The Ethics of Life Extension

buggieboy writes "The President's Council on Bioethics met this month to discuss Age-Retardation: Scientific Possibilities and moral challenges. The consensus was that "aging is a natural part of the life cycle, not a disease." Think Social Security was discussed?" Bruce Sterling's book Holy Fire is a good look at this issue if you find it interesting.

Comments

Nice.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

You will have an average lifespan until proven rich...

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you (Sincerely!) for stating the obvious...

Your statement is quite consistant with the current realization of intellectual "property"!

'Pay or Die!'

Overpopulation

[bac()n]

Age-Retardation would definately intensify the over population problem. People want to cheat death, ignore it. It should be a natural part of life. Eventually this situation is gonna come to a head, and then we're gonna have lotteries to determine who can have children...food and energy rations and other such nonsense.

Can anybody say China?

Re:Overpopulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Age-Retardation

I thought this referred to a disease that PHBs get.

Re:Overpopulation

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Age-Retardation would definately intensify the over population problem.

What over-population problem? The world has the natural resources, and we have the technology to exploit them, to support a much larger population than the present one. The only real challenge facing us is one of transportation: getting the stuff from where it grows, lives, or is made to where the people are.

Re:Overpopulation

[bac()n]

Yet again, ill site statistics.

In 2000, U.S.A: 637,000 births around 247,000 deaths. the birth rate rises about 20% per year while the coinciding death rate rises about 2%.

That overpopulation problem.

In ten years or so the birth rate will be well over a million people, while the death rate wont even break 450K. If that doesn't present overpopulation concerns for you then you are ignoring the evidence.

Re:Overpopulation

[Com2Kid]

• What over-population problem?

The one involving the neccesitating of stacking humans up in kennels, err, sorry I mean apartment buildings (or "condos" if you are rich) like rabbits in hutches.

This is insane

[Henry V .009]

Good God, what dumbasses. Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country. They're the ones who would use this.

Besides, if it ever got to that point, child limitation would be a better option than life limitation.

Lots of things are natural. Doesn't mean they're any good. Anybody who wants to live natural can ditch agriculture and go back to hunting and scavenging.

Re:This is insane

[Anonymous Coward]

child limitation would be a better option than life limitation.

Yeah, it's easier to herd children into the gas chambers and adults. I agree completely.

Re:This is insane

[bac()n]

you dont think overpopulation will be a problem in western nations in the future? who's the dumbass?!?!? there were 637,000 births in the u.s. in 2000, and 247,000 deaths. birth rises about 12-20% per year, deaths stay about the same, what does that tell you?

you're an idiot.

Re:This is insane

[PhilHibbs]

Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country.

Literally, that's true. However, overpopulation in western developed countries is a problem in underdeveloped countries. The amount of crap that we produce that gets dumped on them is terrifying. You think you recycle your waste at those collection points? You'd be shocked (assuming you have a conscience) at how much of it ends up in 'landfill' (i.e. in the open air, on fire, with children picking through it) in India, or poisoning Chinese poor people as they dip the PCBs in toxic chemicals.

Re:This is insane

[Twirlip of the Mists]

birth rises about 12-20% per year, deaths stay about the same, what does that tell you?

It tells me that the population is growing. But that's not sufficient to conclude that we have a population problem. Our population-- the population of the world, I mean-- is not growing at a rate that outstrips our ability to exploit natural resources.

Re:This is insane

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You'd be shocked (assuming you have a conscience) at how much of it ends up in 'landfill' (i.e. in the open air, on fire, with children picking through it) in India, or poisoning Chinese poor people as they dip the PCBs in toxic chemicals.

Shock me. How much?

(My bullshit detector is going off, you see, so I thought I'd call the bluff.)

Re:This is insane

[Anonymous Coward]

pls where cna i get buslhit detcter like you taht sounds cooooool!!!!1

Re:This is insane

[superflex]

Sorry, don't have time to do alot of research, but here is an interesting piece on this sort of problem.

Notable quote from this article: "At the same time that we're preventing pollution in the United States, we're shifting the problem to somebody else," said Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental advocacy group. "It's being exported and doing harm."

Re:This is insane

[Radical Rad]

Whoever wrote the paper seemed more worried about a _decrease_ in fertility than overpopulation. Many people can't wait until their kids move out of the house so they can have some of their life back before they get too old to enjoy it. Who would foster endless generations of children? Probably some but not many I think. They also seemed quite worried that the "cycle of life" that they already understand would change in ways they can not predict. I guess uncertainty scared them worse than mortality.

They didn't discuss in detail the benefits besides the obvious that it is what people want. Imagine a workforce that never ages. Everyone is in the prime of their life. Imagine the skills that employees could accumulate, the shorter learning curves because of previous experience. Imagine the increase in efficiency and productivity. Longer working life means people could save for retirement longer. Pension payouts would decrease. Workers could save enough to retire when they want and go back to working if they get bored which many do.

They also did not consider the possibility of rejuvenation for those who are already old. They talked of stretching the lifespan as if old age would also last longer, but with gene therapy maybe life can be maintained in its prime permanently or at least until you step in front of a bus.

Re:This is insane

[ggwood]

You said, "Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country"

But obviously it would become one if we all lived far longer than we do today. Thus the ethis issue.

Re:This is insane

[C32]

Yeah but who the fuck wants to live in a malthusian nightmare right out of a sci-fi novel...

Re:This is insane

[Hard_Code]

Imagine a workforce that never ages.

Well, unfortunately, medicine seems more geared towards keeping people who can't work anyway alive longer. So that just means more young people working harder, to pay the medical costs of the "magical medicine" that keeps geezers living forever... sounds great...

Re:This is insane

[Lazyhound]

Our population [...] is not growing at a rate that outstrips our ability to exploit natural resources.

Too bad the the natural resources themselves aren't increasing to match.

Re:This is insane

[PhilHibbs]

It'll take some time to do the numbers, but superflex's post is a good start.

Re:This is insane

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No, it's not. It's a terrible start. He linked to one article that spread doom-and-gloom with virtually no facts to back it up. Mountain out of a molehill. Hardly shocking.

Re:This is insane

[PhilHibbs]

Shock me. How much?

I can't give you a grand total, but here's a quote from an article with some numbers.

Greenpeace researchers discovered records listing Pepsi as the exporter of about 4,500 tons of plastic scrap in 23 shipments during 1993... Much of the waste was dumped at the site of a factory owned by Futura Industries in Tiruvallur, outside of Madras... The senior manager of the Futura plant, Dr. L.R. Subbaraman, ... reports that Futura has imported a total of 10,000 metric tons of plastic waste from Pepsi and other companies since 1992." [article written in September 1994]

Much of the waste was dumped at the site of a factory owned by Futura Industries in Tiruvallur, outside of Madras. "As we came over the hill in our auto-rickshaw, we saw a mountain of plastic waste," recounts Madras environmentalist Satish Vangal, one of the researchers who discovered the site. "Piles and piles of used soda bottles stacked behind a wall. When we got closer to the factory, we found many bottles and plastic scrap along the road and blowing in the wind. Every bottle we saw said 'California Redemption Value.' They were all from California's recycling program and now they are sitting in a pile in India!" explains Vangal. "We have enough problems dealing with our own plastic wastes; why should we import other peoples's rubbish?"

Of course I haven't been to India and seen it myself, so I'm relying on the article's author, and the reputation of organisations such as Greenpeace. I found the article through a reference in Michael Moore's book "Stupid White Men", where he also talks about recycle bags being dumped in landfill in the U.S.

hmm...

[C21]

I would think that a mandantory pyschological analysis would be demanded when someone expresses interest in wanting to elude death. I think anyone who would want to do this without legitimate cause has major issues to work out with an experienced individual.

Re:hmm...

[kurosawdust]

I agree. Anything to stop that dastardly Alex Chiu!

Re:hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

with an experienced individual.

How's a hooker going to help?

Re:hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a bit lame, aren't you?

I'm a sci-fi nut, and would want to love 1000 years just to see the future unfold.

Anyone that wants to die needs their head examined - I'm an atheist, so the whole after-life thing is a a non-issue for me.

Re:hmm...

[eglamkowski]

I wanna live as long as possible just so I see how badly humans screw everything up :-p

LOL

[FroMan]

Don't ever use the word "ethics" on slashdot unless ofcourse it is prefixed with "lack of".

Re:LOL

[fredrikj]

Don't ever use the word "ethics" on slashdot unless ofcourse it is prefixed with "lack of".

Geez. Not all stories are about Microsoft ;)

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post, I guess some moderators don't have a sense of humor or irony. Especially since they didn't mod the parent Troll.

How long is long enough?

[blahlemon]

I saw a good lecture on this once with multiple sides of the argument being presented. The best question a critic presented, IHMO, was how long is long enough? Twice the current life span? Three times? At what point would you be willing to say you've lived long enough? If you look at the elderly how many seem overwelmed by the speed the world makes changes? I've got a grandmother who uses a little e-mail but no matter how many times I explain it to her and show it to her she never really understands it, she just memorizes the mechanics. If human learning and the capacity to retain new concepts has a finite limit how could you reasonably expect to have any quality of life once the world has left you decades or centuries behind?

Re:How long is long enough?

[Copperhead]

True. How many people who are hitting upper middle age consider extending their lives because they think they still have something to contribute or create. My guess is that they're simply afraid of death.

Of course, they should be afraid...

