'The 10 Most Promising Breakthrough Innovations of 2022'

This week the Atlantic published its list of 'the 10 Most Promising Breakthrough Innovations of 2022.'
'We didn't just get one 'unheard-of' cancer breakthrough; we got several in one year....'

Is death reversible? It was this year for several pigs (or, at least, for their organs). By pumping an experimental substance into the veins and arteries of animals that had been lying deceased for an hour, Yale researchers got their hearts to start beating again. The technology is 'very far away from use in humans,' Stephen Latham, a bioethicist at Yale University, told The New York Times. In the short term, scientists said, they hope that their research could help doctors preserve the organs of the recently deceased for use in transplants. But the longer-term implications of the experiment can't be ignored: If we have the power to reanimate the heart or other organs of the recently deceased, at what point might we be able to reverse sudden deaths? Could we revive soldiers who bleed out on the battlefield? Could we stock hospitals and nursing homes with buckets of the stuff to resuscitate patients? Should every future American household keep some on hand in the event of a terrible accident?

These questions thrust us into the ethical realm and invoke spooky references to 'The Monkey's Paw,' Pet Sematary, and any number of stories about the dark side of trying to design an escape hatch from mortality. Perhaps, as this technology improves, that debate is on its way. But for millions of people who have lost loved ones to, say, a sudden heart attack or stroke, it's not remotely dystopian to imagine an injection that could reverse tragedies long considered irreversible....

The Power to Synthesize Life (Kind Of)
This summer, scientists grew an embryo in a lab without the use of sperm, or eggs, or a womb. It happened to be that of a mouse. But the species is of secondary importance.... Some scientists I consulted for this project said that the results, which were published this year in the science journal Cell, were the most important scientific breakthrough of 2022.

Scientists are not close to turning stem cells into human babies that make their first gasping cries in antiseptic laboratories. But this work does suggest a major leap forward in our ability to grow synthetic organs and more closely research the relationship between embryonic mutations and developmental diseases. As Paul Tesar, a developmental biologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, told Stat, 'As soon as the science starts to move into a place where it's feasible to go from a stem cell population in a Petri dish all the way through to organ development, it's a pretty wild and remarkable time.'

The article also notes that NuScale's small nuclear reactors received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and 'could be running by the end of the decade.' Meanwhile, the start-up Quaise is working on drilling technology 'that can vaporize granite with a highly concentrated beam of radio-frequency power. If such a technology became widely available, deep drilling would be commonplace and geothermal energy would be accessible on just about any patch of land. It would be as though humankind conceived of a magic wand that, waved across the Earth, makes any square mile as energy-rich as an oil-gushing stretch of Texas or Saudi Arabia.'

The article also suggests one more possibility for the future. 'Decades from now, millions of people may actually prefer the consistency and taste of meat that didn't come from an animal, because they'll know what they're buying when a cultivated rib eye is as consistent as an electrical gadget.'

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