Forbidden Chapter Eight

Real Universal Health

“It is not just new viruses that have doctors worried.  Perhaps the most ominous prospect of all is a virulent strain of influenza. Every so often, a highly lethal strain emerges.  Unlike HIV, flu moves through the air and is highly contagious.  The last killer strain showed up in 1918 and claimed 20 million lives — more than all the combat deaths in World War I.  And that was before global air travel; the next outbreak could be even more devastating.”                                               

   —Time Magazine

By now during my Neothink Visions, the images centered more and more around our health.  More than anything else in the twenty-first century, the people cried out for the geniuses, with their groundbreaking technologies, to eradicate virulent diseases.

Devastating new diseases were on the rise and, perhaps even worse, drug-resistant strains of several old killer diseases were back.  Those frightening new diseases and new strains tended to break down our acceptance of the FDA that suppressed the rise of Neothink geniuses in the medical industry and held back the rapid advancement of the medical industry.  Our physical survival more and more depended on rapid advancement.

My Twelfth Vision showed me that during the early twenty-first century, doctors were less and less able to handle certain infectious diseases that were gaining resistance to antibiotics.  A powerful warning came when only a single remaining antibiotic could stop a popular strain of staph infection that commonly spread throughout hospitals.  Once that lone remaining antibiotic ceased to work, hospitals would become risky places to visit. Then, the common strep infection gained resistance to antibiotics. My Twelfth Vision warned me of the increasing danger as we advanced into the new millennium.  A killer disease, tuberculosis, returned, this time attacking our children, and this time even a combination of antibiotics could not stop it.  

In short, infectious diseases caught up with and began to surpass modern medicine in the twenty-first century.  The FDA worked against a major medical revolution that was just waiting to explode with greater force than the computer revolution.  In fact, the inherent force of a medical/biotech explosion was so great that even with the FDA, genetic engineering such as the Human Genome Project and other biomedical projects were advancing at an all-time pace.  But the mighty biomedical explosion could not ignite with the FDA smothering progress. As with computers, the technology needed quick access to the marketplace, which the FDA blocked.  Indeed, the marketplace is the oxygen needed to ignite the biomedical explosion, which the FDA smothered.

Here is a brief review of a Time Magazine warning.  

Killers All Around

New Viruses and Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Are Reversing

Human Victories Over Infectious Disease

(A Review of Time Magazine Cover Story)

The Time Magazine cover story begins by reminding us how, not long ago, humanity thought that infectious diseases were rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  In the 1970s, the medical world started boasting its imminent victory.  And why not? Previously deadly illnesses such as polio, small pox, malaria, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus “seemed like quaint reminders of a bygone era, like Model T Fords or silent movies”.  And antibiotics transformed the most terrifying diseases known to mankind such as tuberculosis, syphilis, pneumonia, bacterial meningitis, and even bubonic plague into “mere inconveniences that if caught could be cured with pills or shots”.  Medical students were being told not to go into infectious disease, a “declining speciality”.  Instead, they were advised to concentrate on “real problems” such as cancer and heart disease.

But, unfortunately, today the era of great medical success and confidence has been giving way to a new era of unnerving medical defeats…and fear.  The Time cover story states, “The question ceased to be, When will infectious disease be wiped out? and became, Where will the next deadly new plague break out?” The article goes on to tell us about new lethal agents emerging in Africa and South America.  As population grows and man settles new parts of the world, such as a new part of the Brazilian rain forest, for example, new deadly diseases spread from other animals such as monkeys to humans.  As those deadly agents adapt to humans, they gain the potential for large-scale deadly pandemics.  In a world of extensive air travel, those deadly agents become just a plane ride from America.