Re:How long is long enough?

[pauljlucas]

I've got a grandmother who uses a little e-mail but no matter how many times I explain it to her and show it to her she never really understands it, she just memorizes the mechanics.

In my observation, there are (at least) two classes of people: those who learn strictly by memorizing steps and those who see patterns, figure things out, and then "get it." The latter class are the "intelligent" people. That being the case, it's got nothing to do with age.

That aside, living in the modern world (despite what many here on /. might think) does not require the use of e-mail, the 'net, computers, fax machines, cell phones, or lots of other techie things.

If I were your grandmother, I wouldn't want to stop living just because I couldn't understand how e-mail works. There's so much more to life. If she could live another 100 years, she could see the world, enjoy more good meals, and see the birth of her great-great-great grandchildren.

How myopic of you to think that just because she can't "get" e-mail she'd want to stop living.

Re:How long is long enough?

[blahlemon]

E-mail was just the example of technology outpacing her ability to keep up with it. Obviously I'm not saying that she should roll over and die just because she can't use e-mail.

On the other hand she is 80+ years old and has given a DNR (do not recussitate) order to her doctor and local hospitals in the case of sudden illness like heart failure or stroke. She says herself that she has lived long enough. It's not that she doesn't enjoy life, not is it that she is so diminished that she can no long contribute. It's just she's come to that point in her life where she realizes the world is moving faster then her and there are natural limits (her words not mine.)

How myoptic of you to think I would want my grandmother dead.

Re:How long is long enough?

[pauljlucas]

There are two kinds of "life extension": appending years to one's life in which case you'd feel and look really old, i.e., at 160, you'd feel 160; or uniformly extending life so that if you lived to be 160 (roughly double), at 80 you'd have the physical body of a current 40 year old, i.e., aging as a whole would be uniformly slowed down. I'd want the latter only.

On the other hand she is 80+ years old and has given a DNR (do not recussitate) order

Yes, but if her life were doubled, then she'd physically only be what we currently describe as a 40 year old. If that were the case, I doubt she would have given a DNR.

She says herself that she has lived long enough. It's not that she doesn't enjoy life, not is it that she is so diminished that she can no long contribute. It's just she's come to that point in her life where she realizes the world is moving faster then her and there are natural limits (her words not mine.)

Perhaps that's her rationalization and/or what she tells you because, deep down, she might feel like a "burden" to unappreciative and impatient grandchildren.

Re:How long is long enough?

[blahlemon]

>>Perhaps that's her rationalization and/or what she tells you because, deep down, she might feel like a "burden" to unappreciative and impatient grandchildren.

Considering you don't anything about my relationship with my grandmother I suggest you fuck off.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:How long is long enough?

[Yuan-Lung]

How myopic of you to think that just because she can't "get" e-mail she'd want to stop living.

In other news:

An e-mail server outage cause numerous cases of suicide.

Re:How long is long enough?

[Jerf]

Perhaps that's her rationalization and/or what she tells you because, deep down, she might feel like a "burden" to unappreciative and impatient grandchildren.

You know, your points are good enough to stand in a debate without constantly personally attacking the other guy. Stop exaggerating the other guy's point and reading into what he's saying, and start reading what's actually there; no more, no less. You're coming off like a jackass.

Re:How long is long enough?

[superflex]

This is along this same lines of what I was thinking of. IMHO, extending the period of human life is going to do more harm than good unless we also improve the quality of life into these extended years.

Re:How long is long enough?

[anthony_dipierro]

At what point would you be willing to say you've lived long enough?

Never, of course.

If human learning and the capacity to retain new concepts has a finite limit how could you reasonably expect to have any quality of life once the world has left you decades or centuries behind?

Human learning and the capacity to retain new concepts doesn't have a finite limit (at least not any more than concepts themselves do).

Yes, at some point the research into quality of life has to catch up with length of life. But that is being done, too.

Re:How long is long enough?

[UpnAtom]

There are two kinds of life extension: appending years to one's life in which case you'd feel and look really old, i.e., at 160, you'd feel 160; or uniformly extending life so that if you lived to be 160 (roughly double), at 80 you'd have the physical body of a current 40 year old, i.e., aging as a whole would be uniformly slowed down. I'd want the latter only.

For the forseeable future, you are likely to get the latter only. People die of old age because their DNA is a mess and prevents cells from performing their function.

Even by replacing their organs, you are likely to extend the average life by ~10 years maximum.

OTOH, real life extension technology is already here. It's called Calorie Restriction and it reduces damage done to DNA by the body's metabolism.

Practical Life extension

[Tiamat]

They speak in the report about the most studied, and most promising, practical means of life extension: calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. As they suggest in the report, the evidence is clear that it extends not just average lifespan, but maximum lifespan, by as much as 50%, in every species that has been tested, including mice, dogs, and now other primates.

Most people will wait for pharm companies to develop mimetics, or ways of producing the same results without actually having to eat less, but for those who have an interest in reading up on human CR visit the CR Society web pages, or pick up one of Roy Walford's books on Amazon. (He's a professor of pathology at UCLA school of medicine, and is a leading researcher of CR. Beyond the 120 year diet is a good layman's introduction to CR.)

Re:Practical Life extension

[hlh_nospam]

Predictably, the article spent some time covering calorie restriction as one of the few ways thought to significantly extend lifespan.

Calorie restriction has one BIG drawback: You are hungry all the damned time. You can ignore hunger for a while, but it never lets up. Without the imposition of some external discipline, you will eventually cave.

There is a possible alternative: Carbohydrate restriction. Carb restriction has nearly all of the effects of calorie restriction, without the gnawing hunger. From my own readings, and my own experience with low-carb diet, I have come to the following conclusion: One of the most important keys to living a long, healthy life is reducing the amount of insulin required by the body. (Of course, you need to avoid other causes of premature death, such as failure to wear seat belts, or being in certain areas of town after dark.)

It is not really clear whether insulin itself is the culprit, or blood sugar, or both, or some interaction of those things with other factors. But the evidence is quite clear, and growing. I have yet to see a nutritional study in which either the amount of carbohydrate or the glycemic load of the diet has been reduced without causing some improvement in health (although such improvements are usually attributed to some other factor, because of an almost universal bias on the part of nutritional researchers).

There may be some other things you can do to reduce insulin requirements, but the 3 most important seem to be:

1) Carbohydrate (easy) or calorie (hard) restriction.
2) Adequate and regular sleep.
3) Load-bearing exercise.

As near as I can tell, these three items are roughly equally important, as least according to the measurements I have available for my own responses to these factors. Of course, that's not all there is to it; in addition to restricting carbs, you need to limit or eliminate things like trans-fats. In addition to weight training, you should probably do some aerobics. As for sleep, well, that may be the hardest part for the caffeine-addicted geek.

Re:Practical Life extension

[UpnAtom]

Calorie restriction has one BIG drawback: You are hungry all the damned time. You can ignore hunger for a while, but it never lets up. Without the imposition of some external discipline, you will eventually cave.

Not strictly true. There is a whole bunch of neural processing that conveys that sensation of hunger to you You can train your brain to delay that sensation until you really are at risk of malnutrition. As a hypnotist I have done this with several clients.

Multiple life sentances

[LudditeMind]

Hey, then we could make criminals actually experience their 7 consecutive life terms. I'd bet the death penalty would become more popular among the public and the inmates.

Problem Is Already Here

[4of12]

It's good to think ahead to the consequences of breakthroughs that may enable human lifespans to be extended far beyond their current limits. Will the quality of life be good enough, how much will it cost, how should society be restructured, etc.?

However, I'm thinking there's already evidence of what to expect. The number of senior citizens is increasing dramatically and throwing a wrench into pension schemes drawn up decades ago when life spans weren't so great as they are now.

Furthermore, as more and more health care treatments and diagnostics have become available and actually utilized, the overall cost of health care has been increasing in real terms. You can already see the signs of the system straining with hospitals requiring insurance cards, the fraction of uninsured people increasing, the cost of health insurance rising, people waiting in line at ERs, etc.

It's a gradual process and it's already started happening.

The rich live longer and the poor die out?

[SolemnDragon]

My opinion, .02 thrown into the mix

1. First Priority, Bring the lower ends of the scale on the global lifespan spectrum up to par. That means dealing with AIDS, Starvation, Poverty, Pollution, and other major population decimators haunting the young and old in impoverished (and even in supposedly wealthy) countries.
2. Second Priority. Get their health care up to par, too. They're living longer, now let's get them something for that crippling illness.
3. Step three: Let's see some sustainability. That's right, now that we've raised both lifespan and quality of life, let's see if we can sort something out where the planet doesn't get destroyed by healthy humans.
4. Step four: now we're ready to talk about stretching the upper maximum age limit. Because before we do those things, all that we're offering is a new caste, one who can outlive those who are already dying of hunger and preventable diseases. Are we crazy? Yeah, it's great to live longer, but shouldn't we be more worried about those even right here in the US who don't have a chance of living up to the global average?

Incidentally, another chance to give somebody else's money can be found at the Hunger Site.

Idiots. All Idiots.

[dasunt]

Sure, life extension is unnatural. So is insulin, open heart surgery, cooked food, anti-stroke drugs, central heating/cooling, canned foods, automobiles, plumbing, farming, herding, manufacturing...

In short, look around you. Its all unnatural. Unless you are a pre-fire hunter gatherer that does not wear clothing or use tools, your life in altered by technology.

