Future Health Trends – Shirley DicKard

I take no pleasure in watching the future world unfolding – the future I described in my eco-novel Heart Wood. My aim was to show through storytelling that what we do and what we don’t do matters to the future. I described the actions and attitudes of my ancestors (1800s) and today’s generation (early 2020s), and how we are collectively creating a future world that my imaginary great-granddaughter Amisha must live in (2075-2090).

I’m often asked about the future parts, “How did you know? It’s so unsettling!” I can only say I picked out threads of what I saw today and projected them into the future…asking what would life be like if this continues?

Are you ready to explore with me? I’ve selected six main themes from Heart Wood and contrasted our present world with Amisha’s future in 2075-2090.

1. NIBS

Future: a miniscule bio-electronic Nib is implanted behind all baby’s ears at birth. These directly input information and directions into the brain, eventually overriding much of the person’s thinking. In addition to tracking a person’s location, Nibs also monitor their physical and emotional health, and when it detects an imbalance, automatically delivers “rebalancing” medications from the person’s “Medpak” implanted into their belly. Later in Heart Wood, Nibs subtly begin to deteriorate, giving erroneous information as if it were real.

Present: Where to start? Siri, Alexa? GPS directions? Smart watches? Fitness Trackers? These are part of our mainstream world now. AI wasn’t mainstream when I wrote Heart Wood in the early 2020s, but we’re getting closer to having an AI device implanted (for our benefit and convenience, of course).

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk has developed the NeuroLink in which fine electronic threads have been inserted into the brain of at least seven men with spinal cord injuries, enabling them to move a computer mouse with their minds. Yes! Check it out here.

In 2025, RFK Jr. – current US Secretary of Health and Human Services – is touting wearable electronics, such as watches, bands, rings, patches, and clothes, to monitor our vital health signs, with the data stored in the “cloud.” Current medical treatment includes inserting miniscule Nanobots into the body for diagnosis, treatment, drug delivery, and surgery. https://relevant.software/blog/nanobots-in-medicine/

While most of these health advances are originally designed for a specific medical benefit, they set up a prototype for a future widespread Nib-like implant.

2. GARBAGE

Future: Garbage is illegal. There is no “away” for throwing things away. New items must be created from material that already exists, which is why there is a fight between the U.S. and China for ownership of the floating garbage island in the Pacific.

Diver in the Pacific Ocean Plastic Garbage Island

Present: How often have you tossed away single-use containers? I know I have, even knowing they’re filling up our landfills and oceans with garbage that’s mostly plastic. Currently, garbage must be separated and put into recycling bins, where some will actually be recycled. Organizations such as Californians Against Waste are fighting for legislation that eliminates excess packaging, reduces food waste, promotes the right to repair small appliances/electronics, and promotes effective recycling systems.

3. PLASTICS

Future: “Plastix” is made from recycled plastics and is used to formulate everything imaginable: shoes, furniture, cars, etc. But people also know how deadly plastic is, as in the scene when a young girl gives birth to a baby born with a reproductive system abnormality:

“But we did right” said the curly-headed grandmother, hugging her daughter tighter. “My daughter never touched plastic in her life!”

“You can’t avoid it,” Amisha said. “Plastic deteriorates so small it floats everywhere, from high in the stratosphere to miles deep on the ocean floor.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10151227/

Present: Research is finding plastic nanoparticles not only in the stratosphere and deep ocean, but in breast milk, human tissue and baby poop . A new disease, “Plasticosis” is identified in seabirds that also impacts humans. Plastic contains hormone-disrupters that confuses the body’s hormone regulation and reproduction systems. Researchers are investigating the connection between low level exposure to hormone disruptors and gender dysphorias.

4. FERTILITY

Future: It has become very difficult to conceive, and viable births are a rarity. Amisha’s group created a “Fertility Room.” When a female is ovulating, she allows multiple males to inseminate her in the hopes of increasing the odds that one of the few viable sperm will fertilize her one egg.

