This article was written for Flipside that is published by the ITE for teenages. It is a slightly less dumbed down & child freindly version than the original (that avoided any actual reference to personal death, as it may be too scary a thought for today’s children!).

When will you die? On average, it is currently somewhere in your early eighties if you are fortunate to live in a wealthy country like the UK,  have the right genes and live a healthy and safe life. Scientific research, plus a strong desire by many people to live a healthy lifestyle, is bringing the prospect of most people living far longer, maybe well past 100.

The wealth that gives us advanced science has also led to problems such as obesity. Unfortunately, some parents today are outliving their (unhealthy) children but the good news is that on average, young people who take active care of their health and well-being, will in the future stand a much greater chance of getting the congratulatory message (from the monarch or maybe president by then), for their 100th birthday. The bad news is that retirement as we know it today may have to be abolished! Is being very old and fit enough to work such a bad prospect?

Perhaps much of the care needed by today’s older citizens will, in decades ahead, be automated with robots playing a part. Would you mind one day being tended by a machine and having companionship from a robot? Today’s young people, who have always had computers as part of daily life, may find these prospects less disturbing than those who are older!

The current bio-scientific revolution is enabling scientists and doctors to treat cells and eventually our bodies (which are collections of cells) as very complex machines that can be properly understood and thus engineered (involving DNA, proteins and hosts of other molecules and nano-structures). For example, manipulating stem cells that are the precursor to all other cells, are allowing us to fabricate new body parts. Understanding stem cells is also at the heart of understanding some diseases. It will probably be possible to greatly reduce common killers such as cancer and heart disease.

A further grand challenge in science is to understand the brain. Mental health will be better understood as a spectrum of conditions based on the fundamental biochemical and computing activity that is hosting the apparent consciousness we experience and refer to as our minds. As well as helping some mental health problems, this deeper understanding of neuroscience may also lead to a new revolution of bio-computing.