And it could get worse, the Time article claims.  Antibiotics are our main defense that stand between us and some of the most deadly bacterial diseases.  But bacteria have been evolving and steadily adapting for survival, and now they are well adapting to antibiotics.  In fact, the article warns us that every disease known to man is already resistant to antibiotics of one form or another.  Several devastating diseases once thought to be nearly eradicated are back and on the rise: malaria, cholera, measles, tuberculosis, even bubonic plague.  Perhaps even more threatening are the “seemingly prosaic but once deadly infections” staph and strep.  They have become much harder to treat.  Both spread through the cleanest of hospitals, routinely cured with antibiotics. But as those two infections develop universal resistance, the article questions, what will happen to our hospitals?

“One of medicine’s worst nightmares is the development of a drug-resistant strain of severe invasive strep A,” the article states.  Severe, invasive strep A killed Muppeteer Jim Henson in 1990; this vicious killer is on the rise.

Bacteria adapt to antibiotics because, while rapidly multiplying, bacteria mutate and change slightly, just enough to outwit their combatant drugs.

Viruses, on the other hand, are usually tamed and sometimes even eradicated by the preventive vaccine.  But the article points out that new viruses keep emerging.  Viruses that have gone undetected, inhabiting animal populations, can and sometimes do make the jump to humans.  The Time article tells us that was the case with some very lethal African viruses such as Ebola, which made the jump from monkeys to humans.

Still, the biggest fear of all, as explained in that Time Magazine article, would be another killer flu, which usually makes the jump from another animal to humans.  Humans have little defense against such a flu, and if it took hold, then it would wreak deadly havoc.  The 1997-1998 Hong Kong “chicken flu” introduced such a killer flu that, tragically, killed a few people in Hong Kong but, fortunately, did not take hold and go into a widespread outbreak.  Now, each year that avian flu attempts to jump to and spread among humans.  When a global outbreak does happen, the world will never be the same.

The Time Magazine article was a warning.  Today’s biomedical progress is impressive, but is it moving fast enough? The answer is: no, not until the technology has quick access to the marketplace, as do the computers.  And that means no regulatory FDA.

The definitive antidote is “begging” to happen now, in the early twenty-first century, to rescue the human race from the threatening plagues.  That antidote to the threatening human catastrophes is: super rapidly evolving technologies.  Only rapidly evolving new technologies can win the race against rapidly evolving infectious diseases.  But those new technologies will not evolve quickly enough until they can swiftly reach the marketplace.

Starting in the late twentieth century, continuing into the twenty-first century, the national media such as Time Magazine repeatedly warned us we were suddenly losing the race against infectious diseases, with mutant strains of old diseases returning after decades of “absence” and new diseases invading us with devastating results.  The media warned that a medical defeat to microbes could bring with it human catastrophes such as those experienced in the time of bubonic plague, polio, and killer flus. The Superflu of 1918 infected over one billion people, half the world’s population in 1918, and killed over 20 million people in just 10 months.  Never in the history of the world had there been so many deaths in such a short period of time.  Man has not experienced anything close to that catastrophic pandemic since, but in the early twenty-first century, scientists fear a repeat is not far away.

The 1918 Spanish Flu, as it was often called, actually started right here in the United States and infected 25% of our population.  Doctors have warned in the early twenty-first century that logistically “we are due” for another killer strain.  In fact, in 1976, we survived a great scare — a false alarm, or perhaps more apropos, a fair warning:  A soldier at Fort Dix, New Jersey got the flu and died.  The medical world was stunned when the virus taken from the dead soldier was a descendent of the 1918 killer flu.  The medical world braced itself for another catastrophe of unthinkable proportions.  But the deadly virus that made the jump from birds to humans was an isolated case unable, this time, of passing among humans.  This time, we were lucky.  Next time…

Only super rapidly advancing new technology can prevent a “next time”.  The race is on.  Every year a handful of people die from avian flu.  It is only a matter of time before it will pass freely from human to human.  The new technology of genetic engineering has the potential to permanently and universally stop deadly viruses and bacteria.  The problem with this promising new technology in the early twenty-first century, however, is that it is not super rapidly advancing, not fast enough…not until the removal of the FDA.  Remember, super rapidly advancing new technology demands rapid access to the marketplace.  Breakthrough technologies and drugs must freely reach the marketplace.  Private regulatory services with risk-rating systems would be in place, but simply put, the way things are now with the FDA, we will lose the race.  For a computerlike medical revolution to happen, the FDA will have to come to an end in order to spring loose the geniuses of society and their new technologies.  

