# Science Fiction Debate: Extending Human Lifespans **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 20, 2019, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138 "2019-12-20T12:52:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/41 "2019-12-28T08:48:49Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Yes, complete biological stability just as now. There may be an issue with women’s ova running out but I haven’t done the research. > > I pulled most of this from two authors, Larry Niven and Jack McDevitt (though there’s others). Niven postulates a future where people live hundreds of years and some of them grow bored and take ever greater risks for thrills to stave off boredom until killed by misadventure. McDevitt shows a world - non-human - where death has actually been defeated completely and the ensuing civilization becomes very conservative and risk averse leading to stagnation and even technological regression. I’m unclear as to how we’re going to determine birth rate. While it’s true that birth rates in developed countries have decreased, that’s based on women being able to have fewer kids within the 30 years or so they’re fertile now, which presents benefits such as less financial hardship . If, as the OP says, > [@](#): > > Childhood is still roughly 15-20 years, senescence is another 10-15 years , that would mean a woman’s fertile period would be over 300 years, on average. How many would still want one-to-two children in total during that, and how many would want successive periods of raising one-two kids each time, maybe with breaks between child-raising periods? The Full Quiver folks could conceivably procreate nonstop for 300 years, or until they ran out of J names. _One-Hundred-and-Eighty Kids and Counting_, anyone? Wouldn’t it be impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy what the birth rate might do? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/42 "2019-12-28T09:23:02Z")
> [@truthseeker3](#): > > I agree, but I totally didn’t expect to get an objection to birth control. (That’s one of the things I like about the SDMB. It keeps you guessing.) I don’t object to birth control. I object to mandatory sterilization without the knowledge and consent of the patient (as would be the case if you operated on infants) as a method of birth control. > [@truthseeker3](#): > > We don’t really have to worry about sperm because men typically make them all day every day almost all their lives. Yes, we do have to worry. The quality of men’s sperm falls off as they age, and there are [problems associated with older fathers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect) just as there are problems with older mothers. > [@truthseeker3](#): > > (And by the way, if women continue to ovulate all their lives, freezing eggs will decline in popularity.) Maybe not. Since women do not produce eggs throughout their lives (all of a woman’s eggs are formed before she is even born) they all accumulate damage over time. As so men’s sperm-generating cells. Time alone increases the risks of problems in a living person whereas freezing eggs, sperm, and embryos and putting them in a protected environment will prevent environmentally-caused damage (although freezing also carries risks and effects). There might be a trend to freeze some gametes early in life as a security measure against early loss of fertility, but retain biological fertility for some decades. People may have to come to grips with the notion that if you’re going to reproduce your own genes you have to get it done in your first century. ---
**Author:** ![truthseeker3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e68b1a/32.png) [@truthseeker3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthseeker3)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2020, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/43 "2020-01-02T11:32:08Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > People may have to come to grips with the notion that if you’re going to reproduce your own genes you have to get it done in your first century. What - admit defeat? Never! (just kidding) > [@Broomstick](#): > > I don’t object to birth control. I object to mandatory sterilization without the knowledge and consent of the patient (as would be the case if you operated on infants) as a method of birth control. My “get them all” comment was a facetious reaction to everybody’s tendency to ignore the downsides of birth control (one of which is that it (still!) always seems to be the woman’s responsibility/fault) and the Malthusian fear-mongering in this thread (and many others), but I wouldn’t have been surprised to find somebody running with it when I got back. I suppose I should have made that clearer. > [@Broomstick](#): > > Yes, we do have to worry. The quality of men’s sperm falls off as they age, and there are [problems associated with older fathers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect) just as there are problems with older mothers. True (unless The Treatment affects men’s fertility differently than women’s). > [@Broomstick](#): > > There might be a trend to freeze some gametes early in life as a security measure against early loss of fertility, but retain biological fertility for some decades. Yes, that was my initial thought, and you’re right that it could appeal just as much to men as women. Then again, I’ve been thinking about this… > [@Broomstick](#): > > Right now the viability of the above notably drops off over decades. I don’t think I can dismiss that as easily as I first thought. I do think it’s technically feasible to improve cryogenics enough to freeze eggs and sperm indefinitely (cuz I’m playing the sci-fi! card), but that doesn’t take into account the human side of things. When I think of all the things that can happen in a century (wars, natural disasters, fraud, bankruptcy, etc), it gives me pause. One possibility that would have more security and lower overhead (keeping a freezer plugged in for a century could get expensive) might be if somatic cells could be induced to change into gametes; stem cells would seem to be especially promising. