Anti-Aging Medicine and it’s implications?
I am reading current articles regarding medical research into anti-aging: apparently many cutting-edge doctors have already verified that anti-aging medicine is possible, and believe it is reasonable to assume a "cure" to aging is coming soon, perhaps within ten or fifteen years.
I initially find this prospect frightening rather than comforting. Why is this? What are your thoughts on anti-aging?
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I find it interesting that 3 of the 4 answers so far are nominally positive. Yet when someone asks the question of whether you’d like to be immortal, the answers are overwhelmingly negative.
I’ve gotta disagree with Guru above. Despite what the cosmetics industry may say, anti-aging medicine isn’t just about _looking_ younger. It’s about _being_ younger. And not all of us do it out of a fear of aging & death. Some of us pursue it out of a love of life and all it has to offer. Some people say that we should just gracefully accept aging and all the problems that go with it. I find that to be a defeatist attitude. Aging has its benefits, but nothing that can’t be improved upon by having the health and mental clarity of someone half your age. Also, sure anti-aging medicine will only be available to the rich…at first. So were computers, cars, and plane trips. But like all things, it’s only a matter of time before the price falls enough to be affordable by the masses.
It’s been estimated that the human body, if properly maintained and repaired, could easily go on for 120+ years. With advanced biotech just a few decades down the road, who knows how long we could live for in these biological bodies? Even further down the road, mind uploading may one day allow us to abandon our fragile, non-durable meat bodies and live pretty much indefinitely.
One bad part about radically advanced lifespans is that it will crash the social security system. I don’t consider this a big issue though, because even if the average lifespan stays where it’s at now, it’s only a matter of time before SS implodes; from the start it was never sustainable indefinitely.
As for population growth, most of it today and in the future is/will be in third-world countries. In most industrialized nations, pop. growth has already stabilized and in an increasing number of countries like Japan, Russia and Italy, populations are actually decreasing. It will be many decades, if not a century, before radically increased longevity contributes significantly to global population. And by then, we should (assuming no major wars or a theocratic return to another Dark Age) be a space-faring species with the ability to spread off-world.
Below are a couple books on the subject you might be interested in. The first is about the coming biotech revolution, and some of the radical advances already in the research pipeline. The second is more of a transhumanist nature, but the title pretty much speaks for itself.
Great idea – let’s do that.
Anti-Aging meds!! Where are they! Give them to me! Give them to me NOW! Hurry- HURRY there is no time to waste! Hurry I’m melting m e l t i n g…I tell you. M E L T I N G :/ Oh what a crule crule world…….
I love the idea, how else am I gonna reach the paradise I want to live in in this life?
Enhancing the quality of life regardless of one’s age is preferable to just avoid aging. Age carries such a superficial quality to it. The issue is more what predominate fear a person is dealing with.
The "medicine" is more the unwillingness to accept reality. We all age. Being obsessed with youth, or age is such a miserable existence that those people have my pity more than anything else.
Of course, such discoveries will be available to the wealthy. And there is nothing sadder to look at that someone who tries to look far younger than what they are.
But then that is part of free society — to be as foolish as possible.
Oh my, i think we should find another planet to rape before its too late.