As for overpopulation, yep, technology already caused that. Guess how many pre-fire non-tool using hunter gatherers the world can support? Nowhere near six billion.

In short, these are idiots, nothing more.

sorry if slightly OT...

[kurosawdust]

...but I recall in college reading an essay about how if immortality would be realizable, there would be two kinds of people: those who are impulsive and determined, basically using eternity to run through their to-do list, and those who are perpetually procrastinating, figuring that since they are immortal they'll get to it someday. I was just wondering if anyone is familiar with this essay and knew the title/author/where to find it on the internet because i can't seem to locate it through googling...

Re:sorry if slightly OT...

[Smidge204]

I think that was pretty much on topic..

There's two things I'd like to bring up to expand on that idea, in a way. First, a quote:

"Millions long for immortality who don't know
what to do on a rainy afternoon." -Susan Ertz

Which I think pretty much sums up the situation for most of the people who would buy into the treatment. (Just look at how many hollywood burn-outs keep hacking their bodies up trying to stay young!)

The second is an obligatory reference to the HHGTTG:

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was --indeed, is - one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.

Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational
particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. (snip) To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody."
=Smidge=

Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The generally accepted scientific theory about why we get old and die eventually is as follows.

Every animal in the animal kingdom generally gets killed occasionally. Take a mouse. A mouse is small and crunchy to cats. Cats predate mice, so the chances of a mouse surviving say, a year and half is low.

Therefore from the mouse genes point of view is it better to spend most of the energy of a nut it just ate on repair or reproduction?

Clearly if chances are the mouse is dead anyway after a year and half anyway, and so won't reproduce after that time, then it is better to use most of the nut on reproduction. So mice reproduce fairly rapidly and die young.

In contrast, tortoises which are very well protected live for centuries. Birds, for their size, are also very long lived- this appears to be because they can escape most danger by flying away. Incidentally, flying squirrels live much longer than normal squirrels, elephants live a long while, cats live much longer than dogs etc. etc.

Now humans have sort of outgrown all this stuff- we are really, really good at protecting ourselves- even risks as low as 1 in million upset lots of people- "my kid just ate an Alar infested apple- he could die!"; and currently if it weren't for old age we would all live to be about 400 years old; until we had a car accident or died of flu or something.

Our genes just simply haven't had a chance to adapt yet. So we die 'early'.

If nothing is done then the longer lived members of our society- those that look better ('younger') for longer will have more children, because they have more time to do it; and their genes will eventually spread through the human population; and life expectency will go up. But this will take hundreds or thousands of generations.

I say we should help nature along; the current situation sucks.

Re:Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[eglamkowski]

If nothing is done then the longer lived members of our society- those that look better ('younger') for longer will have more children,

Not unless there are some radical changes in female reproductive organs, like being born with more eggs, or being able to produce an unlimited number of eggs as men do sperm.

Re:Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[CarlDenny]

if it weren't for old age we would all live to be about 400 years old; until we had a car accident or died of flu or something.

Hmm, looking up some statistics if we stayed as healthy as 25-44yos in 1995 (190 deaths/100,000), we'd have a median lifespan of about 360 odd years.
n = log(.5)/log(1-p)
Keen.

Re:Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Not unless there are some radical changes in female reproductive organs, like being born with more eggs, or being able to produce an unlimited number of eggs as men do sperm.

Well, clearly it would work with men; and since men and women share a lot of genes, it's likely that women would inherit the longevity genes from their father, they'd just cease to be fertile after 50 years in the normal way.

It's not currently known why women go through the menopause; it's possible that their eggs are ageing too, or are linked in some way to the effective age of the mother; so mutations that allow women to live longer, or different mutations may allow their eggs to live longer as well.

Re:Idiots. All Idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you'll get all sort of idiots ranting at you now about your "unnatural" viewpoint, but for the record I agree with you.

I will never, ever understand people who look forward to bodily decay and nonexistance. Some twits will of course delude themselves into thinking it's a nice idea because of a bunch of bronze-age mythology, but for anyone who is capable of thinking, the prospect of life extension is hard to hate.

Re:Idiots. All Idiots.

[blahlemon]

The ethical question isn't based on natural vs. unnatural, it's based on what is reasonable vs. what is unreasonable.

Don't be so quick to call people idiots just because you fail to grasp the fundimentals of the arguement.

Natural

[barakn]

aging is a natural part of the life cycle, not a disease.

Odd statement, really. Disease is also a natural part of the life cycle. There's no reason not to think of aging as a disease. Antibiotics weren't invented to ease the suffering of patients as they died, they were invented to save lives, i.e. increase life expectancy.

Can't help but think that this discussion would be entirely different in a Buddhist or Hindu culture. Christians seem particularly afraid of death. I suspect heaven and hell are such unnatural and implausible places, sounding more like the figments of overactive imagination, that Christians are secretly afraid they don't exist.

Now watch my karma go down in flames.

Re:Natural

[eglamkowski]

Now watch my karma go down in flames.

Sounds like your karma just ran over some Christian's dogma ;-p

Re:Natural

[TheLink]

You sure those are really Christians though?

I'm a Christian and most Christians I know aren't particularly afraid of death.

Most of us agree that what's scary is dying in a very unpleasant and/or painful way.

And what's scarier is that there's a good chance that we might be made to - Crusader Bush seems to be helping to set up the world for a Christianity vs Islam event. In many countries there's a tendency for people to burn churches, kill/torture/maim christians for something that's totally unrelated - e.g. some journalist writing about Miss World in Nigeria and someone who should not be mentioned lightly. Even in my country, churches have been burnt, defaced and we're not sure why either, maybe it's something some "Christian Nation" did.

Of course there are often still plenty of things to be done/settled - people we have neglected etc, so to have to leave before we think we're done can be worrying.

After all we are answerable to God for what we did and didn't do.

And so far I haven't really done anything really useful in my life (heck I'm posting on Slashdot ;) ). So yeah, I'd like a longer life - coz I've wasted most of what I had already.

I beg to differ

[GuyMannDude]

Good God, what dumbasses. Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country. They're the ones who would use this.

Most environmentalists (the real ones, not the ones that put a "Save the Planet" bumper sticker on their SUVs) and population control advocates are VERY MUCH worried about overpopulation in "western developed countries". The amount of natural resources that a single person in a developed country consumers over their lifetime is significantly greater than the resources that a single person in an undeveloped country uses. Overpopulation in developed countries is an even bigger threat to the environment than overpopulation in undeveloped countries.

Regarding your comment about child limitation, you should probably clarify what you mean. Very few people are going to be in favor of manditory government-imposed child restrictions. However, changing the tax code so that any children over the first two doesn't give you a full dependent deduction might be a way of subtly encouraging people to keep their numbers down.

GMD

Re:I beg to differ

[Strange Ranger]

>Very few people are going to be in favor of manditory government-imposed child restrictions.

I don't know whether I'm in that camp or not. But if I think of it as a parenting restriction, and keep in mind that society requires us to have licenses in order to drive, sell apples, and go fishing, and then I look around at a few of the other parents, well, I start to give myself Orwelian chills.

Re:I beg to differ

[Iainuki]

Overpopulation in developed countries would be a problem if the populations were increasing, which they aren't. The birthrates in most developed countries have fallen below the replacement rate; the US population continues to grow only because of immigration.

Re:I beg to differ

[Kintanon]

How about we quit giving fucking tax breaks to people who have fucking kids? We already pay for their fucking schooling, their fucking daycare, and who knows what else! Then they hit us up at the super market to pay for every other fucking thing from little league to their fucking prom. If you can't afford kids don't fucking have any! And don't come whining to me after you do. I'm all for mandatory child restrictions. When you're born you get a "Reproduction" token, you can choose to use it yourself and have a kid, or sell it/give it away to someone else who wants to have more kids but doesn't have any more tokens. That way each couple has 2 tokens = 2 kids. Since I wouldn't need mine I could sell it to one of those fuckheads that has 6 kids because he's too fucking stupid to figure out how a condom works.
I'm also in favor of mandatory sterilization after a couple has their 2 kids.
Fucking breeders....

Kintanon
PS. Yeah, I know I'm a ranty asshole. Fuck you too.

Re:I beg to differ

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpopulation in developed countries is an even bigger threat to the environment than overpopulation in undeveloped countries.

But it's a self-correcting problem. Too many people being born leads to too much pollution leads to lots of people dying.

Re:I beg to differ

[Anonymous Coward]

lol...yeah, but if you have a civilization of immortal ppl, each having two kids, well one for each parent, its still a steady increase, over every 15-25 year period there would be a +6billion population difference, not to mention that having a bunch of out-dated people would cause evolution to slow, moreso than the near stop that it already is.

Re:I beg to differ

[Unordained]

Voluntary Human Extinction MovemenT

Re:I beg to differ

[j-beda]

I don't know about the little league and the prom, but the education thing is probably pretty useful. When all of us are old and grey, it is pretty useful to have a large number of younger well educated citizens to be working and moving the ecconomy along. At least in the USA and Canada, we can probably make up the shortfall by way of immigration, but there are a number of places (Japan for example) where I think it is going to be a big problem finding enough people to support all the old farts.

As a use of tax dollars, spending it on the kiddies' educations, health care, and daycare is probably one of the best "investments" that the society can make. If there were actually probems with having too many kids born, then it might be worthwhile to come up with disincentives, but the demmographics are that if anything, the "first world" has too low a birthrate rather tahn too high.

