I was kind of disappointed in this. It is pretty heavy on space stuff and not much else.
I don’t think we will see a cure for cancer by 2050, but I would expect major advances in medicine. There is so much we don’t know now about the body and about disease. It is possible there will be a breakthrough and we’ll be able to banish major illnesses like Alzheimer’s.
On the minus side, there is considerable risk at present that we are going to have antibiotic resistance outrun the supply of new antibiotics. Germs with no antibiotic treatment would be a major healthcare disaster. Infections could kill a lot of people, as they used to in the pre-antibiotic era. And surgery is really not safe in the presence of truly antibiotic resistant bacteria.
I also think it is quite a sure thing that we are going to have continued extinction of all kinds of species and a reduction in biological diversity. Elephants are probably not going to make it, long term. Neither are orangutans, gorillas, tigers, etc. Too many poachers, too few animals, slow breeding rates, too high resource needs and competition with humans. Losing big animals like these might make people sad but is probably not an ecological catastrophe. But who knows what else we will lose, or how important it will be to the ecosystem?