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2020, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/44 "2020-01-04T19:21:16Z")
Hmmm… sounds like a SF story I was planning to write… one of these days… (Except in my scenario life extension is prohibitively expensive) First, population - I think it was Freakonomics, in their discussion of birth rates and abortion, pointed out that thanks to birth control, women have the number of children they want, typically - if they accidentally start early, then they don’t have children later. If we posit a medical breakthrough where moderately good healthy children are possible from 15 to 350, for both men and women - first, the birth rate drops since there is not the pressure to “hurry up, your clock is ticking”. Many people may put off settling down and having kids until they hit their 100’s, or 200’s. Get the house paid for, travel all 7 continents, spend a month in a Tibetan monastery and a year or decade working with unfortunates in the third world. So the rate at which the population increases will not be the same as our current one since childbearing will be put off for decades or centuries. Yes, some may find it enticing to raise a new set of family members every few decades, but I suspect as many will be happy not being tied down. That’s another scenario not mentioned - yes, the first world populations will have mainly long-lived people, but the third world will be a collective of immortal elite lording it over a drudge workforce of natural life mortals. Their incentive would not be to raise the economic level of their country, as they would lose the benefit of cheap servants, plus the risk that diluting the financial pool by paying the lower classes more means they would be priced out of the rejuvenation market too. Which brings up the equivalent first-world question. What happens to the Walmart greeters and restaurant staff of the first world? There is always a class of person that makes themselves poor. The ultimate socialist medicine would be to make this treatment available to all. If it costs the same as say, buying a new car every 5 years over 20 years - who wants to help pay that for the 10% (20%? 30%?) who cannot afford it? Certainly, the problem people - those with mental problems or addictions, who cannot make the payments, will die slowly while their peers are a buff 40 years old for centuries. (So - is there a cut-off? Once you are biologically, say, 60 years old it’s too late for the treatments to save you? Gives new meaning to a “life sentence” if the prison system does not pay for these treatments) Watch for underground quacks doing back-alley half-assed rejuvenation treatments… Depends too on the cost. If all your surplus earning are gobbled up by your 20-year treatment round, it puts a whole new spin on financial planning. Yes, once the governments and pension planners realize that there are people who can collect benefits for centuries, a whole different regime will kick in. they will pay you when your treatments begin to fail, rather than 65. Or, not at all - you’ve had 350 years to plan for this. What happens to investment? At a certain point, the system reverts to steady state, but for the 300-plus year adjustment, things will be different. There’s already a suggestion that Japan and its stagnation may be the poster child for the coming global economy. A surge of baby boomers created the modern world, and took the best part of it and socked it away into retirement funds, chasing elusive returns from bubble to bubble (such as the recent mortgage bubble). Now, they boomers with the big retirement funds are actually retiring and cashing out. Will some investment assets become a glut on the market as everyone liquidates at the same time? Will savings actually diminish in value? Of course, all that rejuvenation money goes somewhere. Who gets rich off that? Rejuvenation medical specialist will be a big new in-demand career. What happens politically? Older voters are typically more conservative. But then, these voters will be most focussed on what policies mean for their access to rejuvenation. Higher taxes? no thanks. Education? There’s a workforce from the last 100 years who already know how to read and write, already have job skills, ensuring the up and coming workers are ready is less of a priority. Maternity leave and benefits will disappear. Why would we pay someone to bring more people into an overcrowded world? “If you wanted to have kids, you had 100 years to plan and save for them.” Health care? will we look at people who have some conditions the way we look today at whether it makes sense to treat someone already incurable and dying so they can live a few more months? If they’re too sick to afford to rejuvenate in the next 20 years, why spend money on someone who will be gone in 20 to 30 years? More focus on curability of diseases and condition, not treatments to prolong mere survival. As for jobs - at the lower level will be the people scrabbling to pay for the treatments every 20 years. They will live those lives of “quiet desperation”. No time for a relationship, or kids that subtract from their ability to save. Will they go postal when they reach the deadline and realize they can’t afford the treatment? If I’m going to die in 30 years, I’ll go out and take as many of these lucky bastards as I can." These people will work for the same dead-end job or perhaps whatever they can find for 300 years. the well-off middle class will probably do a job for a few decades, then switch careers through boredom or lack of challenge. “I’ll never be a top-notch musician after 40 years, so let’s try airline pilot or investment banking.” One theory is people will be more careful - but the other theory is that some will translate the boredom into risk-taking; rock climbing, skydiving, high-speed racing along mountain roads, running with the bulls, etc. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2020, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/45 "2020-01-04T21:46:24Z")
