# If you could live indefinitely, and in good health, would you choose to? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 28, 2006, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-live-indefinitely-and-in-good-health-would-you-choose-to/350298 "2006-03-28T21:22:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-live-indefinitely-and-in-good-health-would-you-choose-to/350298/81 "2006-03-31T10:55:48Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > I’m in favor of it, with two caveats: > > 1. I get the indefinite life, but I can’t father children. > > 2. I get to determine when to end my life. I was going to go with the opposite: I would want to be able to have children in my elder years. ---
**Author:** ![drmark2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@drmark2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drmark2000)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-live-indefinitely-and-in-good-health-would-you-choose-to/350298/82 "2006-03-31T15:36:17Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > So… Cancer treatment is elective surgery? How about organ transplants? Open heart surgery? Pacemakers? Now yer talkin’, **Sam**. An excellent post with plenty of points worth further discussion. As to the above quote, you’ve nailed it right down. Clearly, if life-extending treatments become available, they will not be considered elective. They would be considered more important than anything else that currently exists. Will insurance pay? It doesn’t matter. de Grey addresses this issue on his website. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > We’ve been ‘extending the human lifespan past anything known or natural’ for decades. I don’t see people yawning and saying, “Nature wanted my heart to fail. I think I’ll just let myself die.” Yes, indeed. As I pointed out in a previous post in this thread, we have extended human lifespan by about 3-4 times since we first gathered around a fire. No one is complaining about that, except for still having to die, and having the final decades be an expensive, vile, and miserable process of slow degradation. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > The minute it becomes possible to extend our lifespans significantly, there will be huge demand for it. No one will consider the treatment to be elective, when the alternative is a sure death in a relatively short period of time. Exactly what de Grey says. Good thinking! This is exactly what the issue boils down to. No one would turn down some more years of healthy life. No one. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > And you’d be surprised what you can afford when the alternative is death. Take out a second mortage on the house. Hell, sell the house and take out a 20 year loan. Anything is better than being dead to most people. Look how many bankrupt themselves for treatments for cancer or heart surgery. People do this who are already 60 or 70, and they’ll sell everything they have for a chance at maybe 5 or 10 more years of life. Your straightforward summary of the matters speaks for itself. Way to go! And those bankrupting themselves are doing so for 5 or 10 years more of _lousy_ life. If those could be healthy years, then what? > [@Sam Stone](#): > > Imagine what they’ll do for another 100 years. Yes, imagine it. We can imagine the negative outcomes, and the positive ones. Is there any way that we won’t try to find out the outcome of a lifespan of hundreds or thousands of years? No. If we can do it, we’ll do it, and see what happens. Let those who would decline on the offer decline. They won’t, of course, when push comes to shove. ---
**Author:** ![drmark2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@drmark2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drmark2000)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-live-indefinitely-and-in-good-health-would-you-choose-to/350298/83 "2006-04-02T22:13:25Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I was going to go with the opposite: I would want to be able to have children in my elder years. There’s no reason to think that you couldn’t have kids throughout your lifetime, one way or another. ---
**Author:** ![drmark2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@drmark2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drmark2000)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-live-indefinitely-and-in-good-health-would-you-choose-to/350298/84 "2006-04-03T21:08:44Z")
> [@1920s Style "Death Ray"](#): > > Why stop at a 20 year loan **Sam**? May as well make it a 500 year loan, heck why not have the government pay for it and then you pay an extra 3% on your tax! An interesting sort of prooposal, whether you are serious or not. Questions of human exonomics will certainly have to be revised. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-live-indefinitely-and-in-good-health-would-you-choose-to/350298.md?page=4)