THE global disease and death forecast by the World Health Organization (see “What will be ailing us in a generation’s time”) is an exercise in the art of the possible. The authors know it is only a best guess, but it is a guess that needs to be made if only to get biomedical researchers pointing in the right direction.
One assumption underlying the prediction is that the future will be like the past. That may prove false. Wealth is what mostly determines what people sicken and die of. As countries have gone from poor to rich, they have undergone…
