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Engineering An End to Aging
Reason writes "Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has put forward a biological engineering plan to end human aging and co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize in recent years. Now he is finally getting some of the public recognition he deserves in an excellent David Stipp article at Fortune Magazine. If you ever wondered exactly how to go about engineering away the 50 million deaths due to aging that occur each and every year - and how to bring about a sea change in the scientific establishment - then this is the place to start. As an added bonus, I don't think you'll find a more succinct (and utterly British) answer to overpopulation objections to life extension than the one at the end of this article!"
If i lived forever I would get board, I probably join Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged in insulting the universe, we could insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and in Alphabetical Order. I don't care if it is imposable I can dream can't I?
http://hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html
As to the question of life becoming so long that it loses its meaning, De Grey has a response that's truly guaranteed to silence critics: If you don't want to try it, you can simply reject rejuvenation therapy and fade away.
Bingo. It seems like there are always people who whine every time the subject of immortality comes up -- overpopulation, interfering with the divine plan, or just, "I wouldn't want to live forever. I'd get bored." To which the proper answer is: you can always die. If you feel that you're selfishly using up too much of the planet's resources, or that God doesn't want you to live past a certain age, or the ennui of your endless existence is too much to bear (oh, the angst!), fine -- please kill yourself now.
But of course people don't do this, because it is inherent in the nature of life to want to live. People who think a 200- or 1000- or 50000-year lifespan is nightmarish will still struggle, at the end of their lives, to hold on to whatever years or months or even days of life they have left. We rage against the dying of the light because the urge to live is part of our every cell.
So, for those of you who think this kind of research is a terrible thing, an affront to God and man -- please go off somewhere to die quietly. And those of us who choose to live will drink a toast on your graves.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Cheers,
Ian
My mom is 81 and she's busier than she's ever been although physical constraints are starting to slow her down. My grandmother died very alert, aware and reasonable active at age 100 and said she was ready to go, but it had mostly to do with the fact that her friends had all been dead for a long time by then.
Some people would look forward to a longer life because they find some meaning in their lives and others, I am sure, don't and probably would not partake of these treatments. I suggest that you folks who are not familiar with Robert A. Heinlein's novels several of which concern, among other things, longevity issues. Take a look at "Time Enough for Love"(1973).
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
If people are going to stop dying they had best stop reproducing as well. There's already too many of you people breathing my air and eating my corn chips.
That's the roaches and rats, dude. Time to get a maid I thinks.
Table-ized A.I.
Well, ok, it could be a considerable problem if people stopped aging to death, but it wouldn't be the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that our society would collapse from corruption. It's a pretty simple formula. Powerful people maintain their power by maintaining the status quo. The more powerful a person is, the stronger their grip on the status quo. These people purposely manipulate the opinions of the less powerful people (via control of the media and other less well-publicised means) in order to do this, and we generally fall for it pretty readily.
The only serious mechanism for social change is the death of the powerful. If death stopped being inevitable, then the rich and powerful would be the first ones to get that technology.
At that point, the only means for social change would become bloody revolution. Finding and killing the methuselas would become an obscession for anyone who wanted to change things for the better (or even at all).
I think that that world is inevitable, but I don't look forward to it.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
In other news:
World Death Rate Remains Steady at 100%
World Death Rate, Annual
------------------------
2004 (est) 100.00%
2003 100.00%
2002 100.00%
2001 100.00%
2000 100.00%
Source: USA Today
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
With diseases like Alzheimers we at least have an idea of what causes it, and we know what changes happen to the brain as it progresses.... I think it's only a matter of time before it can be prevented. However, I daresay that theories about where and how exactly memories are formed and stored in the brain are mostly wild speculation. We know the roles that certain regions of the brain play in memory, and there are some good abstract models (such as the Phonological loop and the Visuospatial sketchpad) but we are a very long way away from knowing how these are done at the hardware level of the brain.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Those crazy Brits!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Actually strangely enough .. statistically the only way to reduce population growth is to lower the death rate.
.. the only country to achieve a negative population growth with a high death rate is China. In every other case a high death rate results in an even higher birth rate.
Check it in the poulation stats
Low birth rates, on the other hand, make for low to negative population growth almost every time.
It's counterintuitive and supprised the heck out of me the first time I noticed that.
5000 years is won't happen without some major restructuring of society. As we currently have things set up you have a 50% chance of being involved in a fatal accident by the time you are 300.
The anti-aging technology, if ever completed will stop the evolution of the species.
We've been messing with natural selection ever since the beginning of medicine; it's a bit late to object now.
Furthermore, this will probably only benefit the richest, not the fittest...
Maybe at first, but there was a time when only the rich, or only governments, could afford computers. In the US today, poor people have TVs that the wealthy could only dream of in the 50s. Anti-aging technology will start out expensive, but it won't stay that way--and besides, doesn't the idea of the wealthy being the beta testers appeal to your little class-warfare soul?
I'd almost go as far as to posit that this article is an elaborate joke.
Why, exactly, is death a problem? Just pause a moment and really think about why death is a problem, for you.
Life doesn't work without death. In the end, that fact should be very life-affirming and comforting to you. Look around outside and realize that even horrible deaths contribute inifnitely to the natural world.
People weren't meant to live in fear of death.
"Why, exactly, is death a problem? Just pause a moment and really think about why death is a problem, for you. Life doesn't work without death. In the end, that fact should be very life-affirming and comforting to you."
Maybe to you. Death is a problem for me because I enjoy life so very much. Death will put a very definite and wholly unwelcomed end to the fun. So far, my life is working just great without death, and I'd like to keep it that way. Do I fear death? NO. I resent it.
I know full well that immortality is impossible, given entropy. That pisses me off. But if longevity is the best the universe has to offer, give me the maximum. I take first rate care of the equipment (at 51, I can still run a mile under 6 minutes, bench my body weight for reps, and cycle all day at 18 mph avg in rolling country), so I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to hold biomedical scientists responsible for doing their part to keep me alive and healthy at least long enough to get tired of it. "Accepting death" is a defeatist attitude that I just cannot abide.
(uh-oh...I seem to have gotten a little worked up)
My other machine is a lever.