Present: Sperm count and human fertility are decreasing. IVF -In Vetro Fertilization centers have proliferated to help couples increase their odds of becoming pregnant. Of course, now, IVF has become politicized, making it more even difficult for couples to conceive.

5. FOOD INTOLERANCES

Future: Due to long term environmental contamination and genetic manipulation of food ingredients, human babies are increasingly unable to process food to support their growth. However, the Pharma industry has found an answer to the problems they originally created, with “PharmFood,” colorful packages designed for specific food intolerances. Food as we know it has become a rarity.

Present: I walk down the grocery aisles and notice large sections set aside for specific health and dietary issues, gluten-free being the most predominant. Package covers tout everything this food is not: “No gluten, no lactose/dairy, no GMOs, no animal products, no tree nuts, no pesticides, no BHT, no artificial colors or flavors, no high-fructose corn syrup, etc. Wow! I can imagine my great-grandmother wondering why in the world anyone would put those things into food in the first place?

6. WEATHER

Future: California is mostly burned over from massive fires. Rivers hold meager amounts of water, but small pockets of green survive in the foothills. Sea level is rising into the first floors of San Francisco’s Financial District, and Golden Gate Park is now a refuge for Pacific Islanders who lost their islands to the rising sea.

In Heart Wood, Amisha has hitched a ride into the foothills with Charlie, a blind man with a mule and wagon, in search of her family’s old homestead.

Amisha held a small mouthful of water against her sticky dry gums before swallowing. She took another swig and returned the canister to its hiding place. “What's up there?” she asked, pointing to the hint of peaks in the distance. “You're asking ‘bout the hills? Not much,” Charlie replied. “People?” “They've come and gone, mostly farther north.” “Oregon?” “Farther. Canada’s still deciding its immigration policy.” “They say fires took out most of the foothills. Anything survived?” “A structure here and there.” “Trees? People?” “Can't say,” Charlie climbed back into the wagon. “Why are you going up there?” Amisha asked “Can't say that either.”

I was surprised when I re-read the part about Canada deciding its immigration policy toward US citizens. It seemed far-fetched when I wrote it. Little did I know it could become a political reality!

Present: Forest fires used to be a danger mainly for those living in a forest. Mountain folk learned to have “Go-Bags” ready for a quick evacuation. Now, even those who live in cities are concerned about major fire conflagrations. Fires are larger, fiercer, and create un-precedented destruction.

Homes along coastlines are literally losing ground, as the sea encroaches into lowland communities. Hurricanes and storm damage are more intense. Flash floods, landsides, ice storms all demonstrate water’s increasingly destructive power.

Insurance companies, strained by increasing claims from all the chaotic climate-induced fire, water, and wind disasters, are cancelling home insurance policies. And still, current conservative politicians who refuse to see these massive weather events related to man’s actions on the planet, cancel programs that would have given us hope for either halting or reversing climate-induced damage.

Is there hope?

I often hear two main comments from readers: “This is the most depressing book ever!” and “This is the most satisfying ending I’ve ever read in a dystopian book.”

Future: Yes, Amisha’s future world is depressing, but that’s the point. She is a victim of the world we are creating for her. She survives because she has created a small community that lives with what they have, eats less, and grows or forages for their drought-tolerant food. They learn to listen to and let the earth speak first. Eventually her group will connect with other small groups and share what works. Life is certainly not easy by our standards, but it will be possible for some to survive and, for even fewer, to procreate.

Present: I see the writing on the wall, often feeling helpless because it’s such a huge problem. I do the easy things, of course, like recycle, reuse containers, shop locally (including farmers), turn off lights, shop for previously-used things. On a larger scale, there are (still) so many groups working to educate the population and pressure politicians to “think and act green.” It’s harder than ever to make progress in today’s political climate, but do it anyway. Support these groups however you can. And talk about it!

Group Discussions: One of my favorite parts in talking with Book Clubs about Heart Wood are the thought-provoking discussions: “We see this coming, but what can we do?” I don’t have answers, but we can collectively ask the right questions.

If your group would like to start discussing the questions that Heart Wood raises, I can email discussion questions. I’m also available in person or by Zoom. Contact me at: heartwoodnovel@gmail.com.

