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Aubrey de Gray would agree with you.

http://www.mfoundation.org/

Have a read through the mprize and SENS pages, projects geared at tackling not only cancer but ageing in general.

Aubrey De Grey addressed this question a while back - what if people stopped dying from aging altogether? Will population explode? Will we immediately cause a bigger problem than we've solved?

Following his reasoning (plus real-world numbers) the answer is no. Personally, I agree with him.

Even in the most extreme of cases, were everyone to just stop dying of age-related causes altogether (including cancer, heart-disease etc) unless a truck hits them, population would not explode overnight. It would take a long time (read: hundreds of years) to become anywhere as apocalyptic as some would have you believe, far more than enough time for us to adapt and apply solutions to (humans have proven an uncanny ability to adapt social structures to evolving environments over the past centuries, having brains is a dang good thing at times) as well as be in turn mitigated by the very same fact that caused it, much like people going from making 15 kids to having three after realizing that all three (rather than one in five) will survive to adulthood if only they washed their hands.
That's to say our current population growth estimates take the existing rate as a given (200 years ago, 15 kids per family per generation was a given), but this very change is likely to change, and put predictions using these numbers far off the mark.

If people will have extended (reproduction-capable) lifetimes, the rate at which they procreate may quite possibly go down as less pressure exists to adhere to the ticking biological clock (aka "we'll have kids later"), much like many people are already preferring to do so towards their 30's rather when they're 16.

And we'd be replacing a BIG problem (causing a LOT of suffering) with a smaller one that can be tackled by education, regulation and generally more humane means than frality and losing one's mental capacity, life or loved ones.

Cancer is NOT a legitimate over-population solution. Neither are genocide, war, smallpox, AIDS or even old age. Much like amputation is not a solution for a muscle cramp.

The idea of promoting it as such is ludicrous.

They should all be cured.
Overpopulation will be addressed in due time, using far better means that we ALREADY HAVE at our disposal.

Last, I heartily encourage you to read this for some perspective on the matter.

Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?

This would be a waste of ask slashdot time, because this question is already dealt with repeatedly on his many FAQs on the website. There are plenty of answers, for example this one. (And of course they've thought of this one, silly)

My favorite answer is not in that current video FAQ item, so I'll explain it here. Basically, if you think death by aging is a major contributor to the population question, you don't understand the math.

The key point is that if there are more than 2 children born per person, births dominate the population equation because they are exponential. If you have 2 children per adult (= 4 per couple) and a 20-year generation time, then when you are 80 you are responsible for adding 14 people to the population via your descendents. (2 kids, 4 grandkids, 8 great-grandkids). If you die, you've only removed 6.7% of the population you're responsible for.

Keeping people alive from age 80 to age 100 only therefore increases this population by 6.7%, where births are responsible for the other 93.3%. Keeping them alive from 100 to 120 only increases the population by 3.3%, and keeping them alive from 120 to 140 only increases it by 1.6%. By the time you're extending someone's life to age 1000, he or she is only a miniscule slice of the population wedge that includes her and her descendants.

Reducing the birth rate from 2 per person to 1.5 per person, OTOH, really dramatically reduces the population. So it's much easier and more important to control the population that way, instead of by insisting people continue to get old and die, which is kind of cruel to the people who are already alive who would prefer to keep living, you know.

Answer to that is found from the website:
"I've said in the past that the first person to live to 1000 was probably born by 1945"
http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=timeframe

Answer to that is found from the website:
"I've said in the past that the first person to live to 1000 was probably born by 1945"
http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=timeframe

Until it hits the atmosphere and breathes....it isn't really a human.

Yes! Hooray for magical birth canals. C-Sections becoming more magical every day. This is scientifically ignorant.

If it cannot survive on earth....it isn't viable.

What part of earth, ever tried living very long naked on the ocean floor? In lava? That's kind of a dumb argument- as long as we're being silly :p what about babies born in space? Other planets? Hee hee this is fun!

Nature causes aborted pregnancies on its own for various reasons

Yeah, nature causes adults to die too (although we try hard) doesn't mean we should kill people, right?

[...]the two situations balance out

I like you, you're very dark and trollerific! When can I subscribe to your newsletter.

Really people, you surprise me sometimes. But you can still chill.