SciFi stories have room for a little hand-waving and unobtanium. A clumsy or Mad Scientist brews up a \ biochemical glop that automagically restores and shields telomeres, effectively removing age limits. The glop is released into the world, intentionally by the MS, accidentally by the clumsy one. It spreads by \ some simple method, maybe rainfall. Result: People notice that they stop aging. Infectious disease, accidents, and violence still take their toll, but organs stop deteriorating with age. Maybe a bit of apparent rejuvenation ensues, with muscles. Storyline: How does humanity react? Maybe decide how you want the story to end, and work back from there. Or pick a few plot points and see what your characters do and say. What could you emphasize? - The rich have their social tricks to stay rich indefinitely. - Young reckless guys stay reckless longer, with higher rates of violent death. - Wild gals remain wild a long, long, time, with tragi-comic ends. - Old-age financial systems collapse. The non-rich must work longer. - Antiquities markets collapse. What, THAT old stuff? How retro. \ - Populations explode, or not. Choose an entertaining option. - Too many memories accumulate. Regular brain-flushes are recommended. - Human Elders are now allowed on the Galactic Council. - Invading aliens have much shorter lifespans, become pets. Another clumsy or Mad Scientist brews and releases a self-spreading universal aphrodisiac. Now near-immortal humans are constantly aroused. Relationships tangle. Will the ending be Happy Ever After or Happy For Now? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2020, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/46 "2020-01-05T03:10:57Z")
Free immortality for all is a far cry from expensive immortality that needs regular renewal. A financial setback would have slow motion lethal implications. I’m imagining a scenario where someone pulls a Bernie Madoff and suddenly there’s a few thousand broke investors who see themselves now about to die within 30 years since they can not afford a treatment… the green card lottery becomes a much bigger deal when young third world era are vying for not just a richer life but an extra 300 prime years. Free immortality? Realization dawns slowly. Some don’t believe it. What of people who just missed the boat are too old? Do lifestyle issues still matter? Should I be watching my diet and cholesterol? If I have a bad accident will I be in a wheelchair - or hospital bed - for 300 years? I don’t think jobs vs population is ever an issue . There are always jobs. (Like the story about how the maximum number of cars in North America was going to be limited by the number of available chauffeurs. Or the guy who analyzed how many dozen mainframes would be needed to handle the world computing needs back in the day) Look at how many jobs there are in computing which was undreamt of 70 years ago. Jared Diamond in his latest book discusses world resources toward the end. The problem with overpopulation is there is not enough resources to keep the whole world or even part of it in a current first world lifestyle. Maybe we’ll think more about sustainability when what happens 200 years from now is personal. Building cross country supersonic hyper loops instead of burning jet fuel might make more sense if we personally use that transport for 200 years; solar powered homes are a good investment even when the payback is measured in decades. Maybe loyalty to an employer will make a comeback when you need the job for treatments; and when employers realize you will still be around in 50 or 100 years I tv they treat you well. Building you own house will be feasible when you can start with a room or two and slowly expand as needed provided the construction method (3D printed walls etc.?) is flexible and simple. Think of those grand cathedrals that took 200 years to build. AI will validate engineering plans. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2020, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/47 "2020-01-05T07:14:52Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Hmmm… sounds like a SF story I was planning to write… one of these days… (Except in my scenario life extension is prohibitively expensive) There was a short story about this by (I think) Ray Bradbury. I can’t recall the name of it. There’s a young couple who are in love and want to get married, but since people live hundreds of years, there’s no space for them to go. They’re surrounded by towering apartment buildings crammed with apartments crammed with people. In one of them, his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-greats, etc. are all watching TV. I wish I could remember the name of it. It’s driving me crazy. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/48 "2020-01-06T06:47:47Z")
Gahan Wilson had a comic essay in National Lampoon decades ago about this. They invent an immortality treatment, but it can only work if applied before 1 year old. So all us people will slowly fade away while the world stops making adjusts for the old and slow… escalators will run at 3 times their current rate, crosswalk signs change too fast, etc. but if there is such a treatment - as I said, the birth rate will plummet. Yes, some people will pop them out every few years, but there’s no hurry to have kids if you can wait 100 or 200 years. So for the first 30 years, the population will decline precipitously as almost nobody has kids but those over, say, 60 are dropping dead as usual. It will do wonders for society - 3/4 of all schools will close, but continuing and adult education will replace it. Taking 10 or 15 years to get a degree part-time makes sense if you have 300 years to use it. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/49 "2020-01-06T08:32:49Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Gahan Wilson had a comic essay in National Lampoon decades ago about this. They invent an immortality treatment, but it can only work if applied before 1 year old. So all us people will slowly fade away while the world stops making adjusts for the old and slow… escalators will run at 3 times their current rate, crosswalk signs change too fast, etc. > > but if there is such a treatment - as I said, the birth rate will plummet. Yes, some people will pop them out every few years, but there’s no hurry to have kids if you can wait 100 or 200 years. So for the first 30 years, the population will decline precipitously as almost nobody has kids but those over, say, 60 are dropping dead as usual. > > It will do wonders for society - 3/4 of all schools will close, but continuing and adult education will replace it. Taking 10 or 15 years to get a degree part-time makes sense if you have 300 years to use it. There may be no hurry to have kids, but the urge to procreate won’t be delayed. There would be people who’d opt to wait, but how can you say with any certainty that those people would be in the majority? