That popular phrase from ‘La verbena de la Paloma’ that said that “today the sciences say that it is barbaric” is more accurate today than in 1896, when the famous zarzuela was written. «There have never been so many changes and so quickly … like now. We are in a reality so complex that it is impossible to assimilate,” according to Fernando Jáuregui. These changes also affect medicine and health and, as a result, society’s perception of all of this. Thus, and despite what experts predict, most people do not believe that we will live to be 130 years old, but they do believe that cancer will be cured sooner rather than later. Furthermore, a large majority believe that, in the near future, medical consultations due to mental illness will be the most frequent.
The latter is maintained by 82% of the people surveyed in the ‘Revolution in Health’ survey by Periodismo 2030, the entity headed by Jáuregui, a survey carried out in collaboration with the AXA Foundation and Metroscopia, which was presented this morning in Bilbao by the Comunicando Futuro Foundation – Alejandro Echevarría and the Novia Salcedo Foundation. The survey will also be presented this afternoon in Vitoria, at the Anitua Foundation.
Jáuregui has stressed that this survey “reflects an attitude towards people’s lives, not a scientific attitude.” They are subjective impressions about what respondents “think they know.” Because the majority claims to be well informed. When it is not true, because it is literally impossible to stay up to date on all these issues, in constant evolution and innovation.
The survey, carried out based on 3,000 interviews carried out between January 26 and February 6, 2024 throughout Spain, reflects a panorama with “a certain nuance of skepticism, pessimism and anxiety, but also hope,” said Jáuregui. .
New pandemic
How do citizens think health will evolve in the next 30 years? To begin with, seven out of ten believe a new pandemic is likely in the next thirty years. “The impact of what we experienced in 2020 is very clear in this sense,” Jáuregui highlighted. Three out of four also consider it likely that, during this time, superbacteria, immune to antibiotics, will proliferate.
That we are living longer is evident and also, specialists say, that we will be living longer and longer. Up to 130 years old, even. But most of the people surveyed do not see it that way. 57% consider that “it is not likely that technological advances will allow people to live to that age.”
However, a similar majority (58%) does believe in the probability that, in the next three decades, a definitive cure will be found for most cancers. Pessimism appears in the data that reflects the opinion that suicide will replace diseases as the main cause of death (59% think so). Mental pathologies will increase. “One of the most revealing conclusions of the survey indicates that 82% think that it is likely that medical consultations due to mental illness are the most frequent.”
The majority grows to 90%, which is made up of those who believe that digital addictions will increase among young people. In this sense, well over half of those surveyed (74%) consider it “rather positive” that social networks are prohibited until the age of majority “to protect the mental health of minors.”
On the other hand, more than 40% think that remote surgical interventions will be common and more than half of those surveyed accept that it will be possible to implant a chip in the brain of humans to improve their capabilities. However, half of those surveyed would not accept “in any way” that a robot perform a surgical operation, “something that is already being done right now.” Only a third of those surveyed would allow a “robot, machine or artificial intelligence to take care of their child or a family member.”