Heart Wood, Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future can be purchased at your local, independent bookstore (they can easily order it for you!) Or online. If you would like a signed copy directly from the author, contact me at heartwoodnovel@gmail.com.

I’ve been thinking about how my medical background influenced the writing of Heart Wood – prompted by a recent invitation to participate on a panel of UC San Francisco Medical Center Alumni Fiction Writers – a Zoom event on March 15, 2022, at 6 pm. (Details are below).

In my eco-novel Heart Wood, I used family women from three centuries to show the steady progression of health concerns over time in the past, present, and future. Like the frog in cold water where the water is heated slowly until the frog boils to death, it’s easy to accommodate to changing health conditions as they slowly creep up on us – until they become alarming problems.

I saved this cartoon from 2012 – little did we know that 10 years later, we’d still be breaking records for the hottest year ever!

One of the benefits of being 76 years old is having the perspective of time. Starting in the 1980s, I worked for 20 years as a traveling school nurse in small rural northern California communities. Although I didn’t have a mule to tote my equipment down canyons and across rivers, my car was always piled high with file boxes and testing equipment. I served five small schools stretched between the Middle and South Yuba Rivers – all previous sites of the Gold Rush era’s practices of washing away hillsides and polluting rivers with heavy metals used to extract gold.

In those 20 years, I observed trends in children’s health. In the 1980s, children’s health problems were mainly allergies to bees and peanuts, vison and hearing problems, head lice, and assorted injuries. Fast forward to the 2000s where we now have an explosion of allergies and intolerances to foods, asthma, diabetes, cancers, attention deficit disorders, autism, anxiety, and suicide. Seeing these dramatic changes over time alarms me.

Imagine Eliza in Heart Wood in the 1800s reading a box of today’s breakfast cereal: “Does NOT contain gluten, GMOs, artificial flavors or colors, preservatives, pesticides, etc.” I’m sure she’d be incredulous that anyone would put those in foods in the first place!

Yet today, we take for granted having a list of what is NOT in our food so we can navigate the food aisle for the best choices, thankful for the growing number of grocery shelves devoted to food intolerances.

Turn up the heat and fast forward to 2075 where Amisha’s food choices consist mainly of colored Pharm.food packets specifically developed for the multitude of intolerances that the corporate-pharmaceutical industry was responsible for creating in the first place.

One of the underlying premises in Heart Wood is that it’s difficult to raise healthy children on an unhealthy planet. It matters to our children’s health that the atmosphere and oceans are infused with plastic nanoparticles, that drinking water is contaminated, that oil spills into the ocean or lakes, that rainforests are cut down, that food ingredients are manipulated. These seemingly small changes accumulate over time into lethal doses. But small positive changes accumulate over time as well. Let’s each now do what we can to care for the earth and our children’s future!

Here’s registration information for the panel discussion I will be on of three UCSF alumni authors of fictional work
https://ucsf.regfox.com/aacs-spotlight-on-fiction-writers

Tuesday, March 15, 2022. ONLINE 6-7 pm Pacific time

A woman alone in Brooklyn during the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. The connection between a small, oak writing desk and three family women whose lives are joined across centuries and generations. A cadre of peers fighting a coup in a dictator-controlled West Africa. These very different scenarios share a surprising link – all are snapshots of published fictional works written by UCSF alumni.

Join us for a panel discussion with three UCSF alumni authors led by moderator Sarah McClung, head of collection development at the UCSF Library. During this conversation, Shirley DicKard, BS ’68, RN; James Gottesman, MD ’70, resident alum; and Larry Hill, MD ’67, will share an exclusive glimpse into their stories’ fictional worlds and what brought them to life. We will also learn directly from these creative minds about whether their experiences at UCSF played a part in the stories, what their writing process was like, and how they navigated the publishing world.

This program is brought to you by the UCSF Office of Alumni Relations and UCSF Archives as part of the virtual event series in which distinguished UCSF alumni authors discuss their recently published books

REGISTER HERE