So, you apes want to live forever?!?

Great Debates
1

I thought I’d see if anyone was interested in debating or at least discussing the merrits of some of the possibilities of biotech in the future. It seems fairly clear to me that life expectancies have been improving nearly each generation (at least in many industrialized nations today) for some time. I also know of several biotech companies that are actively trying to extend life even further…possible indefinitely. If they succeed then this will become a major issue in the future I’d say.

So, lets postulate that in the future, through nanites or gene modifications or whatever, a product or series of treatments is available that can extend human life indefinitely, barring accidental death or disease of course. Basically, people will age to a certain point and then stop, or age very slowly.

  1. Should research on this be stopped before it even gets close to completion? It seems to me to be only a matter of time (maybe years, maybe even decades), but eventually someone WILL create something that radically enhances human lifespans well beyond what ‘nature’ intended (somewhere around 120 years if I remember correctly at the max end).

  2. Should such a product be allowed on the general market? Should it be restricted, and if so, who should it be restricted too?

  3. If it is, what would the effects on society be? Would laws need to be changed? Wouldn’t the very fabric of our society be altered radically?

  4. Should the product be sold at whatever the market price is or should it be available to everyone, either free or cheap enough to be affordable? What about in the 3rd world? Should such a product or treatment be available there as well? Would it cause more problems for them than it solves? If it ISN’T made available, would that cause even more strife? Maybe it would be tied to policies of a zero population growth?

  5. What about work? People now work for years and then have a nice retirement (well, people try to do this anyway). However, if you could essentially live forever (or for hundreds of years), how would that effect the standard model? Only the very wealthiest could afford to stop working after 50 years or so and retire indefinitely. Or maybe with so many people living, people SHOULD be encouraged to retire fairly young to make room for younger people in the work force? How would continuously working effect people for hundreds of years? Whould humans eventually settle into new patterns and it seem ‘normal’ to them, or would they go insane just thinking about all that time working?

While a lot of people dream about this technology and think it will be a great boon to humankind (and it probably will be at that), it seems to me to be a much more complicated proposition than most think it will be, radically altering our society like nothing in the past ever has. It seems to me to be a pandora’s box and something we should think through BEFORE those biotech companies solve the ‘problem’ and present society with the solution to immortality…

-XT

2

Nature seem to have intended that we die at about 30-40, generally in the stomach of some animal with better teeth and claws

Why would you restrict this particular treatment? It treats a universal “ailment” that makes no distinction between sex, class or belief.
If you thought the pill was a blow to traditional families wait until this kicks in.

Lot of stuff here. First off I would allow the market to set the price but half the length of time before generics could be made.
Again, we get back to who should have it. Again I would say whoever is able to afford it. Initially the rich; eventually everyone. Whether or not some one in the 3rd world would want to live forever is debatable give conditions currently present. That said the drug does not assure you of immortality; a bullet would still kill you.**

Interesting. Figure that you could work long enough to acquire sufficient wealth that you could live off the interest. After that there is nothing stopping you from continuing to work if you enjoy it, or to return to school to learn new skills and begin a second/third round of interest.
The fact that someone could easily extend their enjoyable life span to say 200 years would radically change the way we face problems. I don’t see us ridding the human race of the desire for instant gratification, but I do see us developing a longer term perspective in terms of our impact on others and the environment.
Think of a populace filled with doctors who used to be engineers, engineers that used to be fishermen. It would be interesting.

3

Would it balance out to be that the only people that could really afford this treatment would be the ones who used their extended lifespands to work enough to pay for it? Trying to think about the price of immortality and I only come up with irony. Perhaps I read too much.

4

200 year amortization on your life? :slight_smile:

5

It seems likely that there will be such biotechnology available within the next thousand years
(sorry, I always tend to take the long view…)
(having said that, life expectancy will probably go up in stages, so some people will experience several extensions of their own life expectancy as they get older)…

it depends how active the very old are… many people today live longer, but are highly dependent on care in their extreme old age- this could be the major source of employment in the near to middle future.

But if a way is available of extending the active life, it is certainly likeley that people will jave many professions in their lifetime;
a problem I can see if the memory capacity of the Human brain- some people foresee that forgetfulness will be a major problem in the old but hale human brain.
It is possible that you will be physically unable to remember any new skills without wiping out old ones, once you pass a century or two of experience;
other people expect a thousand years of recall given the capacity of the human brain (perhaps 10[sup]15[/sup] distinct states.