Re:I beg to differ

[Kintanon]

I wouldn't have a problem with it if it worked. But I've yet to run up against more than 1% at best of the students of public school that know fuckall about anything. Most of them are foul mouthed little morons barely capable of the most basic grunting communication outside of the profanity they spew.
When every 17 year old knows who Descartes is (Just as a random example) maybe I'll change my mind...

Kintanon

Re:I beg to differ

[j-beda]

Are there problems with our educational system? Sure. Is it better than nothing? Definately.

Scientific American articles

[GuyMannDude]

For those of you with an interest in the subject of aging, you may wish to check out some of Scientific American's articles on the subject from the last year:

The Truth About Human Aging

The Serious Search for an Anti-Aging Pill

GMD

Re:Life extension?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck does anti-aging treatments have to do with lucid dreaming?

Alright then...

[hackwrench]

Take this to its natural conclusion and you find that all diseases are a natural part of life. So if you take this tack, you should thow out all your medicines.

for some reason

[Unknown Poltroon]

THis post made me laugh my ass off.

Re:for some reason

[blahlemon]

Well I don't care if someone mod'ed it down, I take offence to his personal attack.

It would be like my saying to him "Well you're gay, what the hell do gay people know?"

Re:for some reason

[Anonymous Coward]

He's gay? No wonder.

Re:for some reason

[t0ny]

He DOES have a mac homepage...

Re:Idiots. All Idiots.

[juushin]

To point out a correction, insulin is naturally produced by the body. You must be referring to modern synthetic forms of insulin (Lyspro, Glargine) in your comment that insulin is unnatural.

Geeks are immune to this

[Radical Rad]

They also seem to reduce the animal's ability to compete for mates, so that in experiments in which the single-gene mutation animals are placed together with normal members of their species and allowed to reproduce freely, the single-gene difference is fairly quickly selected out of the population.

We hardly ever get laid anyway!

Re:Geeks are immune to this

[matttastic]

We?

Re:Geeks are immune to this

[Anonymous Coward]

With a name like matttastic I bet you get laid as often as you want, when ever you want.

Re:Geeks are immune to this

[Anonymous Coward]

I know matt personally and I gaurantee you he get laid a LOT! He can get laid any time he wants because he is a stud and he SWALLOWS!

Me! Me!

[TheSHAD0W]

Yes, I want to elude death, for as long as possible, and as long as I can enjoy life. I WILL take antibiotics when I have a disease, I WILL have surgery when my appendix bursts, and I WILL watch my diet to keep myself healthy.

Now, go find me an experienced individual. I'd be HAPPY to speak with one. We'll see if he can convince me that a short, brutish life is better for me.

extend lifespan, but don't force it on people.

[MarvinMouse]

I think the most ethical way of handling this is to allow research into expanding lifespans of people, but to also not force that "extra life" onto people if they do not desire to have it.

I believe that if a person honestly believes that they don't want to continue this temporal existance, then it is their decision. (Of course, this excludes people who do it on a whim or have serious psychological problems.)

Re:extend lifespan, but don't force it on people.

[NewWazoo]

Of course, this excludes people who do it on a whim or have serious psychological problems

"What do you mean you don't want to live to see 150? You think it's unnatural? You must have serious psychological problems if you don't want to live at least as long as 150!"

Unfortunately, it's a very slippery slope. I'm extremely happy to see experts taking a serious look at the implications of new life-extending technology.

Brandon

Re:extend lifespan, but don't force it on people.

[Beliskner]

No. Either everybody gets it or nobody gets it. People like my Uncle who have had tortured lives sorting out everybody else's problems will be forced to extend their lives. And because they're nice people they'll feel forced by their friends and relatives (and employer!) into extending their life.

Much like in the Olympics to get in front some people take drugs. First is first so the honest people suffer. The honest people always suffer after these descriminative decisions.

Morality of the long term...

[gnovos]

If people live longer, approaching forever, they will be MORE worried about the various things that can snuff out life. Crime rates will drop dramatically due to longer lived criminals (imagine spending "life" in jail when that means 500+ years!) and a stronger stance by the governments on stopping violent crime. Overcrowding, if it is really possible to overcrowd the Earth, will just give people a REASON to go and explore space. Signifigantly longer life is a very very good thing for humanity in the long run.

Re:Morality of the long term...

[Anonymous Coward]

i think assuming that crime rates will drop is not valid.

consider this;
imagine that people could be KILLED BY THE STATE if they were caught committing murder! WOW, that would be a deterent, right? well, not really. sometimes punishment does not deter people as much as you hoped it would :(

Re:Morality of the long term...

[Mantorp]

You are so right, longer prison sentences and not to mention the death penalty are such proven deterrents to crime.
Sorry if I didn't sense your sarcasm, but you're either joking or delusional. I would sign up for a long one-way space trip though.

Re:Morality of the long term...

[Lazyhound]

Overcrowding, if it is really possible to overcrowd the Earth,[...]

Bahahahahaha! You poor, naive fool.

Re:Morality of the long term...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, since most people who commit murder carefully concider the consequences first.

Re:Morality of the long term...

[Anonymous Coward]

and people that commit crimes other than murder always consider the concequences?

I think that jail time is not the deterent that you think it is. Really. Look at contries that have adopted the US jail policy, they have crime issues too. now look at singapore, they do not. The difference....corporal punishment. Now i am not condoning corporal punishment. It just that if you want to talk about punishments that work, you are forced to talk about it.

Re:Morality of the long term...

[sckeener]

If people live longer, approaching forever, they will be MORE worried about the various things that can snuff out life.

That might be true of some, but I know some people who would get bored living forever. Those people would seek out risk.

Of course there are all those religious fanatics who should take some risks otherwise they might never meet their maker.

HA!

[gnovos]

Age-Retardation would definately intensify the over population problem. People want to cheat death, ignore it. It should be a natural part of life. Eventually this situation is gonna come to a head, and then we're gonna have lotteries to determine who can have children...food and energy rations and other such nonsense.


You are circumventing the "natural" way of communication by using teh internet, you know. Unless you plan to go bakc into the forest and start eating grubs, you are not qualified to speak to us.

Drive dangerously.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Do you realise the consequences of driving safely?

1. You contribute to overpopulation. Maybe you don't realise that the human death rate is extremely and unnaturally low. By driving carefully you effectively cheat death and upset the cycle of nature.
2. You underappreciate life if you don't take risks. Part of the sweetness of life derives from the knowledge that we could lose what we have at any moment. Did you know that driving safely makes the biggest dent in the risk-taking we take and hence is the biggest reducer of our appreciation of life?
3. By choosing to drive carefully you increase your chances of suffering from diseases like cancer. The choice is up to the individual but many would prefer not to suffer a painful lingering death.

So drive dangerously folks!

Re:Drive dangerously.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Shit! The day I said this a friend of mine actually did this. He's now in hospital having plastic surgery. Shit shit shit! Be careful what you joke about!

Just look....

[Anonymous Coward]

at what happened to the Brunangee!

Re: I call BS

[7-Vodka]

Hey I was under the impression that there was no generally accepted scientific theory of ageing. How stupid could I be.
Why don't you just reference a few scientific papers in peer-reviewed publications so that I can enlighten myself.

Or maybe this post is full of shit, which is what I think, since it doesn't even contain a sensical model in it.

Jumping to conclusion

[phriedom]

Wow, they really jump to some strange conclusions. For example the report states that longer lives will delay new generations rising to leadership, and therefore delay new ideas and will slow innovation. As if old people can't have new ideas...

Some problems have no solution.

[SlowFuse]

Human aging is almost certainly such a problem.

An adult human is composed of roughly ten trillion cells. A self repairing organism (one in which cells replace themselves) running around in an environment full of mutagenic agents, is in constant danger that one of those cells will be damaged in such a way that it just keeps dividing. In principle, nearly all of those ten trillion cells can initiate a deadly tumor at any moment.

The most probable reason that cancer is so terribly rare in the young is that the great bulk of our cells have a failsafe mechanism built in. They can only divide a finite number of times before they "arrest" and stop dividing. Runaway cell lines only get so big before they stop growing. There is no reason that cell division needs to be limited other than as a tumor failsafe. Its an evolutionary adaptation. A long lived, highly complex, self repairing, ten trillion cell organism would not be possible without it. But it limits the amount of repair you can do in a lifetime. That's why we age.

further, it is becoming clear that natural selection has balanced tumor risks, with repair concerns and extended our maximum longevity as much as we can hope for. You can cure cancer, if you are willing to age at a high rate. You can cure aging, and degenerate into a mass of tumors. But the idea that we are going to have to worry about the social implications of doubling human lifespans is laughably premature.

Want to know more. Check out this paper on the subject. Or visit Telomere.org

Re:Some problems have no solution.

[ggwood]

You said, "You can cure cancer, if you are willing to age at a high rate. You can cure aging, and degenerate into a mass of tumors."

But what is going on *right now* is in violation of this. We are trying to cure cancer by killing tumors, and thus living longer. Sure, cancer treatment is a nasty business and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. However, when it becomes clear the alternative is death, people choose it and live longer.

It seems you are only considering one facet of the approach: genetic manipulation of tumor suppression.

