Five Diseases Technology Will Help Cure in the next 10 years
April 09, 2017
Five Diseases Technology Will Help Cure in the next 10 years
Within the next ten years, many diseases may be cured with new knowledge and technology. Medical breakthroughs are happening every day. Corporations and pharmaceutical companies are racing to be first to discover remedies. Some of the richest people in the world have set out to find cures for the most widespread diseases, because they can. What diseases might be cured first?
Diabetes
Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Blood glucose is your main source of energy and comes from the food you eat. Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, helps glucose from food get into your cells to be used for energy. Sometimes your body doesn’t make enough insulin. Glucose then stays in your blood and does not reach your cells. Although there are many shady web sites claiming they can cure diabetes with a smoothie, there is no known cure for Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes at this time. However, new research offers hope that a cure for all types of diabetes may be possible in the next 10 years.
Cancer
Cancer is the name given to a collection of related diseases. In all types of cancer, some of the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues. Advances in genetics, imaging, nanomedicine and immunotherapy could pave the way for an effective cure of all types of cancer within 10 years. Dementia and Parkinson’s Thanks to improving imaging techniques that allow researchers to view activity in the brain, epigenetics and personalized medicine, these neurological disorders may be cured in the next 10 years with proper funding.
Malaria
Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease caused by a parasite that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito which feeds on humans. People who get malaria are typically very sick with high fevers, shaking chills, and flu-like illness. Although, the development of an effective malaria vaccine faces major challenges, the number of people in areas of risk (3.2 billion), make it a disease that must be defeated.
Blindness
Effective cures for many of the conditions that cause a loss of vision are predicted soon using stem cells, surgeries and bionic eyes.
Not Snake Oil
The reason I believe these diseases will be cured soon is because of the rapid growth of merging technologies. Nanotechnology and pharmaceuticals are teaming up to take on cancer with nanomedicine. Biotechnology and imaging methods are working to cure diseases of the brain. Quantum computers and artificial intelligence may one day soon help us find answers to the really hard questions.
Not Without Risk
Emerging, perhaps disruptive, technologies such as genome editing and stem-cell therapy can have ethics or safety issues, but they bring the promise of good things with them, like eliminating inherited defects and helping the body fix itself. Risk must also be taken to fund highly lucrative but expensive projects, that may lead to a dead end.
As with most technologies, I hope these future medical cures will be available to all.
Image of doctors performing surgery from Wikimedia
Image of man with dementia © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar, via Wikimedia Commons
Image of cataract in human eye by Rakesh Ahuja, MD (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Mosquito from Pixabay
Diabetes Kit via Pixabay
Smake Oil Salesman by Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
