By Michael Clyne, US News Magazine January 10th, 2195

Twenty years ago today, Martin Canner became the first human to successfully undergo reconstitution, ushering in a new age of immortality for humanity. As part of our coverage of this anniversary, NewsTime wanted to take a look at how Reconstitution had both benefited and perhaps harmed society. Ignoring the broad strokes of the reconstitution parlors and reconstitution travel which readers are already familiar with, we wanted to show how reconstitution has changed human society.

Medicine/Insurance

Hospitals shutting their doors and shipping equipment off to less fortunate countries was news 10 years ago. Now it is an accepted fact of life that if you are sick or have experienced trauma, it can be easier to just preemptively terminate than to find a doctor or hospital. To be sure, there are still those who use clinics for the assignment of birth control or psychiatric purposes, but the days of the busy emergency room, long term care and cancer wards are something that is only seen in some war torn countries or those which do not have full implant technology. Medicine still exists, with thriving pharmaceutical and cosmetic reconstitution research being two prominent specialties, but it seems the exciting news comes from the veterinary sciences than the human.

The major exception is the quick spread of reconstitution technology itself, now widely available and with the UN considering converting to a globally available satellite system, with implants getting better and turning into devices that do more than just preserve life, but also fill in for phones, contact management and banking applications.

The biggest growth area now is in the field of psychiatric care. Some people simply can't cope with the idea of living forever. Many psychiatrists subscribe to the "lost generation" theory, ascribing survivors guilt to those that outlasted parents, siblings and most tragically children to inherit immortality. Others believe that to live forever is by itself too large a psychic burden.

AKD Pharma notes that they have experienced 40% growth for the last 5 years in the number of people who are requesting significant time delays in reconstitution, some as long as 10 years. AKD spokesperson Denise Howard notes "While we expected some would want to skip along time this way, we are constantly amazed at how many people are willing to pay for the expense of long term storage." AKD charges 10,000 a year for long term storage, noting the cost of permanent storage of personalities is much higher than the transitory storage that is in standard use in the reconstitution network.

Insurance companies have had their businesses violently change, with more property damage related to diffusion violence and no medical insurance income worth tallying, there has been in a significant winnowing of that business.

Sports

Sports, if anything, have gotten more brutal and tactical. Many athletes dislike reconstitution as it takes them longer to take their body from its reconstituted state to its athletically tuned state. Teams are used to having to pay to keep an accurate body image of their players in the reconstitution system, but players usually sit out a game until they have re-achieved their peak performance. Ironically, the turnover of athletes hasn't signifigantly changed over the last 2 decades; players are still retiring out of the game to coach, report or to move on to other careers, leaving ample room at the bottom for new players.

Financially, the industry has seen a reduction in salaries for players and profits for teams. Prominent sports writer Jerry London ascribes this to the reduction in the actual danger that the players are in, "People aren't blood thirsty per se, but there really isn't any danger on the field anymore, which logically reduces the tension and excitement that a game can bring to fans, which reduces the fan base. Interestingly soccer hasn't seen a reduction in viewership, likely because it never really was a full contact sport. Likewise, golf, baseball and other peaceful sports like hockey are actually experiencing upswings in attendance and viewership. Boxing has almost disappeared as a sport, which was surprising, but not unwelcome. Many blame the fall of boxing fall not on reconstitution but on the widespread problems of corruption in the ring."

Religion

With the Roman Catholic Church's endorsement of reconstitution in 2189, which many thought was connected to Pope Innocent XV's failing health, Catholicism has undergone what many call a revolution. The fourth Vatican council in 2193 established a system for Popes to pass on their Scepter and effectively "retire." Combined with the third Council's sweeping changes in 2093, the Catholic Church has remained a vital thriving organization in a more secular western world.

Islam, also an early embracer of reconstitution technology, continues to gain converts, Concentrating on the war torn Central Africa and eastern and in the northern-most South American regions, both areas, underserved by reconstitution technology, have been a hotbed of missionary actions from all the major religions. Many social scientists think this is exacerbating the conflicts.

Entertainment

Despite screenwriter Jacob Allman's assertion that "Man, is sure is getting harder to kill people on film." (Given during his 2190 Best Screenplay Oscar acceptance speech), Hollywood has if anything thrived during the last 20 years, creating new entertainment for a constantly growing population. More movie theatres have opened in the last 10 years than in the previous 50 and per screen profits have gone up some 12%. With the growth of the average true age of attendees going up, the number of thrillers released by studios has gone down, with more ponderous fare taking precedence. Many in the industry see this as a fashion trend rather than a change attributable to the maturity of the population.

Government

After the passage of the Reconstitution Act of 2194, broad changes in the way the government provides for the elderly went out the window, along with taxes for social security and much of the Medextend dollars going into reconstitution infrastructure deployment and development. The anger of many seniors at the shutdown of social security was mitigated by the tapering off of payments to allow for retraining and education and the 10 year free pass for no-charge reconstitution which many felt was a Solomonic solution to the problem.

Senators Peter Harrison (R, Ca) and Sunil Gupta (D-PR), credited with the creation of the act, are still in office. Both enjoy seats on the transportation and teleportation committee which oversees the efforts to explore the solar system and act as the American representative body to the ITOA.

Zoology

Probably the happiest side effect of reconstitution technology is the ability to regrow species from DNA using the same technology used to prepare clones for reconstitution. Zoology students around the world cut their teeth on reconstituting extinct species for study and repatriation the world over.

The Environment

All is not well with the advances of the last 20 years, the environment has been a decidedly mixed story, the transition from fission to fusion power is going slowly, with only 6 plants operational in the states and 20 in the rest of the world, the use of fusion power continues to generate many thousands of tons of toxic waste requiring secure internment. The near meltdown in 2185 of the McCarthy Lost Hills plant caused the release of some toxic gas and a renewed effort to secure existing sites. The cracking system that powers the teleportation system has been slow to be adopted, which many have blamed on entrenched power and energy interests. Spokespeople for the fossil fuel providers in the Middle East and Northern Russian steppes rebut this accusation saying that the high energy density that oil brings to the equation for a fairly low cost makes the high upfront costs of power generation still favor fossil fuels like shale, oil and gas.

Of late, the greatest concern of the environmentalists has been waste heat from the teleportation system. While more efficient teleportation systems are coming out now that do not emit as much heat, many teleportation concerns are slow to convert to the new technology, citing the high acquisition and personell retraining costs.

The increased violence that accompanied the advent of reconstitution in conflict zones in Africa and south America has also resulted in an increase in the use of virulent pathogens and chemical weapons that deleteriously effect the environment, a fact that most of those on both sides of these conflicts are unlikely to change and the average load of nuclear and chemical pollution in human bodies has increased 10 fold over the last 2 decades, mostly due to the transitory relationship many have with their bodies. Environmental Scientist Sara Hallinan noted that "People don't really care what sort of chemical problems they expose their own bodies to in this day and age, after all we have reconstitution. The real problem is with the animal population and our chemical loading problems are killing them while only inconveniencing us."

Chemical industry spokesperson Harry Killingsworth noted that "the overall chemical load in fish and animals has been on the decline for 50 years, with only nuclear contamination rising, and we have nothing to do with that.' Additionally the increase in the use of psychometric drugs has become a problem, leaching into the animal population which led Ms. Hallinan to note "While having mellow fish and animals sounds amusing, it's not a good thing to have cows chilling on Previcide or fish grow beards on Heirant."