Perhaps we will let all our cells replicate many more times and get loads of tumors, but walk in to a phone booth once per week and have all the tumors zapped by radiation. Perhaps we will find the gene sequence which allows unregulated growth and turn it off. Perhaps we will grow massive freaking tumors, but turn off the gene which causes them to become malignant. The possibilities are vast.

I am not saying any of these are likely solutions, but I think this is a horribly complicated matter and deserves complicated answers.

Re:Some problems have no solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

not entirely correct,
"runaway" cell lines cause cancer for the very reason that they do not stop dividing. thus, when the are "runaway" they are already incapable of stopping themselves from dividing. the natural combatant of cancer is not telemeres, as you appear to think (sorry if i misunderstood you)but rather a system of controled cell death, called, apoptosis. check out this link,it is cool stuff :) http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyP ages/A/Apoptosis.html

telomeres are believed to be what keeps "normall" cells from dividing uncontrollably, thus becoming "cancerous." however, the correct mechanism for eleminating cells that already have sustained damage that might lead to cancer, is apoptosis

Re: I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

the theory of senescence deals with the information mentioned above.

the general idea is this;
reproduction takes alot of energy. maintaining the body also take alot of energy. not too long ago, geologically speaking, it was hard for organisms to obtain lots of energy. they could not get enough to both maintain their bodies and become reproductively active. thus, they could maintain their bodies until the wanted to reproduce. now, the must decide how long to maintain there bodies. does is make sense to have your body maintain itself for 200 years, if you die (by predation, a tree falling on you, ect) before you can pass along your genes? the answer is an emphatic NO. thus, organisms must trike a balance between how long they live and how much of that time is spent reproducing.

if you feel this idea is totally off-base, consider humans. about when do peole noramlly feel that they are starting to decline? i think that you would find that people feel they start to decline physically shortly after their teenage years. Now then, when do people usaully start becoming able to reproduce? well, it just so turns out that happens when they are teenagers.

coicidence??? well, that if for you to decide, if you choose to think about it.

more to your flamebait point, you are correct in thinking that there are no generally accepted theories on aging, but that does not mean that there are not good ideas out there. ideas that are worth kicking around and thinking about. i can't believe that you would only consider scientific papers in peer-reviewed publications--do you always let other people do your thinkng for you?

Telomeres

[SlowFuse]

I think we are just having a miscommunication.

Tumors are cell lines that have escaped the telomere failsafe because a second mutation has activated telomerase (an enzyme that lengthens telomeres), thus "unhooking" the failsafe that protected us in the first place.

Apoptosis is a second line of defense, but not nearly so effective because it requires that tumor cells are distinct enough from normal cells that the suicide program can be initiated. If the criteria used by cells to determine if they are cancerous (and thus need to self destruct) is too sensitive, then healthy cells get destroyed, accelerating aging. If if the criteria are not sensitive, then tumors get out of contol without triggering the alarm. Still, a problem with no sollution.

Morons...

[Master of Transhuman]

In fifty years, nanotech will obsolete aging, infirmity, and oh, by the way, human bodies, human brains, and human nature...

Which, hopefully, will include morons like the authors of this study...

Environmental issues will be moot...

This kind of stupidity can't even be commented on...I'm wasting the bandwidth even responding to this crap...

They CAN'T

[jonskerr]

I don't know how many old people you talk to every day, but people over 40 are pretty stiff in the head, let alone over 60! Now, this anti-agathic they're talking about might break up the lipofuscin clogging up the dendrites and that may cure the problem, but _currently_ the problem with most people is they're upset that life isn't like it was when they were young.

Re:They CAN'T

[phriedom]

This is such an ugly generalization that I really debated whether to answer or not. Perhaps you do work with old people, but it might be a poor sample of them, like the sick ones or something. Or are you in a "conservative" industry/community? I work in a smallish company, about 100 people, on the "bleeding edge" of technology, where the test equipment can't reliably evaluate our products. There are a bunch of smart guys, the CEO in particular, but the one guy that I think is irreplacable is The Chief Engineer. He doesn't manage anyone, he just solves problems and invents things. He started building crystal radios when he was a kid. IIRC, he turns 67 this year, and he looks like Santa Claus, but with a grey pony tail. Think about that: vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, core memory, CRTs, lasers...and always pushing the leading edge. I'm not sure how many patents he has, but he got at least one more in 2000 that I know of. Everyone loves to work with him because he is like a fountain of knowledge and a year around him is like 7 years of experience in a regular company. Ingenuity is infectious.

Now I realize this guy is a one-of-a-kind gem, but there are lots of people who would like to stay strong, healthy, sharp, and productive. There are lots of people who yearn for progress, and love to do valuable work.

Re: Re:They CAN'T

[Anonymous Coward]

Three cheers for you, phriedom! One very valuable commodity that ages gives one is _perspective_, knowing that there was something before Eminem and IM'ing. The person who can keep his/her eyes, ears, and mind open to the new, but can also let us know when they've seen this before, is perhaps the most valuable of all. People who won't hear from the past are as close-minded as those who can't handle what's new.

Idiots

[dh003i]

Just because something's a natural part of life doesn't make it good. Gangre, HIV, disease, cancer, suffering, walking around without a wiped ass after defication -- all of these are "natural parts of life". That doesn't mean any of them are good.

Aging isn't a disease? Really? Tell that to people being slowly killed by Alzheimers and other conditions that effect the elderly. Or what about those who just live on and on and die "of old age"? Hardly a joyous thing either, being so limited from one's normal capacity.

It's amazing to me that some people have nothing better to do than sit around and babble amonst themselves and a bunch of other elitist snobs about why we should not extend our own life-spans.

Especially as an atheist, I take it that being alive is good -- the longer the better. If I could live to be 200 years old, that'd be good. If I could live to be 10,000 years old, that'd be great. If I could live until the universe either collapses into a big crunch or expands out approaching near zero-K termperatures, that'd be even even better.

As Don Rickles says...

[Master of Transhuman]

"Let me put it to you another way..."

You don't want life extension?

Fine, I don't want life extension FOR YOU either...

You're going to die. I won't.

Have a nice day.

Re:As Don Rickles says...

[Lazyhound]

Oh, you would eventually.

Wretch.

Re:As Don Rickles says...

[Master of Transhuman]

If eventually is a billion or so years, I'll have time to worry about it...meanwhile I'll take care of business...

Have a nice day.

Oops.

[SlowFuse]

Yeah, sorry. I wasn't clear.

I don't mean "cure cancer" in the sense of eliminating existing cancers, I mean eliminate the phenomenon. I'm arguing that cancer comes with the territory once you have extensive self repair.

I like your phone booth argument. In fact, I made roughly that argument in the paper that I pointed to above. Here is how I put it:

"Finally, given our increasing ability to detect and surgically or chemically eliminate tumors, we might one day be willing to accept an increase in our tumor risk in order to extend youth. The in vitro lengthening of zygote telomeres would likely produce that heritable effect." An anti-cancer booth is a great image.

Selfish idiots more like.

[jonskerr]

Every comment posted by you finger-pointing name-callers is powered by the thought "Wouldn't it be great to extend MY life?" But what about OTHER people? You dorks would never want to have eight bajillion morons and idiots (who you so obviously hate) living forever and sucking up all the food, water, air, and inexpensive housing. Stop thinking about just yourselves for 5 seconds.

Are you kidding?

[SlowFuse]

We already have nanotech, infinitely more advanced than humans could conceivably devise in the next fifty years. We are made of it. And the machinery in question was created by a force that opposes aging, yet natural selection has not managed to solve the problem of aging, or cancer, or pathogenic disease. What mechanism do you think we will have access to that could possibly counter these major costs of our design? And you are willing to trust the utterly irreplaceable environment to the same, unspecified, technology?

Before you start waxing philosophic about technology's superiority to nature, take a moment to consider what a humming bird is capable of. And I don't just mean in terms of flight agility, I mean precision acrobatics, controlled by an onboard computer that asses the world in real time with staggering precision. And the whole thing runs incredibly efficiently on sugar.

Has man ever come within an order of magnitude of the marvel of a humming bird? So what makes the next fifty years, and the biological problems inherent to humans any different?

If you were kidding, I guess the joke's on me.

Re:Are you kidding?

[Master of Transhuman]

Ever see a hummingbird in space?

So much for that argument...

Heaven and Hell..

[RandomInAction]

are secretly afraid they don't exist.

ahem.. personally I'm a little afraid that they do exist.

Re:How long is long enough? Cause learning is hard

[ggwood]

In my opinion this is the most serious problem with life extension.

In physics it is generally termed "to stop working hard". When an old physicist stops being productive, reading up on all the current research, and starts talking about history, what should be done, what should be more funded, etc. If you've hung out at physics departments for any length of time you will find such people. They never retire, never leave, are always going to the talks, sharing knowledge of ancient unsolved problems (no progress in 30 years LOL).

Sure, it is great to have them around, but imagine if we lived to 300 years, but everyone stopped working hard around 60. Right now we work hard for 40 years and relax for the last 10-30, thus the majority still work hard. If we lived to 300, virtually all the faculty would be in the old, relaxed, historical stage. Remember you can't fire them they have tenure.

It is a full time job keeping up with new papers and discoveries in physics. Sure some older people do it. Paul Erdos (perhaps one of the greatest mathematicians of all time) did it until the day he died...but he also took stimulents see his biography The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. Exceptional in many ways, asking everyone to be Erods is not going to work on many levels.

