Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Edwin's avatar

A 35-Year-Old Prediction

Dr Vernon Coleman

I wrote the following 35 years ago in a book called The Health Scandal.

‘By the year 2020, one third of the population in the developed world will be over the age of sixty five. One quarter of the population will be diabetic. In every home where there are two healthy parents and two healthy children, there will be four disabled or dependent individuals needing constant care. Diseases such as blindness (which is ten times as common among the over 65s and thirty times as common among the over 75s) will be as common as indigestion and hay-fever are today. Unemployment will be normal. Stress related diseases will be endemic. Developed countries around the world will face bankruptcy as they struggle to find the cash to pay pensions, sick pay and unemployment benefits.

Resentment, bitterness and anger will divide the young and the old, the able-bodied and the dependent, the employed and the unemployed. There will be anarchy despair and civil war. There will be ghettoes of elderly and disabled citizens abandoned to care for themselves. There will be armed guards on our hospitals. Those with jobs will travel to work in armoured cars.

For years those who have forecast the end of the human race have talked of nuclear war, starvation in the Third World and pollution as being the major threats to our survival. But the decline I predict for the year 2020 will be triggered not by any of these forces but by much simpler and entirely predictable developments. The human race will be destroyed by medical ambition, commercial greed and political opportunism.’

From The Health Scandal by Vernon Coleman, published 1988

`The Health Scandal’ has been out of print for many years – it is now available again. You can purchase a paperback copy via the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com

Expand full comment
Joy Lucette Garner's avatar

I am still somewhat skeptical of the being too near the trains;-) They will most likely be used the way they were in Germany.

Expand full comment
14 more comments...

No posts