The following brief review from the same issue of Time Magazine reveals new technologies pursued by doctors, scientists, and businessmen (but again, missing the key ingredient of market-accessible super rapidly advancing new technologies):

Counterattack:

How Drugmakers Are Fighting Back

(A Review of Time Magazine Article)

“Doctors and the public were not alone in feeling cocky about infectious disease a decade ago.  The drug companies did too,” so began the article.  “More than 100 antibiotics were on the market, and they had most bacterial diseases on the run, if not on the verge of eradication.”  

The pharmaceutical industry simply modified existing antibiotics to stay one step ahead of the bacteria.  But that approach no longer works.  So, researchers are turning to new technologies to get back in the lead against disease.  

One dynamic approach is called “rational” drug design. Scientists study the molecular structure of a bacterium, particularly the active site of the enzyme used by the bacterium to fight off the antibiotic.  Next, scientists attempt to design a molecule to “plug up” the active site of that enzyme.  Without the effect of that enzyme, the bacterium would once again be killed by the original drug.

A similar concept is being pursued against viruses.  You see, viruses cause their damage by invading our bodies’ living cells. To invade a living cell involves receptor sites, like little hooks, where the virus joins the cell.  Similarly, a molecule can be designed to block the receptor sites so the virus never attaches to our cells thus remains harmless to our bodies.  …So goes the search for such defendant molecules through combinatorial chemistry.

Again, the problem with such new medical technologies is that they are not super rapidly advancing …not as they should be, not like, say, computer technology.  How, then, did our country finally get medical technology to super rapidly advance to prevent the coming human catastrophes?  My Twelfth Vision showed me:

The Great Rescue

I witnessed during the Twelfth Vision that the looming medical catastrophes helped us see reality and depoliticize the medical industry.  Two things happened at once by depoliticizing medicine: 1) record amounts of private research funds went toward medical research, and 2) a record number of entrepreneurial geniuses went into medical research.  Those unhindered geniuses of society drove medical technology into unimaginable new dimensions that eradicated the most complex diseases.  In short, the Neothink geniuses drove forth those new technologies to save our lives.  

Depoliticizing the medical industry, depoliticizing everything about it from regulations on health insurance to regulations on medical research, saved many tens of millions of lives.

Today, each added increment of politicizing the medical industry further bureaucratizes and slows advancing new medical technology, which in turn dramatically drives away private research funds.  Medical projects become too inefficient and cost-prohibitive for businesses to invest.  Moreover, the lone entrepreneurs, those aggressive geniuses of society, could never function in such a cost-prohibitive, risky environment.  The force of their creativity and endless energy that so propelled the free computer/Internet industry is but a fraction of what it could be in the medical industry.  They are needed to unlock the cures to the most complex diseases.  

In the Twelfth Vision, those geniuses, once they were free to flourish and leap into Neothink, rapidly unlocked otherwise impossible combinations.  

Politicization ravages our health and costs us millions of precious lives.  Each incremental step the other way — depoliticizing the medical industry — dramatically frees up thus speeds up advancing technology, which in turn dramatically attracts private research funds and opens up the medical industry to the entrepreneurs and their endless energy and creativity, their speed and ability to ferret out brilliant advances.  