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/50 "2020-01-06T18:00:38Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > There may be no hurry to have kids, but the urge to procreate won’t be delayed. There would be people who’d opt to wait, but how can you say with any certainty that those people would be in the majority? It’s an educated guess. People used to have children in their late teens in the “Good Old Days”. Now the mid-20’s is more usual, and some people delay well into their 30’s. I suspect the majority of people, given the option, would choose to have their early life experiences fist - travel, live it up, get established. I’m also guessing along with this will come a reluctance for society to support the option to have children when it means taxes on money that could be put toward your own life extension - not to mention personal choices. All the structures in place to support the expansion of the workforce - tax deductions for dependent children, free school, day care (subsidized in the civilized world but not the USA), employer family benefits, will wither away. People will epect to be established - pay off their student debt, pay off their house mortgage, have a well-paying job - before they begin to pop out money-sucking leeches. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/51 "2020-01-06T18:15:34Z")
I suspect the first effect of life extension would be an extension of the post-adolescent phase; the college life drinking and partying time; but tempered by the need to ensure that by age what? 40? they have enough for the recurring treatments. And the underclass who cannot afford that will continue to have children, some of who will manage to become part of the long-lived. But breaking in will be tough. Who wants to pay big dollars to someone just starting out in life unless they display remarkable talent, when there will be a pool of workers with decades of experience to draw from? Will that first generation be the long-lifers, and most of the rest born after that doomed to short-lived failure? ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/52 "2020-01-07T06:21:03Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > People used to have children in their late teens in the “Good Old Days”. Now the mid-20’s is more usual, and some people delay well into their 30’s. I suspect the majority of people, given the option, would choose to have their early life experiences fist - travel, live it up, get established. My daughter was born when I was 18. Her children were born when she was 39 and 41, with the partner she’d been with since she was 19. (Great guy, too. And yes, they lived it up and traveled.) My grandson is 60 years younger than I. Talk about feeling old… :eek: With MUCH longer lifespans presumably giving longer reproductive lives, many folks may delay parenthood indefinitely. What happens when Gramps and Gram are a century or three older than any grandkids? Can they even pretend to communicate? Will “family” become an abstraction? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/53 "2020-01-07T07:55:30Z")
I kind of think things will stagnate culturally. Things change so fast today. But… when the buying public has their preferences formed anywhere from 40 to 340 years ago, and assuming low/delayed reproduction rates, the number of people in any age class will be fairly small - there will either be dozens of niche markets, or more likely trends will come and stick around for decades. Look at the boomers (That’s me, Herc!) and rock music. I was in Burger King the other day and they were playing disco on the Muzak, and I thought “Wow! This song is over 40 years old!” I don’t think any place except a ballroom would have been playing all top hits from the 30’s when I was in college. Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black (1970?) was the theme used in ads for some action video game ads. and so on… the dominant group (much like boomers today) will be the group that were old enough to use the rejuvenation technique when it first became available. Their culture will predominate. ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/54 "2020-01-07T08:28:53Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > - Antiquities markets collapse. What, THAT old stuff? How retro. \ Would the retro market not explode? People like things from their youth and now they have so much more youth to reminisce about. That widget from 2 centuries ago might be interesting to a few historians today, but in the future there will be a lot more of people who actually remember that widget and want to have it for the memories. > [@TriPolar](#): > > OTOH, I don’t want to live hundreds of years. If I could restore some youth right now that would be great for a few more years, but I’m getting pretty bored and fed up with life anyway. > [@Mijin](#): > > In terms of my individual life, yeah after a while working, socializing, sexing etc gets tiresome. But if I could live a few centuries, I would, because I want to see more of what we learn about the universe and what we can achieve. Would it not be fair to say that these things get tiresome and boring today because as we get older we get physically more tired and have less energy as a rule? People aren’t fed up with life because they have seen it all, but because they are more run down. I would think that if I maintained the energy of my thirties for a few hundred years that my tolerance for socializing and sexing would get expanded quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138/55 "2020-01-07T20:26:46Z")
It would be more than retro or nostalgia, it would simply be demand - give me the stuff I remember from my early years. My point being there would be a rush of people for the first 30 to 50 years as people reach the age for treatment then receive it. They would be like a giant baby boomer cohort and dominate everything. Then, these people would have kids slowly and irregularly and there would be very few children at any time, these newbies would have a limited niche culture. It would be like being the only millennial working in an office full of 50-somethings. Generational culture (other than the “boomers”) then would be like finding fellow Slovenians or Norwegians or Thais in your city to hang out with - very few of you but with a common bond of shared experience. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-extending-human-lifespans/845138.md?page=2)