The medical-industrial complex dominated the planet’s economy. Biomedicine had the highest investment rates and the highest rates of technical innovation of any industry in the world. Biomedicine was in a deliberate state of controlled frenzy, giving off enough heat to power the entire culture. In terms of government expenditure it outranked transportation, police, and what passed for defense. In what had once been called the private sector, biomedicine was bigger than chemisynthesis, almost as big as computation. Various aspects of the medical-industrial complex employed 15 percent of the planet’s working populace. The scope of gerontological research alone was bigger than agriculture.