Is this the body of the future?

How will we look 100 years from now? Surely we'll all be fitter and more beautiful? Surely not fatter and uglier? Elizabeth Heathcote weighs up the latest research

Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say."

Aldous Huxley's description of the future human in Brave New World is among the less florid in a genre where bionics, human flight, ESP, teleportation and laser vision come as standard. But amid all the tosh, are there any clues as to how our bodies could look a hundred years from now? "Medicine has achieved more in the last 50 years than in the last million," says Professor John Hawk, a consultant dermatologist. "Who can predict where we will be in 100 years? What we do know is that we should have more rapid advance than in any previous century."

Bush and Saddam notwithstanding, one thing is certain: we will live longer than ever. Science is divided between those who predict longevity will increase endlessly, while others believe there is a genetic limit that will eventually impose a ceiling. But Baroness Sally Greengross, executive chair of the International Longevity Centre, is optimistic that the 20th-century average of a two-year increase in life expectancy every 10 years will continue. Life expectancy at the turn of the 19th century was less than 40 years; in the UK it is now 75 for a man and 80 for a woman. A century from now reaching 100 will be the norm and those who take care of their health could live to 135. But what shape will we be in?

Body shape

Obesity is going to do more than anything else to transform the way we look, live and die. Even if the startling pace of its spread over the past 20 years slows down, the majority of us will be obese in 100 years. "There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that obesity is not going to get significantly worse," says Dr Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council. "Even on a 100-year timescale, the outlook is bleak."

Around one in five Britons is now obese and that will rise to one in four within 10 years. There is no sign of a slowdown thereafter; all the indications are that this trend will escalate. Young people will continue to be the worst affected, with dire consequences: the first cases of type-2 diabetes (previously considered a disease of old age) have been seen in British teenagers. America, which is around 10 years ahead of us in this problem, is handling its first cases of weight-related coronary disease in children.

Andrew Prentice, Professor of International Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, recently described the resultant changes in body shape as one of the most dramatic shifts in evolutionary history and predicted that obese children will, in the future, die before their parents. Dr Jebb, meanwhile, predicts that the classic British pear shape will fall victim to greater fat stores – we will, instead, become a nation of Teletubby apples.

Except that, of course, no one is suggesting that we will all end up obese. The picture is in a way bleaker: of a growing divide between the affluent slim and the overweight poor. And as more of us become overweight, expect body ideals to move even further towards the increasingly unattainable – the very thin. "California, with its two populations of the seriously obese poor and very thin rich, could become the model," Dr Jebb says.

Every pharmaceutical company is pumping serious money into this area, but Dr Jebb pooh-poohs any notion of miracle cures, even in a hundred years' time. "There will never be a drug that allows you to eat what you like and not get fat," she says. "They will only ever be able to reinforce people's voluntary efforts."

The mechanisms of appetite are set genetically, but the equation is so complicated, involving clusters of genes and complex gene-environment interactions, that she believes an advance in this area will be more than 100 years away. The same is true, she says, for the notion of a fitness "cure". "There clearly are genes for body shape, fitness and so on, but the benefits of exercise on body and mind are so complex, that I don't believe that drugs will ever be able to mimic them," she says.

Our great-great-grandchildren, then, will still have to exercise, but if they can restrain from the GM pasties, a fabulous body will be easier to achieve. Research into muscle-wasting disease has already uncovered a single human gene that can build muscle fibres, Insulin Growth Factor 1. By introducing the gene into the legs of rats, muscle mass has been increased by almost 30 per cent. A bold move on from steroids ...

Colouring

Britain was gripped last month by news of research from the World Health Organisation warning that within 200 years the natural blonde would become extinct, its delicate recessive gene no match for a flood of ravaging brunette. Alas for the dyeing industry, this turned out to be a hoax – we should have known; the science was never sound.

Yet the reality is that globalisation is already changing the way we look. "The world will become an increasingly homogenous single population," says Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London. "You can see it on the streets already and it is essentially an averaging process. In Africa, different peoples still look strikingly different and you can pinpoint where someone comes from but you haven't been able to say that in Europe for some time, and that process will escalate."

The States, where black-white mixing is three centuries old, is our best model. Blue Mink's genetic theory was spot on when they sang in the Sixties:

"What we need is a great big melting pot
...And keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out coffee coloured people by the score".

Although dark skin, hair and eye genes are dominant, the relationship is rarely as straightforward as dark coming out on top. The result? "Expect to see more Colin Powells," says Professor Jones.