Now in private industry, you can fire them and I think this would motivate people to keep up their skills, but honestly, what job could you do for, say 200 years without getting in a rut, ceasing to learn, and pining for the days when you used to program an IBM 360? Know any older programmers?

We already have a problem with discrimination against people who are 50. (Know any programmers in their 50's looking for work? Even at the height of the tech boom? I do and I did - very difficult for them). Think how far worse the problem would be at 300.

You might counter, but with new (drugs/gene theropy/ whatever) people will feel young, they will be physically healther, but I know physicists who are physically fine, but unable to keep up with all the burdons of research for even the 40 year career required of them now. To think of, say 140 or 240 year careers in physics seems outside the relm of possibility. What are these people going to do? Retire and burdon a tiny working class? Work and suppress the ideas of the younger people? This is already a serious problem.

Perhaps programming is not as intense as physics research (I think they are probably equally challenging) so more people can do good work for longer times, but how many? And how long? I'm sure the general youth and libretarian bent of the slashdot community will think they can hack forever. Perhaps you can. I don't know tons of hackers - in fact old hackers must be kind of rare. Perhaps hackers are so well compensated that they won't worry about money but in physics we are not well compensated. I know tons of physicists. Very few are productive past the age of 50 and most have very few new ideas after about 30.

In many fields technology changes quite rapidly and people have a hard time changing the way things are done. Imagine having to teach UNIX shell basics to someone who has been using windows for, not just 5 years but 50 or 100 years?

Such longevity is a recipe for stagnation.

Sure, America has plenty of resources. We could support people working 30 hour weeks or retiring at 50, but right now we have trouble tossing some food to starving people - I think we are a long ways from the kind of society needed to handle that level of stagnation.

And this gets to the central issue. Aging technology, if adopted, would destroy any retirement system such as social security or my retirement plan which pays out forever. And if a vast number of people have great difficulty working past a certain age (which is my contention) they will have to retire, take worse jobs, or stop taking the medication and simply die. Unless we become some kind of ultra socialist contry - which we are no where near doing. An

The short version

[ggwood]

All the great pleasures we have in life: college, dating and being single, having children, starting from scratch in business and building a career - are what people talk about when they get old. But, no one wants to go back and do it all over again. Most people do not have another set of children at, say 40 or 50, or go back to college and live in a dorm room, or become single.

Is the temptation there? Certainly, but we are comfortable where we are. We stagnate.

In my field (physics) very very few people I know contribute anything significant after they are 50 or so and most stop having truely new ideas at 30. Even if they are perfect pictures of health. To throw another, say, 100 years onto such careers would be suicide for the field. Arguments over new ideas is largely made when the older generation die - they are never convinced.

I feel many fields (such as programming) may have similar problems, but I don't have the firsthand knowledge I do in physics.

What are these old people going to do? I doubt as a society we will choose to support them. How are we going to phrase the new social security law? You get it when you turn 65, but if you are taking anti-aging treatment you get it when? 10 years after you stop taking the treatment? Enforcement would be difficult at best.

Re: I call BS

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Hey I was under the impression that there was no generally accepted scientific theory of ageing.

There's no accepted scientific theory of the mechanisms of aging, but the genetic influences of evolution are somewhat understood, and are believed to be more or less as I described. And the theory has experimental support. Some worms had their lifespan doubled by only breeding from the oldest members.

Why don't you just reference a few scientific papers in peer-reviewed publications so that I can enlighten myself.

Horses, water, lead etc. Why don't you do your own research into it, rather than make a bunch of half arsed assertions and then expect me to do all your hard work for you?

Natural selection does not oppose aging.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

If aging somehow helps the species survive, then natural selection will select for it.

Tim

Re:Life extension?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vanilla Sky

Re:Idiots. All Idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Canned foods are also naturally produced by the body.

In fact, It does.

[SlowFuse]

Natural selection does not favor traits that "help the species survive". It favors things that increase the rate at which individuals reproduce.

The fact that selection opposes aging (senescence) has been understood since 1957 (actually, earlier, but it has been thoroughly understood since then.)

I've put the relevant paper on line. It is by George C. Williams, one of the greatest evolutionary thinkers since Darwin. He is also the guy who cured evolutionary biology of the idea that selection acts to the benefit of the species.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, this excludes people who do it on a whim or have serious psychological problems."

It seems to me that if some nutjob decides to kill him/her self, then that is natural selection at it's finest.

Sure you may think that I'm an insensitive boor, but that's life. Deal with it. Better dead than in our gene pool.

Imagine a civilization made up of suicidal people. If it mannaged to perpetuate itself, that would be a sad, sorry place to be...

Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[BerntB]

The ethical question isn't based on natural vs. unnatural, it's based on what is reasonable vs. what is unreasonable.

Most everything -- including pain relief during surgery! -- was considered both unnatural and unreasonable at the start by inflexible idiots.

And in a hundred years children might laugh at me when I describe your opinions... hope this is saved so I can proof you exist. (Or, existed.)

Re:Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[Madcapjack]

Would refusal of Life Extension Treatments be considered suicide?

Re:Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[BerntB]

That is just a repeat of the argument, not an answer to the counterargument (mine and others):
What is considered reasonable has changed time and time again -- when the technical possibilities change.

A luddite -- like you -- would at one point in time refuse blood transfusions. (Hell, some of you still do!)

Re:Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[Madcapjack]

I wasn't trying to offer a counterargument to your or any others' argument. I am well aware that what is considered reasonable has changed time and time again, and not just when "technical possibilities change." Perhaps I did not read all of the discussion thoroughly enough to know that what I was doing was just restating the argument. However, your response was not warranted.

I suppose that one may sometimes extrapolate from a question the beliefs of the questioner, but I tend to think that this may often speak more of that person than the person asking the question.

But I will not speculate on your mental states. Rather I would like to address your charge of my being a Luddite.

First, I would like to point out that if one was not-Luddite, it does not follow that that person has no reservations about any technology or technological change. Your argument seems to rest upon the idea that all technological change is good, which it plainly is not. Nor do I think that it is unreasonable to question which technological and social changes we want. However, in any case, I am not a Luddite, and do not on principle reject longevity treatments, cloning, cybernetic enhancements, designer babies, or any of those other things that loom on the horizon. In fact, my position on these issues might best be called Transhumanist, and at a guess that might be more radical than even your beliefs, and certainly cannot be called Luddite! On the other hand, I tend to hold the belief that people have both the right to life and to death, and I think that this is only reasonable in a world that can prolong life beyond the point where one may even be capable of making such choices, and so instead, place the burden on others- doctors, family, friends, and courts to make life and death decisions. I am well aware that traditional thinking on liberty and society hold that suicide is not counted among the rights one might have, but perhaps we should change our thinking. In any case, the reason for my comment was rather to ask the opinions of other slashdotters whether or not abstaining from longevity treatments would be considered suicide (I can't claim authorship for this thought, I read it in the Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars trilogy.)as it is one small worry that I have about the ramifications of such treatments. A more important concern for me is whether or not such treatments will divide the rich from the poor. And finally,I am perplexed that you would call anyone who regularly reads /. a Luddite as this is a forum of techies, and it seems rather improbable. However, since its certainly possible that there are Luddites at /. and its a logical error to speak of the particular by speaking solely of the general (i.e. my saying dogs have tongues doesn't mean that my dog has a tongue), we'll let that go. in any case, have a nice day.

Re:Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[BerntB]

Your argument seems to rest upon the idea that all technological change is good, which it plainly is not.

We are obviously discussing different subjects; at least you have a very different position than "blahlemon" which I commented on first. My fault. I should have checked that it was the same person writing!

Regarding what you discussed, I have a thesis:
You would have a different opinion if you lived in Sweden.

As I understand it, doctors often do a "last aid" informally here in Sweden, but it isn't talked about -- and is officially illegal. A man got a one (1) year sentence recently for helping his suffering mother beyond the pale (N B, visits from girl friends are allowed. There are no rapes in Swedish prisons. He will probably be released after half a year, but won't get emotional scars (and aids) for life.)

This official attitude might have to do with hospital budgets being financed by taxes... (Would you trust the state with your health after retirement, when you obviously will only use up common resources and not add to them? 1/2 :-) )

I do agree that you own your life. Suicide is, IMHO, frowned upon in this post-religious world because most people doing that are mentally ill and/or in a depression.

Again, sorry for raising you blood pressure. If you come by Stockholm/Uppsala, I'll buy you a beer. :-)

Re:Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[Madcapjack]

Hey, if you're ever in Warsaw, I'll buy you a beer.

Re:Would you refuse a blood transfusion, too?

[BerntB]

Hell, any reason to drink a beer is good. :-)

But my company just went belly up and I should save money and not travel. :-(

Do you need Perl/C/C++ *ix nerds in Warsaw -- and what is the pay? :-)

Re:HA! / Population idiocy

[Smur]

REALITY CHECK... Population is not and has not and (IMHO) WILL not be a problem. Why not? Our technology improves faster than our population. I invite those who worry about population density to compare the population densities of, say, Bangladesh (lots of disease, etc., no technology) and suburban Chicago. Check an atlas or almanac so you have an apples-to-apples comparison. Ask yourself why people living in similarly population-dense high-tech and lower-technology areas have different life expectancies, etc. (Blinding flash of the obvious, no?) Being an optimist, I would venture the notion that technology will even solve the nasty pollute-more-than-use problem we here in the U.S. seem to have. Technology has been saving humans from their own idiocy for all of history, despite our tendancy to burn geniuses, pioneers and visionaries at the stake. Cliched but true.

