If you could predict your own death, would you want to? For most of human history, the answer has been yes. In Neolithic China, fortune tellers practiced pyro-osteomania, or bone reading. The ancient Greeks divined the future by the flight of birds. The Mesopotamians even tried to plot the future in the decayed entrails of dead animals. We’ve looked to the stars and the movement of the planets, we’ve looked at weather patterns, and even done physical divination to ensure future good fortune and a long life expectancy. By the 1700s, the art of prediction had become slightly more scientific, with mathematician and probability expert Abraham de Moivre attempting to calculate when you would die—the way to calculate it was with an equation—but truly accurate predictions remained elusive.
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Then, in June 2021, de Moivre’s greatest wish seemed to come true: Scientists have discovered the first reliable measurement for determining how long you will live. Using a dataset of 5,000 protein measurements from about 23,000 Icelanders, researchers working for deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland, developed a predictor of time of death—or, as their press release explains, “how much of a person’s life is left.” It’s an unusual claim, and it comes with specific questions about methodology, ethics, and what we mean by life.
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A technology to accurately predict death promises to upend the way we think about our mortality. For most people, most of the time, death remains a vague estimate, haunting the shadowy recesses of our minds. But knowing when our lives end, understanding the days and hours we have left, removes that shield of carelessness. It also makes us view risk differently – we are, for example, more likely to try unproven treatments in an attempt to beat the odds. Understandably, most of us might try to avert the eventuality or avert the outcome. Science fiction often tempts us with this possibility, with films like Minority Report, Thrill Seekers and the Terminator franchise using advanced knowledge of the future to change the past, preventing death and destruction before it happens. A science of predicting lifespan carries with it a judgment about its value: that more life equals better or more worthwhile life.
This summer’s breakthrough was the work of researchers Kari Stefansson and Thjodbjorg Eiriksdottir, who found that individual proteins in our DNA are associated with overall mortality – and that different causes of death still have similar “protein profiles.” The process they developed is called the SOMAmer-Based Multiplex Proteomic Assay, and it means the team can measure thousands of proteins at once.
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The result of all these measurements is not an exact date and time. Instead, it gives medical professionals the ability to accurately predict the highest percentage of patients who are most likely to die (at the highest risk, about 5 percent of the total) and also the highest percentage who are least likely to die (at the lowest risk), all with just a prick of a needle and a small vial of blood. The deCODE researchers plan to improve the process to make it more “useful,” and this effort joins other projects that are racing to be first in death prediction technology.
Information source: newsupdate.uk