In the Twelfth Vision, I witnessed that we outgrew our desire to be ruled over.  As people began dying in increasing numbers, at a faster rate than the bio-tech advancements started saving people, we chose to depoliticized the medical industry to make it as free as the computer industry.  Survival pressures changed our toleration levels for debilitating big government.  Without it, the geniuses did to medicine what they did to computers.  Our country won this race against the microbes.  In the Twelve-Visions World, after depoliticizing the medical industry, more and more geniuses rose up and saved us from worldwide human catastrophes.  That medical revolution became known as the Great Rescue.  But the human losses were never forgotten.

Two Forces That Brought Us the Twelve-Visions World

My Twelfth Vision showed me two forces at work: Rising within us, we felt disillusioned with politicians and regulatory bureaucracies.  A steady rebellion against a ruling class started spontaneously rising throughout civilizations around the world, from China and the Orient, through Russia and Eastern Europe, Asia Minor and down through Africa, to the relatively free United States and throughout Central and South America.  Those early signs of the new Neothink mentality, spontaneously rising throughout different civilizations around the globe, affected us at home.  

Tomorrow, we started resisting the ruling class and its politicization over our lives just as we would resist a religious cult trying to tell us how to live.  A shrinking number of people tolerated big government legislating and regulating our money, morals, and businesses.

That anti-authority trend gained momentum as medical catastrophes loomed.  Under growing survival pressures, the people saw more clearly and ended the ruling class.  

There was also another, more specific force at work: the inevitable Twelve Visions Party with the underlying mission to prevent the coming medical catastrophes.  The Twelve Visions Party, upon its success, set free the geniuses of society.  They brought the Technological Revolution beyond the computer industry to the medical industry and to all American industries — the only antidote to the looming medical and economic catastrophes.  

The Twelve Visions Party quickly depoliticized the medical industry and set free the drug companies and especially the aggressive entrepreneurs, the geniuses of society.  The Twelve Visions Party represented medical technology versus medical catastrophe…the new world of freed geniuses using Neothink versus the old world of career politicians and bureaucrats suppressing progress.  The Twelve Visions Party brought in the new world and unleashed the technologies and geniuses in all industries.  When America embraced the Twelve Visions Party, the party for depoliticizing America, then three benefits surfaced:

1. Near-perfect health for the young, the old, and for those in their prime.

2. Millionaire-like wealth for ordinary people, including the poor.

3. Exciting jobs of the mind for nearly everyone, which released nearly everyone’s human potential (the Fifth and Sixth Visions).

Young Again

My Twelfth Vision showed me that as the ordinary person got swept into a stimulating life of nearly perfect health and millionaire wealth, he passionately sought life over death.  Death at mid-70 simply became unacceptable.  Science, medicine, business, and entrepreneurs focused on an epic event: eradicate diseases and illnesses to enable ordinary people to live healthily well into their hundreds, and then beyond.  

Technology-blocking “higher authorities” such as the FDA that burdened progress were scorned out of existence by the people.

Today, most people feel the unacceptability of the ultimate disease, aging.  But few people can relate to their own greatest tragedy of dying in their 70s because:

• The thought of living healthily and prosperously for 130 years or more seems like science fiction.

• One’s wealth, health, love and happiness are stagnant or shrinking.  At 75 years, life is no longer very stimulating, and the desire to live longer in “old age” is gone.

 In tomorrow’s rapidly progressing Twelve-Visions World, I saw (in my Twelfth Neothink Vision) that the idea of living longer did not seem so futuristic.  What before seemed technologically impossible was in wide use.  Without disease, we lived well into our hundreds.  Moreover, the idea of extending human life by slowing the disease of cellular degeneration or aging, and slowing the effects of gravity and entropy, became a mass appeal, especially as ordinary people became wealthy, healthy, and in love with life…the young and romantic life.  The geniuses were hard at work learning how to extend our lives!

Today, by contrast, people eventually lose the desire to live. Sinking in stagnation, most good people experience limited financial and emotional success.  Physically, emotionally, and financially burned out, most older people do not care to live too much longer.  Quality of elderly life is far below what it would be in tomorrow’s Twelve-Visions World.  Thus, today the desire to live longer is not in wide demand.