Re:HA! / Population idiocy

[gnovos]

Thanks for agreeing with me... perhaps you meant this for the PARENT post?

This is really simple...

[poo203]

those of you who don't wanna live longer, dont get involved in the solution. Meanwhile the rest of us can make up our own minds.

Not that invincible..

[vladb]

if you consider natural calamities and other odd life events such as car accidents, terrorist attacks, wars, etc it no longer appears that age-retardation will result in dramatic increase in ever-lasting beings filling up the living quaters (the Earth, or maybe even Mars in the future). Also, those who live longer stand a greater chance of dying from an external cause not linked to their own biological clock. On another note, wouldn't many of us want to see Einstein live a much longer and productive life? If we put every effort in sustaining the lives of geniuses, we - as a society -- stand a greater chance at finding out answers to the toughest questions. It seems an awful lot of waste to see extraordinary gifted individuals expire in the midst of their quests... On another hand, this may be a dangerous line to take as extending lives of a selected few individuals could be against the cherished principles of equality etc. ...

Re:Life extension?

[VendingMenace]

it was a clear reference to the "beggers in spain" series by nancy kress btw, the series was so-so, the first book was OK, but the other two kinda sucked. basically the author had a great idea with poor implimentation anywayz, at least check out the first book :)

Re:HA! / Population idiocy

[Lazyhound]

Small problem.

Tech-toys takes resources.

Do you think there are enough resources on Earth to support a population of ten billion people living the American lifestyle?

Yes? Really?

How much damage do you think the extraction of those resources would cause? Hmm?

The arrogance...

[Lazyhound]

...of this sort of thing always makes me ill.

The desire to extend your life to this sort of extreme is the ultimate vanity.

YOU ARE INSIGNIFICANT.

Take your allocated time on this Earth, use it well, do good, and then fade away.

Incidentally, if "using it well" to you means to sit in front of a computer on your morbidly obese ass wanking to porn, you had might as well just end it now, and be done with it.

Re:The arrogance...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'f I'm so insignificant, your dildohood, then how can I possibly do any good? By the way, how come the thought of wanking in front of the computer comes so quickly to your mind, unless you are a major pud puller yourself?

Re:The arrogance...

[WhiteWolf666]

YOU ARE INSIGNIFICANT......

Use it well? Do Good?

I don't mind being vain.

Life must suck for many of you.

[TheLink]

So many people seem to assume that people must be able to "contribute productively" in order for their lives to be justified or have meaning.

Why don't you all go enjoy life a bit more.

Have fun, make other people happy. Enjoy the sunsets, etc.

Watch animals and children play (who aren't particular bothered about "contributing productively"). Play with them.

Life sounds like such a drag the way some of you _quantify_ it. No wonder extending it seems like a bad idea in that dreary light.

Even old people have a good laugh from time to time. Most people have a set level of happiness - events etc may push it up/down, but after a while they get used to it and they're back to their usual grumpy/chirpy self. That level can change, people do have life changing experiences. But the point is people in general can still be reasonably happy even with all the minuses of aging.

Man is a part of nature (man made != unnatural)

[mrnick]

I mean really? We are a part of nature so doesn't it follow that anything we do is a part of nature. It seems ridiculous to think that man is somehow above nature. Some people think because it is man made that is is somehow unnatural. Is a bird nest unatural because a bird made it?

Nick Powers

A few comments:

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, we'd never get to step 4 in your plan. Never. Or at least not for a long, long time.

But maybe if someone were to live 400 years and gain all sorts of experience in this world, they would have the ability to help solve the world's problems. Still, society as a whole has to change so even uber-intelligent people aren't going to help.

But maybe a shake-up of the system would help. Change doesn't happen by just keeping the status quo (which already included groups lobbying to do steps 1 and 2 with no avail). If people lived hundreds of years you'd bet that society would have to change. Maybe it would change for the better for everyone (although of course the reverse could happen - at least we'd have a chance to do it right).

Of course that said, I don't think we should only tackle step 4 and hope for the best. I also don't think we should NOT try to extend life just because we can't solve ALL of the worlds problems. That would be foolish.

What we need to do is tackle things in parallel. Work on steps 1,2,4 in parallel and see where things end up. Maybe I'm just saying that because I'm researching parallel and distributed computing, but I think it makes a lot more sense.

Why didn't I mention step 3 above? Well basically step 3 was just sit and wait until the worlds problems disappear. I can code what you propose in a few lines:

while (worldHasProblems) {
//note, solveAllProblems may never return
solveAllProblems(worldProblems);
sleep(arbritraryTime);
}
extendLife();

Note: we'll never see extendLife() since while we're sleeping the world will come up with more problems for us.

Some comments:

[codemachine]

Reposting logged in this time:

First off, we'd never get to step 4 in your plan. Never. Or at least not for a long, long time.

But maybe if someone were to live 400 years and gain all sorts of experience in this world, they would have the ability to help solve the world's problems. Still, society as a whole has to change so even uber-intelligent people aren't going to help.

But maybe a shake-up of the system would help. Change doesn't happen by just keeping the status quo (which already included groups lobbying to do steps 1 and 2 with no avail). If people lived hundreds of years you'd bet that society would have to change. Maybe it would change for the better for everyone (although of course the reverse could happen - at least we'd have a chance to do it right).

Of course that said, I don't think we should only tackle step 4 and hope for the best. I also don't think we should NOT try to extend life just because we can't solve ALL of the worlds problems. That would be foolish.

What we need to do is tackle things in parallel. Work on steps 1,2,4 in parallel and see where things end up. Maybe I'm just saying that because I'm researching parallel and distributed computing, but I think it makes a lot more sense.

Why didn't I mention step 3 above? Well basically step 3 was just sit and wait until the worlds problems disappear. I can code what you propose in a few lines:

while (worldHasProblems) {
//note, solveAllProblems may never return
solveAllProblems(worldProblems);
sleep(arbritraryTime);
}
extendLife();

Note: we'll never see extendLife() since while we're sleeping the world will come up with more problems for us.

(Thank you for logging in to reply,) and.. i agree

[SolemnDragon]

I don't think that we should tackle only one at a time; you're right about that. Problems do not occur in linear fashion and cannot be sorted out that way. And We are never going to completely eradicate all of the problems. And... solving hunger, homelessness, disease, and lack of education won't remove ignorance and unhappiness from the face of the earth. But... it would be a good start.
It just drives me crazy that more isn't being done to at least START with those ideas, that's all- i feel there's a certain amount of effort that should be made in those areas first, and I don't feel we're there yet. I'm not sure what proportion is the right amount, but I definitely feel like we aren't there yet.

I don't advocate working on them exclusively- i just immediately thought about the idea that a government which just put the gag rule back on its AIDS funding, is threatening to cut humanitarian aid in response to the Iraq issue, and can't even keep its own citizens employed and housed and fed... maybe should be focusing just a little bit more on fixing those areas before looking into something like this... because those are also serious ethical matters.

On the other hand, i have to say- at least they are asking questions about the ethics involved, and that's actually a major step FORWARD for us...
you raise good points. What would your ideal plan for the exploration of this issue look like? Mine is really more about spending a certain proportion of attention and money in the right directions on those issues- before step four. It's too late now, of course, because people are always going to want to look younger, feel younger, etc... i would just hate to see these benefits restricted to those who could pay (i'm one of those who couldn't, although i have it pretty good compared to a great many out there. I'm fed and i'm free.)

incidentally, i don't respond to your point about this changing society, well, because i want to think about that some more... Thanks.

Re:(Thank you for logging in to reply,) and.. i ag

[codemachine]

I haven't really given this response as much thought as it deserves, but I'll spit out what is on the top of my head anyways:

I think that Western society has a tendancy to think of the problems of the rest of the world as solveable by money. We think that all we can do is send 50 bucks to some charity to feed a hungry kid, because changing all of society is virtually impossible for one (or even a great many) indivuduals.

You are right that there is too little effort going into solving hunger, AIDs, etc. The problem is, even the effort we are currently putting into "solving" the worlds problems really comes down to treating the symptoms. Hunger and disease aren't the real problems facing the third world. They are side effects of the real problem. The real problem is the world economy and how it works.

So maybe the reason we aren't really able to help the third world (or even our own poor for that matter) is that we don't want to admit that we are the problem. At the very least, we are part of the problem.

Unfortunately changing the world's economic system can only be done by unbearably slow change or a catastrophic event. Either way, the new system that is built will be just as suseptible to human politics and greed as the old one (every organization evolves to this over time). Human nature will always prevail, at least until the Vulcans come here to show us the true path.

This may sound like a bleak view of humanity, but it really doesn't prevent us from improving ourselves and our society. It just means we need to do little things to improve ourselves or others, even if we can't be perfect. Not being able to be perfect is no reason not to continue trying to be better.

Wow, that sounds like something Jean-Luc Picard or Gene Roddenberry would say. Come to think of it, Gene's whole plot revolves around us rebuilding society after World War III and ever so slowly improving humanity. I'm just not sure he gave us enough time - and if these darn anti-aging drugs don't hit the market soon, we'll never see it ;) .

Inevitable diseases.