Population could be a problem; if we have low fertility and current mortality trends we can expect a world population of less than 6 billion in 2150;
if longevity kicks in around that time, even low fertility will guarantee a steady increase in population for the foreseeable future.

Another problem is that accidental death will become the main cause of death, or possibly homicide; you will expect perhaps three hundred years of life before a car crash or bullet ends your life. The end result of this would be a safety obsessed, if not downright boring society.

SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

6

I feel such technology should only be available to those who are psychologically able to cope with a long life span… say, perhaps, those who have at least from a long line of long-lived folks. Someone with a few centenarians in the family tree. Someone with grandparents, great aunts and great uncles who passed the 100 mark.

Yes, in the interest of science, I suggest that only those people be allowed the benefits of life extension. Plus, y’all should give us your lunch money.

7

It should be restricted as much as possible by allowing only those who chose dangerous but nessisary to humanity occupations. No politician should be allowed to have access to it EVER (set up a waiver for anyone of an age to become political and if they opt for the treatment they waive all right to participate in poliotics on an administrative level.)

The treatment should be designed to be renewable. Not a one shot deal. Probably an upper limit to lifespan shopuld be set at 200 or so years.

Still I think immortality is the worst thing that could happen to our race. What value life it it is diluted over the psan ove centuries? People waste their lives now as short as they are.

What SHOULD be worked on (and is) are ways to make every year productive up to the time of death. I forget the exact quote but it goes something liek this:

You spend the first twenty years of your life becoming an adult. The next twenty learning a craft or a trade, the next ten mastering it and the next thing you know you can no longer perform your craft.

Youth IS wasted on the young.

8

It’s beyond folly to think that this drug/genetic treatment could be regulated. If there were a drug one could take to double one’s lifespan, for example, there would be riots in the streets if the gov’t tried to restricgt access to it.

Insurance companies would probably pay for the treatment-- think of the extra years of premiums they could collect!:slight_smile:

9

Amen, John Mace. Restrict it?! We can’t restrict heroin and cocaine, try restricting immortality! The only possible way to restrict it would be if it involved a very complicated procedure as opposed to getting a shot, and even then some offshore micro-sovereignity like Nassau would pimp the service for what the market would bear.

Which brings up the question of what it would cost. Cost is determined by two factors: the break-even cost of providing a product sets the minimum price, and the maximum profit you can extract from the market sets the optimum price. Never aging is something people would pay a LOT for. If someone had a monopoly on the product, they could sell it for billions a shot to the 500 wealthiest people on the planet (and quickly become the wealthiest :stuck_out_tongue: ). Competitors would soon arise however, so eventually it would be available at cost+.

Impact on society? Let’s see…

Government: I agree the idea of dictators or perpetually re-elected senators ruling for centuries is appalling. We’d need either term limits or a culture that condones assassination. :smiley:

Overpopulation: With the exception of China, people have traditionally been free to have children, and changing that would be perhaps the most radical alteration of human society in history. Of course they’ve traditionally been free to live in poverty and die of hunger and disease too, so maybe it would balance out.

Retirement: forget about retiring at 65, unless you’ve made very good investments in the stock market. Everyone, or nearly everyone, can’t retire as long as human labor is necessary to create wealth. Retirement age effectively is the age of the oldest ten percent of the population. We’re already having difficulty with Social Security beneficiaries living into their 90s. Eventually the criterion would be health rather than calendar age: you work as long as you reasonably can.

A huge question is the capacity of the human brain to retain memories and store new skills. Most wouldn’t care about remembering who was their neighbor 300 years ago, but if you gave up being a neurosurgeon to spend a few centuries doing space exploration, you might need a refresher course before taking up a scalpel again.

Granted that everyone would still someday die from accident, war or murder, the knowledge that death isn’t foreordained would have to have an effect on society. Maybe we’d see the ultra-timid become safety freaks, while others might become fatalists or even daredevils.

10

Politicians? We call them kings, as in, “May our king live forever, and the rest be food for the worms.” If this were possible, the politicians are exactly who’d grab it, even in the US.

11

We are probably only a hundred years away from some sort bio-tech chip that can be attached anywhere on the human central nervous system and acess memory space.

