Experts Identify 17 Global Health Threats Including Two With Extinction Potential
A Lancet Commission has identified 17 major global health threats through 2100, highlighting malicious AI and nuclear conflict as the only two with the potential to cause human extinction.
Newsnibs Staff
- 2026-10-13
- Updated 8:40 PM UTC
A Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health, led by Christopher Murray of the University of Washington and drawing on contributions from dozens of scientists, has identified 17 major global health threats facing humanity through the end of the century, two of which the commission says carry the potential to cause human extinction. The assessment, published in The Lancet and presented at the World Health Summit in Berlin, covers 204 countries and territories and models potential avoidable death and disability using disability-adjusted life-years, or DALYs, through 2100.
The two extinction-level threats are the malicious use of artificial intelligence, including its potential use to help create bioweapons, and nuclear conflict leading to nuclear famine. The commission found that preventing nuclear conflict could avert 133 million deaths and 9.35 billion DALYs, while reducing the risks from malicious AI use could avert 10.4 billion DALYs.
Beyond those two, the commission classified 15 additional threats as catastrophic, meaning each could account for more than 1 billion avoidable DALYs by 2100. The full list of 17 threats spans air pollution, antimicrobial resistance, childhood malnutrition, climate change, conventional conflict, declining development assistance for health, high alcohol use, high blood pressure, income inequality, low educational attainment, naturally occurring pandemics, obesity, poor mental health, smoking, unhealthy ageing, malicious AI use and nuclear conflict.
Obesity carries the largest burden of any threat the commission assessed. The gap between best- and worst-case obesity scenarios through 2100 amounts to 23.1 billion DALYs, a figure the researchers compare to 46 COVID-19 pandemics; effective interventions could avert that loss. Low educational attainment and income inequality rank as the next-largest burdens after obesity. Climate change also ranks among the major threats: the commission found that limiting global warming to 1.8 degrees Celsius rather than 4.4 degrees could prevent 1.89 billion years of healthy life lost to the disease's direct effects.
Across all 17 threats combined, the researchers put the total estimated global burden of disease and injury for 2025 through 2100 at 246 billion DALYs, which they describe as roughly equivalent to 500 COVID-19 pandemics. The commission stresses that these figures are modeled estimates of potentially avoidable losses, not predictions that the deaths will necessarily occur. The report states that all 17 threats are relevant to India specifically, among the 204 countries and territories covered.
The commission's recommendations call on governments to build health systems that are prepared for and can prevent these threats, to accelerate investment in innovations such as vaccines, antibiotics and climate technologies, and to create a "Monitor of 21st Century Global Threats to Health" to strengthen tracking of emerging risks. The work was built on historical evidence and risk modeling conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Photo by Veer Mickey Shah on Unsplash
