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Ask Slashdot: What Happens If We Perfect Age Reversing?
ourlovecanlastforeve writes: With biologists getting closer and closer to reversing the aging process in human cells, the reality of greatly extended life draws closer. This brings up a very important conundrum: You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space. Even at our current growth rate there's not enough for everyone. Not enough food, not enough space, not enough medical care. If — no, when — age reversal becomes a reality, who gets to live? And if everyone gets to live, how will we provide for them?
All those who sign-up to live and work in orbiting colonies get age-reversal therapy for free. The primary economy will to be build more and better colony ships to handle the influx of long lived people. Within a generation or two the entire Earth will be most emptied and the federation of human colonies will declare Earth a "National Park" available to visit on vacation - just pick your continent.
Let's say an age cure is released tomorrow. It will be priced specifically for a certain percentage to afford. It probably won't even be publicly available, and instead be invite-only like certain cars already are. I honestly can't imagine the wealthy and elite opting to release that kind of cure to the general public, although it's a safe bet to assume politicians will grant themselves (and family) access.
I could easily see such a scenario causing mass riots and civil wars, however. And on the off chance that it did become something that just gets dumped in the public water system for the benefit of mankind, we'd just have more wars. Longer life spans would mean "reevaluating" things like term limits for politicians, prison sentence lengths, retirement, and pensions. I don't think food would even be on the radar for possible issues. I'd be way more worried about every day things that our societies are based on suddenly being rendered obsolete.
Even social changes would be pure chaos. Imagine your 90 year old grandmother suddenly regressing in age a bit, with a restored mental and physical agility. She may not be ready for SEAL training, but you can bet she wouldn't be happy sitting in the nursing home all day. How does she train for a job? Can she afford to stay "retired" for another 30 years when her savings were built with 10 in mind? And how would the rest of the family react to grandma Joanne becoming an equal again, rather than an elder?
But I would whole-heartedly support a "stop making fucking babies" measure.
I actually wonder if society will ever get around to regulating reproduction.
We regulate whether you're allowed to drive a car, but we don't regulate whether you're allowed to have a kid. I submit that you can do a LOT more damage with the latter than the former.
I think we really need a better social contract. We need to take better care of those who are alive, and do more to ensure that those who are born are more likely to be able to take care of themselves. If it takes a lot of work to be allowed to have a kid, you'll probably see parents invest a lot more in their kids. When somebody is born with autism or whatever, society can step in and lend a LOT more support. However, you won't just have masses of kids forced to take care of themselves because their parents were irresponsible.
There is no reason that cradle-to-grave can't be financially viable, as long as you exercise control over the cradle part.
Cry however you want over reproductive rights. I don't see how preventing somebody from trivially deciding to have kids is a greater injustice than much of what goes on as a result of humoring that urge.
As far as who gets to reproduce goes, I don't think it has to be that difficult. At the very least, mandate education and some general weed-out steps so that those who aren't reasonably committed don't bother. Then you can screen for stuff like serious genetic disorders (by all means allow surrogacy and adoption instead). At that point you have to earn some kind of right to reproduce (that might be trivial or difficult depending on demand for reproduction vs slots available). The wealthy might be able to pay into a trust fund to simply buy the right (it costs society money to clean up after your messes, so you can prepay if you want). Otherwise, it might be a bit like applying for a scholarship - what have you done to give back to society, etc. Then for the sake of diversity you could have a lottery for x% of the slots where everybody has an equal chance of being able to reproduce regardless of merit.
Also, how about this: the drug/whatever that cures you of aging also makes you sterile. Or it could be a legal requirement - want to not die of old age? The price is X dollars and your ability to reproduce
That's fine. I've already had children, so I'll sign up for that immortality, now. Or am I unable to get the immortality serum if I've already had children? What if I lie about it and get the serum - do you make an anti-anti-aging serum for the circumstance? Or do you kill me because I acted for self-preservation? What if all my children die, then am I eligible again? What if I have no children, get the anti-aging serum, but am not affected by the sterility? What if I have no children I know about, but it's later discovered that I had a child from a one-night-stand? Does it matter if I didn't know when I get the serum, and how do you prove if I knew or not? Women can't claim they didn't know about pregnancy from a one-night-stand, so do we punish them for it with the no-serum-for-you death sentence, or do they get a pass? Or do we force them to get abortions to maintain immortal status? How does adoption fit in - if I adopt do I lose immortality? If I give my only child up for adoption do I regain immortality status? How do surrogate mothers count - is it the woman who gives birth, or the couple who contracted the birth who lose immortality status? Or both?
Now let's look at this again - are those laws going to be consistent across every single country? If not, you run into the situations where people move from place to place in order to match the laws to their immortality requirements ... and then what happens when someone later moves?
Simply put, anything like this is an absolute minefield of horrible choices, horrible consequences, and a horrible government forcing it upon the people.
They are "age related diseases" because age seems to be one of the main factors. If the body (and mind) stays young and healthy, a lot of those things are going to have a drastic decline. For cancer, treatment and survival rates are improving all the time.
From a health care perspective, most of the cost comes from the elderly. If there aren't any more elderly, and they are instead working and contributing to society, universal health care actually becomes cheaper, medical technology improves faster (making those diseases even less of an issue), and so on.
And people don't usually die of "old age" but of things related to it. When the body gets older, the immune system gets weaker, your bones and muscles decay, your brain gets messed up, and a lot of deaths are in reality just a mix of a bunch of factors that just result in the body kind of shutting down. None of that will happen anymore.