cover image RX 2000: Breakthroughs in Health, Medicine, and Longevity by the Year 2000 and Beyond

RX 2000: Breakthroughs in Health, Medicine, and Longevity by the Year 2000 and Beyond

Jeffrey A. Fisher. Simon & Schuster, $21.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-73844-0

Fisher, an anatomical and clinical pathologist, tells a more or less incredible tale of the future of medicine. While he bases his predictions on contemporary scientific research, he ignores the limitations placed on research by funding, political maneuvering and religious beliefs. Fisher calls on an impressive array of experts (from such fields as surgery, nuclear medicine, genetics and biomedical research), but he apparently believes that science takes place in a vacuum. From his prophecies of boosting brain functions with cultured brain cells to the harvesting of organs and environmentally safe manufacturing processes, Fisher's prognostications would seem to belong more in a supermarket tabloid than in a book. Surprisingly, he makes no mention of current research involving fetal tissue, research that many say offers the most promising advances in the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer's; he also places the first baboon liver transplant in 2003, when it actually happened in 1992. His timeline (from present to 2030) charts ``as precisely as possible . . . the development and the availability of a wide range of cures as well as diagnostic procedures and preventive techniques,'' but gives few citations for the sources of these predictions. Although some of his predictions are plausible (the approval of the abortion pill RU-486, for example), others (e.g., designating anencephalic infants as organ donors) seem highly improbable. There is no question that medical advances will continue to have a dramatic impact on health care, but the forecasts here are drawn very fancifully. (Aug.)