Quote: "I live in LA. I was a little surprised when I moved here five years ago to discover that the normals outnumber the weirdos by a dramatic margin."

It's just that the weirdos and shysters get more publicity than normal people.

After about 18 months in L.A., you begin to understand the more serious problems. The L.A. culture is even more disfunctional than the culture where you lived before. It gets seriously lonely, living in Los Angeles, even though there are people all around you.

Fraud Alert! In my opinion, this Slashdot story is about an almost purely fraudulent subject, with insignificant truth. Many people want to believe, and my guess is that the leaders of "anti-aging" efforts want to take the money of the believers. Here's where they ask for money: At present, a $100 donation (enough for a free signed copy of "Ending Aging") is leveraged to $150!.

The real science in this is in the VERY early stages. It's a wild guess, but a somewhat educated wild guess, that perhaps one one-thousandth is known about body chemistry that would need to be known to "cure" aging.

There have been some successes, if you can call them that. This paper talks about extending the life span of fruit flies by 7%: Extension of Drosophila Lifespan by Rhodiola rosea Through an Anti-oxidant Independent Mechanism. This sentence is interesting: "We evaluated a new formulation of R. rosea (SHR-5) which contains elevated levels of the putative active compounds (rosin, rosarin, and rosavin), and found that it could extend mean life span by 43%." The interesting word, in that sentence, in my opinion, is "could". Not "extended the life span by 43%", but "could". And the active compounds are "putative"; that means "commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed". How "commonly regarded" can it be when it is a "new formulation"?

If you follow experiments like this, you already know that "extending the life span of fruit flies" is rather common. If I were to try to extend the life of fruit flies myself, I would start by taking them out of their tiny cages in the laboratory and letting them fly more freely. Maybe now they just get depressed and commit suicide. (I find it difficult to be serious about that "research" paper.)

Right now, 2008-06-27, 01:13 AM PDT, Slashdot is second on the list of Blog Coverage (bottom of the left-hand column):
* Digg
* Slashdot
* Center for Society and Genetics
* Depressed Metabolism

I wonder if they will eliminate the link to this Slashdot story when they discover that not all Slashdot readers are ignorant about science?

Remember all the publicity about sequencing the human genome? A lot of taxpayers paid a lot of money for that. Then, it was revealed, that, so sorry, the epigenome is a lot more complex, very influential, and almost completely unknown.

I would like Slashdot editors to provide an assurance at the end of every story they run that no one they know got money or any other benefit because of running the story.

Every time you play a video game, you are spending time learning about a fantasy world, when you could be learning about the real world. If you study the real world, you can discover that "anti-aging" is a HUGE business, funded largely by people who have more money than scientific knowledge, and hope not to die.

Yes, I know how to spell disfunctional. I just don't like that spelling, and I made my own.

Quote: "I live in LA. I was a little surprised when I moved here five years ago to discover that the normals outnumber the weirdos by a dramatic margin."

It's just that the weirdos and shysters get more publicity than normal people.

After about 18 months in L.A., you begin to understand the more serious problems. The L.A. culture is even more disfunctional than the culture where you lived before. It gets seriously lonely, living in Los Angeles, even though there are people all around you.

Fraud Alert! In my opinion, this Slashdot story is about an almost purely fraudulent subject, with insignificant truth. Many people want to believe, and my guess is that the leaders of "anti-aging" efforts want to take the money of the believers. Here's where they ask for money: At present, a $100 donation (enough for a free signed copy of "Ending Aging") is leveraged to $150!.

The real science in this is in the VERY early stages. It's a wild guess, but a somewhat educated wild guess, that perhaps one one-thousandth is known about body chemistry that would need to be known to "cure" aging.

There have been some successes, if you can call them that. This paper talks about extending the life span of fruit flies by 7%: Extension of Drosophila Lifespan by Rhodiola rosea Through an Anti-oxidant Independent Mechanism. This sentence is interesting: "We evaluated a new formulation of R. rosea (SHR-5) which contains elevated levels of the putative active compounds (rosin, rosarin, and rosavin), and found that it could extend mean life span by 43%." The interesting word, in that sentence, in my opinion, is "could". Not "extended the life span by 43%", but "could". And the active compounds are "putative"; that means "commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed". How "commonly regarded" can it be when it is a "new formulation"?

