshop course on Saturday too, but hey, it's all good, we'll take what we can get, and there's plenty more opportunity as we do get most other weekends to ourselves (well, we have something planned on most weekends anyway, but that's our choice). Y'know we've spoken everyday for 4 and a half months? amazing.

oh, i have a new favourite site: http://tosic.com/... nice work nikola!

Yeh baby!
http://www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/29/1098992276594.html

They chose one of my photos!
How awesome.

Day is going well, lunch is sausages, eggs, rice with carrot, peas and red capsicum.

REGURGITATOR The Marquee, 128 Pyrmont Bridge Road, CamperdownThursday and November 5, 8pm
$22Bookings 9557 0221
They play Caringbah Bizzo's on November 7. There's a free midnight gig in Pitt Street Mall the following night. And they play Homebake on December 4.


This is also my 3rd day without a cig. Did I say that Mick and I are going to go to the Food and Wine expo in Hyde park on Saturday? yeh, I think I did.

till then, 'au reviour'.

I've just submitted 20 photo's to Sydney Morning Herald for consideration for an online gallery called "built environment"... wish me luck! I'm not expecting them to use any of mine, but I'll make a certainty if I don't submit any I guess.

Off to the supermarket now for some late grocery shopping (the idea is to beat the rush, hopefully not everyone elses idea too)....

later