The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals. On the 10th October 2026, they published the findings from a commission on global health threats. It makes for pretty bleak reading.
About the Commission
The Lancet brought together 35 individuals from the fields of economics, governance, health, security, and technology, to examine hundreds of potential risks through the prism of a “health-focused framework.” The goal of this research was to present these threats to governments in order to prepare for and prevent them, by implementing the necessary solutions now.
They narrowed these risks down by selecting those anticipated to cause “at least one billion years of healthy life lost by the end of the century.” This measurement is based on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). One DALY is equivalent to a single year of life lost through disability or premature death.
Key Findings of the Commission
A total of 17 threats were listed in the report. Of these, two had the potential to cause human extinction. The remaining 15 were classed as “catastrophic” threats.
These threats include (in alphabetical order):
- Air pollution
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Childhood malnutrition
- Climate change
- Collapse of Development Assistance for Health (DAH)
- Conventional conflict
- High alcohol use
- High blood pressure
- Income inequality
- Low educational attainment
- Malicious use of AI
- Nuclear conflict
- Obesity
- Pandemics
- Poor mental health
- Smoking
- Unhealthy aging
The commission states that AI and nuclear conflict are the two risks that have the potential to cause human extinction. Meanwhile the climate crisis was classed as a threat to “human survival.” Thus, quantifying these threats in the framework of DALYs becomes extremely difficult, particularly in the case of climate breakdown, as this will lead to a plethora of new risks which will compound and amplify one and other and cause a great deal of suffering and death in the process. As such, based on DALYs, the climate crisis didn’t make the top five threats, which is surprising to say the least.
The top five threats with the most DALYs included:
- Obesity – 23.1 billion DALYS
- Low educational attainment – 16.1 billion DALYs
- Income inequality – 13.8 billion DALYs
- Malicious use of AI – 10.4 billion DALYs
- Both nuclear conflict and poor mental health vied for fifth place, with 9.35 billion DALYs each
The commission makes it clear that there are solutions available to tackle these threats, and avoid worst-case outcomes such as human extinction. However, implementing solutions relies on governments and political action, which is a major problem as politicians are either causing or exacerbating many of the crises.
Conclusion
I’ve previously quoted AI and climate experts warning about human extinction as a result of the AI crisis, and about civilisational collapse caused by climate breakdown. However, this report is different in that it was put together by one of the most respected medical journals in the world. It simply hits different when the Lancet warns of AI potentially causing human extinction this century.
It’s interesting to note that similar to my warnings from a few years ago about the threat of AI outpacing climate breakdown in terms of urgency, that the Lancet has also placed AI above the climate crisis in their rankings. As mentioned before, part of this is due to the fact that all the impacts of climate breakdown can’t be modelled, and also because they will compound and amplify one other. In truth then, the DALY score for climate change will be far greater than that listed here. Nonetheless, the AI crisis has surpassed it in terms of urgency and also in terms of scale, for whilst climate chaos may result in the collapse of civilisation as we know it, it may not necessarily lead to the complete extinction of our species. Yet, that’s precisely what AI threatens. Many people still fail to acknowledge this threat despite the warnings from many quarters, which is simply beyond me.
Many of these “catastrophic” threats are part of the wider polycrisis. They’re occurring simultaneously and have the potential to amplify each other in ways we can barely understand. Despite this, our politicians continue doing nothing to avert disaster. Some governments are actively making these issues worse. So where does that leave us?
I’ve concluded a number of my blogs recently stating that we need to consider alternative forms of governance. We live in perilous times where urgent action is needed, and that isn’t coming from our current system of electoral politics. One system that has been proven to work is participatory democracy – where citizens lead and manage their own national and local governance. A switch to permanent participatory democracy would remove toxic politics from our society. It would enable ordinary people to have a say on whether we want industries to lobby for their harmful products. It would also give people the chance to regulate these industries to ensure they operate in a safe and considerate manner.
Without this kind of switch, I struggle to see how we will tackle all these issues which are being worsened by multiple corporations in multiple industries, with lobbyists working their way into the halls of government around the world. This has to change, or humanity will just stumble from one catastrophe to another on an ongoing basis.
Enormous change is heading our way, and we have a short window of opportunity to determine whether that change will be the start of a new brighter era, or whether it will crush and destroy us. It’s up to each of us to ensure the best-case outcome is realised, and to do so now.
I’ve been writing about the climate emergency since 2016, and the AI crisis since 2023. I write all my own work, without the use of AI. I don’t publish on any other paid platforms, and my blog remains completely free to read. If you’ve found my writing informative and if you’d like to support my work, I’d be really grateful if you did so here. Thank you.
My cli-fi children’s picture book, Nanook and the Melting Arctic is available from Amazon, including Amazon UK and Amazon US. My eco-fiction children’s picture book, Hedgey-A and the Honey Bees about how pesticides affect bees, is available on Amazon’s global stores including Amazon UK and Amazon US.