In tomorrow’s nonpoliticized wealthy/healthy/exhilarating Twelve-Visions World, I saw people regain a childlike desire to live longer.  Rich and in love with life, the desire to live longer was in wide demand.

Death Under 100 Became Unacceptable

A strong sense of tragedy grew in us as we got older and closed in on death.  We emotionally grasped the unacceptability of dying in our 70s.  In fact, the thought of dying at all, not to mention so young, grew increasingly intolerable.  That unacceptability of dying was a direct result of our deep and permanent happiness as value creators (Vision Two).  Tomorrow, the freed geniuses of society raced forward to answer our cries for life as we discovered the persons we were meant to be, forever ending the burden of life (Visions One and Two).

Most of us today do not grasp the tragedy of dying so young because, as we grow older, we steadily lose our enthusiasm for life.  The burden of life comes to the surface as we use up our happy experiences of life (Vision Two).  We cannot blame ourselves, for in today’s suppressed world, life offers limited mortal doses of wealth and happiness.  

My Twelfth Vision showed me that tomorrow’s Twelve-Visions World actually reversed the trend: enthusiasm actually intensified as we grew older.  As Neothink value creators, we built larger and larger puzzles of creation, which became very exhilarating.  Instead of withering in our ruts, we blossomed in our creations.

In tomorrow’s Twelve-Visions World, our brief seven-and-a-half decades of life was considered much too brief for the wealthy and happy ordinary person.  The demand for living longer grew enormous.  First, disease was eradicated to give us healthy life well into our hundreds.  Then, major businesses, financial institutions, scientists, research doctors and entrepreneurs embraced the growing demand for longer life.  Money, minds, technology, science, medicine came together through entrepreneurial business.  Their superpuzzle soon pieced together the ultimate demand of slowing down and eventually curing the disease of aging.  (See Neothink trilogy Superpuzzle by Mark Hamilton.)

The geniuses awakened the sleeping-giant consumer product of all time: life extension.  For suddenly, happy people’s brief time in all eternity became unacceptable.  Too brief.  Within your lifetime, the new Twelve-Visions World doubled your journey through life…and more.

The Life We Were Meant To Live

Tomorrow’s Twelve-Visions World saved us from emotional diminishment and lifted us to the next level of happiness.  We lived each and every day with four new frontiers of happiness, described in Twelve Visions. 

Today’s world brings us uneventful years for all we have left…for our one short experience of life in all eternity.  In the Twelve-Visions World, by contrast, my Twelfth Vision showed me we were like children with so much yet to experience.  As value creators, we had no limits…always another adventure to create and experience.  We finally lived the lives human beings were meant to live.  Before the Twelve Neothink Visions, we had no clue of that life.

Tomorrow, life was bigger than life again, like when we were children.  Every new day filled us with exhilaration.  Creating exciting new values was how we played as adults.  Yes, play …like children.  We enjoyed the love from our fellow man for creating important values for society.  The burden of life was gone.  We achieved both the technology and the desire to live a lot, lot longer (Vision Four).  We enjoyed nearly perfect physical and mental health for a long, extended life of happiness.

Today, the regulatory and entitlement programs for the “social good” are illusions that politicize our lives and rule over us — over our money, morals, and businesses.  The career politicians and regulatory bureaucrats get enormous power, prestige, and they control enormous wealth.  On the other hand, we get suppressed with physical diseases, mental stagnation, and short burdensome lives.  

Looking forward into the Twelve-Visions World, career politicians and regulatory bureaucrats were left behind.  The geniuses jumped ahead into Neothink and brought us enormous buying power and nearly perfect health.  Thereafter, we too jumped into Neothink.  As described in the full Twelfth Vision (in my book Twelve Visions), four new frontiers of happiness appeared before our eyes and brought us back to our child of the past and a beautiful, long-lost world in which we permanently rediscovered the thrill of life.