for hundreds of years (perhaps by preventing teliomere shortening, or some other as yet unknown biological mechanism) would it wreak the economy? Consider that you would “play hell” getting the retirement age raised significantly given interest groups like the AARP we would potentially pay entitlements for decades or even centuries! Furthermore, even a mediocre investor can become a multi milliionaire if they have enought time to compound interest. Thus, with a high percentage of the population being extremely wealthy, who would work (well I guess there is always immigrants who couldn’t afford the medicine).
Do you think that the govenment might actually ban such an intervention in the interest of national security.? I know that in one of my nursing classes we had an MD who does research in life extensions/antiaging and he said that the whold “gerontology field” was generally opposed to life extension (choosing instead to focus on “easing” the harsh effects of old age).
can extend lifespan by upwards of fifty percent in most animal species where it has been researched (see the work of Dr. Roy Walford for instance). In addition, there is evidence of chemical agents such as resveritol (found in grape skins grown under certain conditions) may be able to virtually duplicate the effects of caloric restriction. Other techniques such as inhibitiing teliomere shortening on the ends of chromosones seems to work via a seperate pathway, and has also produced promising results in the labratory. It seems likely that when we advance nanotechnology to the point where it is effective at the cellular level we will also be able to make great strides in this area. It is hard to imagine that within the next few centuries that we won’t be able to dramatically extend human lifespans.
I guess it would wreak the economy the way it is now, but after some transitional period will adapt to the new circumstances. You’re correct about the interest thing - given today’s interests, everybody can be rich by simply depositing a few bucks into a savings account and waiting. But you could do this even now, since you don’t have to remain alive yourself all in between - why not deposit a hundred dollars into an account, and pass it on to your heirs? Your great-great-great-grandchildren would be extraordinarily rich. Works even now, without wreaking the economy. That’s because there is also inflation taking away some portion of the interest gains, and because the standard of living is constantly growing - the total production in 200 years will be incredibly larger than today, so economy won’t go havoc because there are so many more opportunities for you to spend your cash.
You’re also correct about the retirement problems, but I think finally people will realize that they can’t retire with, say, 65 and continue to live anaother 135 years receiving pensions paid for by the working young.
All in all, it would be a different world than today, and the transition would be hard, but it would adapt. My WAG.
age arresting breakthrough that allows someone to live hundreds of years. The only catch is that it cannot reverse the aging process only slow it down AND you are seventy five when it occurs. You could be under this scenario part of the last generation ever to grow old. Think about, it wouldn’t have mattered that much from a historical perspective if you were born in AD 600, AD 1000, or AD 1400 from a life span perspective. However, what is the difference between being born in AD 1969 and AD 2300? Of all the rotten luck to be born on the very cusp of breakthroughs that lead to virtual, youthful, immortality (or something close to it). It’s kind of like finding out that everyone, but you gets an extreme makeover, and a harem while you get to be a celibate, old fart, and then die.
Roland, if you were rich enough to get the treatment early, you’d be rich enough to ride many decades’ worth of plastic surgery advances and leave a good-looking corpse.
Now, that isn’t the same as being young for all those decades, but majority-plastic old farts can get plenty of tail. Especially if they’re rich.
Retirement plans only work because of the presumption that on average most people will die of old age before they exhaust the value of their investments. Everyone can’t retire and let someone else do the work. What would happen is that the return on investments would drop to nearly zero, and people would have to keep working through their millenia long lifespans. People are living longer nowadays and we’ve already seen the banks offering dismal returns on savings accounts. The only exceptions would be the small number of lucky, successful investors who continually play the stock market.
The fact is that if the western world created a drug capable of extending the average life of a person several times over it would create a hell of a class divide. We live by capitalism. The rich who will be able to afford these drugs will continue to live as the privileged few. But those unable to afford it, despite its probably cheap value, will be unable to prosper. Like Schnitt said, over enough time any amount of money can become a fortune. The rich will getter richer and as the ecomony changes towards the longer living the poor will become poorer. How this will wreck the economy is whatever side of the line you would be on.