[Ardias]

Some medical scientists believe that certain diseases are "inevitable" in that if you live long enough, you're going to get one of them. Prostate cancer is an example of one. It generally affects older men, and the older a man gets, the more likely he is to experience it.

Centuries ago, most men would never had to worry about prostate cancer. They would have died from malnutrition, beheading, or hyenas long before they age related diseases were even an issue. Now, we live long enough that we have the luxury of worrying about prostate cancer.

Besides prostate cancer, there are other age related diseases and discomforts that are far more common today than they were when my grandfather was young.

Who knows if there are other diseases waiting to be discovered by 300 year olds?

Thanks for a thoughtful reply

[barakn]

I tend to categorize Christians into several categories, and I wasn't trying to implicate all of them. There are the actual Christians, regardless of sect, who actually pay attention to the teachings of one Jesus of Nazareth. To these people, phrases like "love thy neighbor" and "turn the other cheek" actually mean something. Teachings like this even some Buddhists accept. And then there are the "Christians" who will only give up their guns from their cold dead fingers, who can't accept paying taxes for social services, who consider the killing of innocent civilians to be merely "collateral damage," who can't see past the color of skin.

Re:Thanks for a thoughtful reply

[TheLink]

Yah one of the big troubles with religions is with all the fakes. There are lots of "XXXXX" who hardly follow the core tenets of YYYYY, and yet are willing commit acts of violence just because someone allegedly slighted YYYYY or violated a minor tenet of YYYYY.

Joke for you:
One Sunday morning during church service, a 2,000 member congregation was surprised to see two men enter, both covered from head to toe in black and carrying submachine guns.

One of the men shouted, "Anyone willing to take a bullet for Christ remain where you are!"

Immediately, the choir fled, the deacons fled, and most of the congregation fled. Out of the 2,000, there only remained around 20.

The man who had spoken took off his hood, looked at the preacher and said:

"Okay Pastor, I got rid of all the hypocrites. Now you may begin your service. Have a nice day!"

And the two men turned and walked out.
---

Seriously tho, a wise person has to respond to the entire situation, and not just what a gunman says.

After all, some wacko could similarly announce to the world, "If you love Jesus kill yourself now".

That's clever.

[SlowFuse]

But i've also never seen a hummingbird in a subway tunnel, but I have little doubt that selection could produce one, given time and a niche worth inhabiting.

Unfortunately, there is no selection on hummingbirds to get more than a couple of hundred feet up so their absence from space doesn't really say much about the power of selection.

Still, even if I grant you that selection couldn't possibly put an animal into space, I see no comparison between the complexity, efficiency, robustness, effectiveness, etc. of a humming bird and that of a crude, inhabited space traveling projectile. Sure, technology does some interesting things. It even does a few things that selection couldn't, but your assertion that normal human concerns will be made technologically obsolete in fifty years is ridiculous.

Biologically, we're talking about a self assembling, self repairing, dynamic organism composed of 10 trillion cells. And we haven't even talked about the ability of the brain and the immune system to deal with novel challenges that are unprtecidented in the evolutionary history of the species in question! We're not anywhere close to understanding the basic rules of our own construction, let alone being able to overcome the built in costs of our marvelous design.

Not everyone who sees limits is a moron.

Re:That's clever.

[Master of Transhuman]

But anyone who does not see that since Nature has done it, it is therefore doable, IS a moron...

Your attempt to reverse the argument that Drexler made years ago that nature has already established what can be done, the rest is merely engineering, is not very convincing.

The argument boils down to whether selection is more powerful than conceptual thinking. I think in the end it is irrelevant which is true. There is no a priori reason for believing that we can not duplicate whatever nature does. We might not be able to develop anything that nature has not already developed, but that is not relevant either, since we can repurpose what has been developed. And in the case of nanotech, we are duplicating things on a level that nature itself uses, i.e., molecules. We don't have to spend millions of years generating random attempts in real time. All we need to do is understand the mechanisms involved and we can duplicate anything nature has done. Once we are far enough along on the curve in terms of nanotech computers, we can use random processes speeded up millions of times to relearn what took nature millions of years, if such an approach proves necessary due to complexity theory problems.

And that doesn't even begin to touch on the possibilities of femtotechnology, which will be the step after nanotech...

Nanotech is not gross mechanics, it is a technology based on the actual physics of nature. Whatever nature did is based on physics. Learn to apply the physics and you can do anything nature does.

If you haven't read Drexler's first book, "Engines of Creation", I suggest you do so. He covers all these a priori arguments there.

Yes and no

[SlowFuse]

I certainly agree that anything natural selection has done is necessarily possible, and that, in principle it could all be duplicated. And beyond that, that everything natural selection has produced is ultimately based in physics. And yes, most of our best medical tricks involve repurposing products of selection. But none of it gets you where you want to go.

First off, my problem with your assertion was about the timeframe you placed on it and the certainty that you implied. We are not anything like 50 years away from doing what you are suggesting (either in terms of knowing enough about our construction, or in terms of having powerful enough tools to accomplish it), and even if we were somehow going to get there, you couldn't possibly be sure of it now, based on the current state of knowledge. Something utterly amazing and unforeseen would have to happen.

Further, I would say that the likelihood that humanity will survive long enough to get where you are suggesting is very small. We are much farther away than you imagine.

For now, the precautionary principle is the state of the art.

Re:Yes and no

[Master of Transhuman]

The problem is your assertion isn't based on anything more than my assertion.

The second problem is, you ignore the fact that advances in nanotech will provide us with an accelerating - note that, accelerating - amount of data on such things as how we are constructed. This is the part that everybody misses. Everybody focuses on what nanotech will do eventually (including me) and few remember that the incremental advances will accelerate knowledge in all other fields of science, thus providing us with the knowledge to use nanotech better. There is a synergistic convergence between nanotech and all (well, most, I don't know that things like astronomy or astrophysics will be impacted very soon since they deal with things not physically present on Earth)sciences and technology.

It boils down to not forgetting that advances do not happen in a vacuum. They impact other fields. And the more basic the advance, like nanotech, the more impact they have.

And that affects the time frame because the advances will accelerate as time goes on. So you can't assume that because nanotech does very little today that the rate of advance will be linear over the next fifty years. Just consider where computers were fifty years ago versus today for an example which is nowhere near as important as nanotech (but which will be very much improved by nanotech as well, and which is important enough to have a convergent effect on the advance of nanotech - as Drexler pointed out in his first book.)

Yes and no

[SlowFuse]

Actually, my assertion was based on the past rate and acceleration of progress in understanding the biological make up of humans and their relatives. Yes knowledge accumulation accelerates, at the beginning. But it also stagnates. Our understanding of animal design has been doing whatever it does for hundreds of years, and yet we are still fighting about the basics. Really.

In my professional opinion, we are in no danger of escaping our evolutionary design any time soon. I understand the impulse to hope, or even bet, otherwise. But the fact that you are certain means that you have yet to understand the nature of the challenge.

Re: fear of death

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so this started out as a short post, but it just kept getting longer.

I definitely agree with you: I don't fear death, but I do worry about the unfinished business. Oh yeah, I also desire to avoid having a painful death. ;) However, I trust that I'll go how and when I'm supposed to go.

For me, it is actually more scary to think about those who will be lost. I think I will always have that feeling of what if I had said 'xyz'? And on that note, I feel compelled to say a few words here:

Many people who refuse to believe in God do so because they don't want to believe that we are accountable for our actions. For anyone reading this post who fits in that category, I implore you to consider the possibility, because one day we will all be judged whether we like it or not.

Others often refer to the 'hypocricy' of Christians and use that as a basis to refuse to accept the gospel. We all sin, yet we often try to hide our sins from one another because of our shame. Sadly this can lead to an apparent arrogance, where non-believers hear our criticism of sin and feel it as a personal attack. We don't mean to say "I'm better than you because I am without sin." Instead, we mean to say, "I'm just like you because I commit sins, too." The difference is that we have confessed our sins to God and asked for forgiveness.

And fortunately for us, there is good news. ! God sent his son Jesus to die for our sins. Through him we are made clean.

After you have accepted the fact that we are accountable for our actions, and that we all sin, and that the price of sin is worse than anything you could experience here on Earth, you may be wondering: ok, so what should I do?

Read the Gospel (For those unfamiliar with that term, I mean the first four books of the New Testament: the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). There you will read about the life of Jesus, his teachings, and his ultimate death on the cross. Confess your sins and accept him as your savior. Then do your best to follow his teachings.

Please don't let my mistakes (or the mistakes of any other Christian) keep you from accepting God's free gift of salvation.

Re:Multiple life sentences

[Anonymous Coward]

Young prisoner: So what are you in for, old man?

Old prisoner: I stole car.

Young prisoner: Didn't they stop making those about 150 years ago?

Old prisoner: Yeah. :(

Did I blow it?

[SlowFuse]

I'm fairly new to slashdot and it looks to me like my reply appended to the wrong message. Is that true, or does it just look that way?

I have the answer!

[ahfoo]

I missed this one the first time around, but luckily comments are still enabled.
I got this one all figured out.
If there was a workable method of life extension then people who wanted to use it would have to agree to leave the earth and live off-world after a certain period of time.
The reason I think this is such a great idea is because politically I believe you could win over a large part of the religious community which would be where you'd see resistance. Using this solution, everybody would still reach the end of their normal life span and go to heaven!
Is that beautiful or what?