I can forsee that after several centuries of adding chips a human brain may become 75%+ more computer than biological. (unless the chips themselves are mostly biological. At this point several congnitive tasks may be possible at any given time. Multitasking. :wink: And acess to the internet.

12

Keep in mind that any improvements in longevity are likely to be incrimental. I doubt we’ll wake up one day to learn that we can suddenly add 100 yrs onto our lifetimes. It’ll be bit by bit, and society will adapt just as it has to the doubling of lifespans we’ve seen in the last few hundred years.

13

This has been handled interestingly in fiction. I suggest The Long Habit of Living by Joe Haldeman. He proposes a “Stileman Process” that anyone can undergo and which completely restores your youth, with two caveats:

[ul][li]The process only lasts ten years, after which you need another Stileman or you rapidly croak; and[/li]In order to get a Stileman, you must pay all your worldly assets, which must total at least $1 million USD.[/ul]

14

John Mace I must clarify the ‘doubling of lifespan in the last few hundred years’ bit, if you don’t mind.
The Life Expectancy has doubled, but I am sure you are aware that this is mostly due to a decrease in infant mortality and a longer peiod of healthy old age;
in Classical, medieval and Renaissance times, people in their forties had a reasonable expectation of at least twenty years of life, and several individuals lived into their nineties and beyond.
So improved health care for the young and old has been the main cause of this life extension, not a physiological change.

I think that to live past a century and avoid the fate of Swift’s Struldbrugs will require a medically induced physiological change of some sort.

SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

15

I tried to post a long reply yesterday, which got ate by the board…third time yesterday. So I gave up in disgust.

The point I was going to bring up was: What about marrage? Will traditional marrage pretty much become extinct, or will it continue? Maybe we will go with an arrangement more like the ancient Celt, where specific terms of marrage are agreed upon by both parties (i.e. 1 year, 5 years, 10 years), with both parties having to agree at the end of the term to continue with a new term, or go their separate ways with no stigma attached. I just can’t see people in general being married for hundreds of years…especially hundreds of sexually active years. It would take a very rare couple to manage that, I’d think. Or am I wrong? Maybe this will strengthen marrage?

Also, what about children? If men and women are sexually active and fertile for hundreds of years, should society step in and limit the numbers of children any pairing can have? Limit the number of children from any individual woman? Or will humans just change and readapt to having less children on their own?

Thanks for all the comments.

-XT

16

Your point is well taken, but any increase in life expectancy is likely to be similar to what was seen in the past. It’s not like there will be some migical elixhir that will ensure a long life. You’ll just have increased odds. There will still be a distribution. But I will admit that, as you implied, that distribution will probably be tighter.

17

I think the biggest problem would be massive overpopulation. Perhaps access to this life extending technology would only be given on the basis that you wouldn’t have children?

18

You know there are all these drugs that currently extend lives of regular people. No one is out there mandating that they should limit themselves in some way simply to purchase the drug. Why the desire of so many posters in this thread to do just that?

19

I don’t know, I think these side issues are really tangential to the economic one of what the drug is worth. Given a practically infinite lifespan, one could expect a practically infinite price, largely paid through loan style payments making you in debt to the companies forever. The ability to default on this payment will cease to become an option given the odds of being caught for any such thing approach 100%.

I would expect a life of servitude to whatever agencies would possess the production of the drug.

I don’t see any way around the idea of the economy largely collapsing. Even minimum wagers could set up much smaller investments that would grow within one or two hundred years to enable them to retire. But obviously everyone can’t be retired or no one is fixing the sewers or making the hamburgers.

Overpopulation is the smallest concern, IMO. I can’t imagine the economics of such a drug.

20

It is most likely that we will enhance the brain to slow down subjective time. This will probably coincide with fully immersive VR hooked into our very nerves. Perhaps the reason we don’t see any aliens is that they don’t go out into space, they retreat into VR so that 1 second is about a million years. We should see the first signs of souped up intelligence within 30 years if tech continues to accelerate at it’s current pace (which is exponential - not linear).

Treatments that stop and reverse biological aging are probably more like 10 years away. Already there is a contest to see who can create the longest living mouse called The Methuselah Mouse Prize. Already they have extended the lifespans of worms, fruit flies, and mice. We’re next. . . .