Facial appearance will be part of this merging, and photographic technology has given geneticists some insight of the "average" face of the future, although certain characteristics seem to prove resistant to dilution – a "strong" nose for example. It is a subject that has attracted the interest of artists, too, including Paul Wombell, director of the Photographers' Gallery, who used EU stats to build up an image of the average European. "He looked a bit like Gary Lineker," he says.

Another effect will be more surprises in the delivery room. A racially pure population holds few genetic time-bombs but ours will increasingly do so, as recessive genes are tucked out of sight in our DNA. Thus two dark parents carrying a blue-eyed or red-haired recessive gene from a long forgotten ancestor could get a surprise, and the milkman won't have been anywhere near.

Skin

"In 100 years, we are going to look a lot younger," says Professor John Hawk, a consultant dermatologist. The main reason is decidedly un-space age – our growing awareness of sun damage, which will make us ever more meticulous with the sunscreen. But a new generation of drugs will also reverse some of the damage. The US Food and Drug Administration is already considering a pioneer – Dimericine, delivered via a cream – which contains an enzyme that helps to repair DNA.

In the longer term, genetics could make a real difference. Ageing is controlled by telomeres, which sit at the end of every strand of DNA and control cell division, but after each replication they shorten, giving every cell a finite life span. There is lots of research going on into lengthening telomeres to slow or reverse ageing, but, as with all genetic medicine, it will take a long time: 30 years is an optimistic prediction. Which would give us the dubious distinction of being the last generation to look our age.

Cosmetic surgery

But then again maybe not, because what genetics can't cure, the scalpel can. Although, of course, in 100 years it won't be the scalpel. "The idea of going under the knife will seem prehistoric," says Professor David Sharpe, a consultant plastic surgeon at the Bradford Royal Infirmary. The big advances, he predicts, will come through technology at a cellular level – drugs or growth factors that can reproduce elastin fibres and collagen, or strengthen and thus increase the life of our existing tissue. "Our fight is against the effect of gravity," Professor Sharpe says. "If we win it in this way, there will no longer be any need for face-lifts."

The same technology will, eventually, replace breast and other implants – there is already talk that surgeons will be able to replicate or grow tissue in situ. "I'm afraid that humanity's effort will go more into these developments than into our attitudes, which will still venerate physical perfection and youth," says Professor Sharpe sadly, and predicts that our tendency towards the "gorgeous and superficial" will increase.

Hair

Within as little as 20 years, toupee jokes could be a generational eccentricity. Baldness, predicts Dr Daniel Maes, vice-president of research and development for Estée Lauder, will be a thing of the past. "Men will be fatter, but they will no longer have shiny heads," he says. Current research into treatments with hormones and growth receptors promises a cure for hair-loss within a generation.

Another development – although the timescale here is longer – will be manipulation of melanin production in the hair root to eradicate greying by regularly applying a serum. In the very long term, Dr Maes predicts that we will be able to control the shade of hair colour in a similar way.

Eyes

More and more of us are destined to become short-sighted, the effect of reading and close detailed work. "In Asia we have seen a huge swing from long to short sight – in Singapore and the Philippines it has reached epidemic proportions," says Professor Roger Hitchens, director of research and development at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. "This is likely to happen in Europe too. We're programmed to look at cows in a field, not computers."

Very early research into drugs delivered into the eye that can prevent short-sightedness looks promising – within 100 years their use could be part of our morning regime. In any case we are not going to become a nation of speccy four-eyeses. Glasses and contact lenses will be obsolete, as laser technology becomes cheaper and more effective at dealing with "difficult" conditions such as ageing eyesight.

Teeth

Crowns, fillings and dentures will all be history, promises Elizabeth Kay, Professor of Dental Health Services Research at the University of Manchester. In fact, tooth decay will be wiped out, the result of dietary improvements and the use of fluoride, in toothpaste or water. Hurrah! So dentists will be redundant? Well ... maybe not, but their drills will be. Not only will these be overtaken by ozone or laser technology, but dental work will revolve more around gum disease – an illness of age – and cosmetic dentistry. "In 100 years, everyone will have perfectly shaped, perfectly white teeth," predicts Prof Kay.

And so we have it – the full-fat, modified, hormoned, ageless, straight-toothed human of the future – at least in the West. But then again, do we? If the science is difficult to predict, then what about our reaction to it? Do we want to be perfect?

Humanity's embrace of materialism over the past century would suggest that most of us will grab everything within reach that can improve our appearance, but of course there will be sub-groups of resistance. Expect communities to emerge (probably in north London) where women grow old the way nature intended and men bald the way their forbears did. And who knows? As hirsute agelessness becomes the norm, perhaps we will venerate these people, and not just for this marker of their authenticity. Perhaps, in a brave new world of overweight flawlessness, wrinkles will be sexy.