Radical Life Extension and the Problem of Malthusian Hells

Ronald Bailey looks at the probable effects of life-extension technology in Reason Magazine.

Life extension news

On the way to an 800-year lifespan?

The future of aging

Peter Huber writes on technical and scientific issues, and his archive is a worthy bookmark. In this article, he investigates trends in medicine, and concludes that we may be around to watch them for a long, long, time.

Within a decade a mother in the early stages pregnancy will routinely direct her obstetrician to extract and stash away some embryonic cells for the future benefit of her unborn child. When the child gets to be 40 and has early Parkinson's or some other degenerative disease, another doctor will pluck those cells out of the freezer and cultivate a perfect cure.

It doesn't stop there. After all, what is a "disease" and what is "health"?

It depends on what your baseline is.

And if instead the child is fated to suffer nothing but the degenerative disease of old age, why then, he or she will have the option of curing that affliction, too. Restarting the biochemical clock for the body as a whole when you're 80 will be as straightforward as restarting it for any one specific tissue or organ when you're 40.

Most people I've talked with say they wouldn't want to live forever. Fine.

Let's postulate a medical treatment that grants another ten years of healthy life. Who'd turn that down? And when that ten years is running out, how many would decline the offer of another ten years?

Do that a handful of times, and you're well into your second century. Keep scheduling a treatment every tenth annual physical, and habit might carry you well into four digits.

Technology becomes cheaper as it gets older. A treatment affordable only by the super rich today will be routine, albeit a significan investment, in a decade or so. In fifty years, it'll be sold over the counter for pocket change in the drug stores.

Lifetime tenures, life sentences, and even "lifetime warranty" will take on a whole new meaning.

The future will be a very interesting place.

Immortality

Live Science interviews Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge University researcher who believes that within a quarter of a century, human life spans will be well into the low four digits.

Daunted at the prospect of living forever? Questioning the wisdom of such a course? Maybe you believe that, in the words of Ambassador Kosh, "You are not ready for immortality."

LS: Why do you personally want to live forever? AdG: It’s not really a matter of living forever, it’s just a matter of not wanting to die. One doesn’t live forever all in one go, one lives forever one year at a time. It’s just a case of "Well, life seems to be fun, and I don’t see any prospect of it ceasing to be fun unless I get frail and miserable and start declining." So if I can avoid declining, I’ll stay with it really.

I doubt any of my readers would have any qualms about people wanting to fix health problems. How about "reconditioning" the circulatory system, even though it winds up extending life and greatly reducing aging-related heart attacks and circulatory problems?

What if cancers were routinely cured or prevented? Cancer is largely a disease of the aged, and certainly shortens the lives of those who have it.

What if you could restore muscle tone so old people weren't feeble?

What if you could restore nerve function and cure blindness, deafness, and the loss of other senses? (Oh, yes. Cure Alzheimer's while you're at it.)

How many people, at any age, would take a pill or a shot that did away with the health problems they've accumulated over the last, say, ten years, despite having a "side effect" of extending their projected life span by that amount?

How many people who say they oppose immortality would vote against adding one healthy year to everyone's lifespan?

[Update: More here