What medical advancements have been made since the year 2000?

If a person gets any treatment that prevents
untimely death, that extends life, doesn't it?

Or do you mean the three score and ten
extended to five score and ten for the
common man?

the Vital One said:

It is often claimed that advances in medical science will extend our lifespans. Sometimes these claims are even that we will live decades or centuries longer.

What has medical science discovered and implemented into common practice recently? Let's define recently as since the year 2000.

I'm not opposed to mainstream medicine and do not advocate any alternatives, but I am skeptical about many of the longevity claims commonly made.

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Longevity tends to be average longevity. Even centuries ago you had people who lived to ages even we would think were old, but these were rare individuals. Most of their contemporaries died at a much younger age.

Today there are far more making it to old age than in the past. That raises the average.

Back when I was a toddler, I had pneumonia. Treatment included antibiotics, which didn't even exist when my parents were the same age. Would I have survived without antibiotics? Don't know. Odds favored that I wouldn't. That was decades ago, so you could say modern medicine has added decades to my life.

That doesn't answer your question, though, about medical advances after the year 2000. MRNA vaccines has to be the biggest that comes to mind. There's a lot of promise there.

the Vital One said:

It is often claimed that advances in medical science will extend our lifespans. Sometimes these claims are even that we will live decades or centuries longer.

What has medical science discovered and implemented into common practice recently? Let's define recently as since the year 2000.

I'm not opposed to mainstream medicine and do not advocate any alternatives, but I am skeptical about many of the longevity claims commonly made.

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Here is a list of new drugs approved by the FDA in 2019. As you can see, there's 48 in that one year alone, and that is only for the USA and only for new chemical entities (i.e., drugs that haven't been approved in any form for any other disease). So that's hundreds of advances, although pretty much all have taken many years to develop. How much they might contribute to expanded life expectancy can only be determined in the future. Following the link you can get data from 2011 onwards .

the Vital One said:

It is often claimed that advances in medical science will extend our lifespans. Sometimes these claims are even that we will live decades or centuries longer.

What has medical science discovered and implemented into common practice recently? Let's define recently as since the year 2000.

I'm not opposed to mainstream medicine and do not advocate any alternatives, but I am skeptical about many of the longevity claims commonly made.

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One example - age adjusted breast cancer mortality rates in 2000 were just over 200 per 100,000 people. They're now under 145 per 100,000 people (an improvement of better than 25%). In those 20 years, nearly the entire body of breast cancer treatment has been replaced/supplanted with new techniques.

the Vital One said:

It is often claimed that advances in medical science will extend our lifespans. Sometimes these claims are even that we will live decades or centuries longer.

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If you want to live longer then look at the Ornish program. People can add years to their life through diet and exercise. There are scriptures that talk about how to add years to our life. For example Ephesians 6:2

1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2“Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), 3“that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.”…

The average life span is 70 to 80 years. There are people who live to be 120. My grandmother and my pastor both lived to be 100.

sesquiterpene said:

pretty much all have taken many years to develop.

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I have a friend who pretty much devoted his whole life to developing a drug to treat infants with premature lung development.

A quick Google search brings up this.


We really are making fantastic strides. And it’s all down to science.

Three cheers for scientist!

Placing a stent and other cardiac procedures these days can be done in out-patient surgery, whereas in the 90s they would have required more invasive procedures. The advanced imaging systems have come a very long way as well.

1) Pembrolizumab (AKA, Keytruda) is a monoclonal antibody, released in 2015. Keytruda was the first PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor. (Short for programmed death 1 and programmed death ligand 1.) These drugs prevent cancer cells from triggering the death of “killer” T cells. This allows the immune system to attack and destroy malignant tumors. Melanoma, breast cancer, and non small cell lung cancer are especially sensitive to immune attack when T-cells function properly. A great example is former Pres. Jimmy Carter. He was in his early 90s when he was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. On addition to surgery and radiation, he was also given Keytruda. Amazingly, his metastases disappeared. Melanoma in the brain had been a nearly certain death sentence—particularly in. 90+ year old patient. The PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors are a huge advance in oncology.

2) I can also mention how sickle cell anemia has been cured by bone marrow transplantation with genetically altered stem cells. And the complete mapping of the human genome—all 3.2 billion base pairs. Which was completed in the early 2000s.