If you follow experiments like this, you already know that "extending the life span of fruit flies" is rather common. If I were to try to extend the life of fruit flies myself, I would start by taking them out of their tiny cages in the laboratory and letting them fly more freely. Maybe now they just get depressed and commit suicide. (I find it difficult to be serious about that "research" paper.)

Right now, 2008-06-27, 01:13 AM PDT, Slashdot is second on the list of Blog Coverage (bottom of the left-hand column):
* Digg
* Slashdot
* Center for Society and Genetics
* Depressed Metabolism

I wonder if they will eliminate the link to this Slashdot story when they discover that not all Slashdot readers are ignorant about science?

Remember all the publicity about sequencing the human genome? A lot of taxpayers paid a lot of money for that. Then, it was revealed, that, so sorry, the epigenome is a lot more complex, very influential, and almost completely unknown.

I would like Slashdot editors to provide an assurance at the end of every story they run that no one they know got money or any other benefit because of running the story.

Every time you play a video game, you are spending time learning about a fantasy world, when you could be learning about the real world. If you study the real world, you can discover that "anti-aging" is a HUGE business, funded largely by people who have more money than scientific knowledge, and hope not to die.

Yes, I know how to spell disfunctional. I just don't like that spelling, and I made my own.

Quote: "I live in LA. I was a little surprised when I moved here five years ago to discover that the normals outnumber the weirdos by a dramatic margin."

It's just that the weirdos and shysters get more publicity than normal people.

After about 18 months in L.A., you begin to understand the more serious problems. The L.A. culture is even more disfunctional than the culture where you lived before. It gets seriously lonely, living in Los Angeles, even though there are people all around you.

Fraud Alert! In my opinion, this Slashdot story is about an almost purely fraudulent subject, with insignificant truth. Many people want to believe, and my guess is that the leaders of "anti-aging" efforts want to take the money of the believers. Here's where they ask for money: At present, a $100 donation (enough for a free signed copy of "Ending Aging") is leveraged to $150!.

The real science in this is in the VERY early stages. It's a wild guess, but a somewhat educated wild guess, that perhaps one one-thousandth is known about body chemistry that would need to be known to "cure" aging.

There have been some successes, if you can call them that. This paper talks about extending the life span of fruit flies by 7%: Extension of Drosophila Lifespan by Rhodiola rosea Through an Anti-oxidant Independent Mechanism. This sentence is interesting: "We evaluated a new formulation of R. rosea (SHR-5) which contains elevated levels of the putative active compounds (rosin, rosarin, and rosavin), and found that it could extend mean life span by 43%." The interesting word, in that sentence, in my opinion, is "could". Not "extended the life span by 43%", but "could". And the active compounds are "putative"; that means "commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed". How "commonly regarded" can it be when it is a "new formulation"?

If you follow experiments like this, you already know that "extending the life span of fruit flies" is rather common. If I were to try to extend the life of fruit flies myself, I would start by taking them out of their tiny cages in the laboratory and letting them fly more freely. Maybe now they just get depressed and commit suicide. (I find it difficult to be serious about that "research" paper.)

Right now, 2008-06-27, 01:13 AM PDT, Slashdot is second on the list of Blog Coverage (bottom of the left-hand column):
* Digg
* Slashdot
* Center for Society and Genetics
* Depressed Metabolism

I wonder if they will eliminate the link to this Slashdot story when they discover that not all Slashdot readers are ignorant about science?

Remember all the publicity about sequencing the human genome? A lot of taxpayers paid a lot of money for that. Then, it was revealed, that, so sorry, the epigenome is a lot more complex, very influential, and almost completely unknown.

I would like Slashdot editors to provide an assurance at the end of every story they run that no one they know got money or any other benefit because of running the story.

Every time you play a video game, you are spending time learning about a fantasy world, when you could be learning about the real world. If you study the real world, you can discover that "anti-aging" is a HUGE business, funded largely by people who have more money than scientific knowledge, and hope not to die.

Yes, I know how to spell disfunctional. I just don't like that spelling, and I made my own.

Or get rid of the supernatural BS and actually research something useful. Science, FTW.

• Cell loss, cell atrophy
• Nuclear [epi]mutations (only cancer matters)
• Mutant mitochondria
• Death-resistant cells
• Extracellular crosslinks
• Extracellular junk
• Intracellular junk