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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.
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Incidentally, another chance to give somebody else's money can be found at the Hunger Site.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
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.
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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
watch this
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.
I write in my journal
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.
Government IS the problem.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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!Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
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?
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.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
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.
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.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.