I think most of you seem to imagine a single drug or treatment to make you almost immortal and then regulate that.
I think whatever comes along will be in incremental steps, lots of drugs and treatments and behavioral changes added together to equal extremely long life.
Or…
As I imagine, say some rich evil guy clones himself several times. He anonymously supports the clones and ensures that they have a healthy, active life. When he reaches 75 years of age and they are in their late twenties, he kidnapps the most physically fit and has his brain transplanted into the perfect host body. Viola’! repeat as needed for an essentially immortal life.
I suppose that some writer somewhere has written a story along these line.
If not, maybe I could… I’d be rich!
Wait! damn. now it’s the property of the Chicago Reader. :smack:
Without some limiting factor (either in society itself, or mandated by the government) the consequences of radically enhanced life expectancy would be a huge population explosion. Hell, even without enhanced lifespans, we have a huge population explosion atm. Think about it if people lived even double their current lifespans, and remained sexually active AND fertile for double their current time. Now, think about it if people lived even longer, hundreds and hundreds of years, being sexually active and fertile. Something would need to be done about this, don’t you think Grey? Or do you think it would balance itself eventually?
It sounds like a great idea to me. Assuming we’re talking about a drug or treatment that actually doubles, triples, or quadruples your EFFECTIVE lifespan - not just stopping the aging process at 90 and keeping you old and feeble for many decades - I’m all for it. I can think of 50 different careers I’d like to try. I could fill up a thousand years or more with all the cool shit I’d like to do. Anyone who can’t think of at least a few centuries’ worth of stuff to do needs a medical treatment to fix their broken imagination.
xtisme the ones most likely to produce this type of drug live in the west and you’ll note we’ve got a declining population. Extended life spans won’t necessarily trigger a big boom.
Beside I’ve got hike Skye, become an architect, historian, political scientist, run for office, see Angkor Wat, climb the pyramids, visit Mars, watch the sun rise over the temple of the Sun and finish my damn basement. I figure 500 years should do me quite nicely.
Chalk me up as one who believes the immortality process will be incremental and require ongoing care. I also don’t think it’ll happen all at once… I’m 26… if I take care of myself I can reasonably be expected to live to my 70s or 80s and perhaps a decade or so longer. Suppose when I’m 40 they make a breakthrough in the field of, oh… let’s say gene therapy that will push that ‘reasonable envelope’ to the outside max of human biology which is about a 120 or so. Ok, I’m taking care of myself I get the gene therapy and can look forward to ringing in the year 2100 (if I’m lucky). When I hit my 60s there’s been another new development… let us say… in the realm of tissue engineering. Now they can do everything up to and including whole body replacement so I can now get my clunky body replaced with a genetically identical vat grown body (minus the brain for no messy moral implications) and with a little microsurgery I can have the body of a 20 year old again. Well this set’s the clock back QUITE a bit… the only limiting factor now is brain deterioration and they can ameliorate that with a combination of drugs so that I can keep on in good neurological and psychological health for a couple of centuries until some serious breakdown occurs on the cellular level. 2100 comes and goes and by this time nanotechnology has really hit it’s stride… I now no longer have to go through the inconvenient and expensive full body replacements every 40 years or so… now I can have tailor made nanobots injected into me that will provide a whole host of benefits so my outside lifespan is now impossible to say or predict. At this point any further developments go into making me more than human. The key to immortality is being in that lucky generation that lives long enough to catch the next break. The real question is whether we’ve seen that generation yet or not. I BTW don’t think questions of overpopulation and lifestyle are major stumbling blocks… immortality offers alot of benefits beyond the obvious. A person who can expect to live indefinetly would most assuredly begin to start taking the longer view about a great many things, reproduction included as well as sustainable ecology. Remember that pesky speed of light thing we can’t ever get around (maybe)? Well, if I can live forever a few hundred years to get to the next star might be a nice change of pace, so long as the star ship is spacious and accomodating enough (and why shouldn’t it be?). Mars is just a hop, skip and jump away… there’s a whole universe out there and you need something to do to pass the eons.
Well, there already is a free method of extending lifespan. In fact, it actually SAVES you money. Restriced caloric intake has been proven to extend lifespan by about 30%. How many people have signed up for this program? Not many.
The idea that you could take a p ill is ridiculous. Hell, you can’t even take a pill to cure a cold. Any medical treatment that extends life will be costly and will come with a host of potentially negative side effects. There ain’t no free lunch out there, folks.
Any system that would give people indertiminate lifespans would test the faith of the religious. Would someone who believes he is heavan-bound be willing to put off, potentially forever, the opportunity to meet God, his late grandparents, and his dead goldfish?
“Live off the interest?” Interesting idea. Allow me to doubt that for a moment.
The bank grants interest to its investors as a reward for depositing a sum of money, which the bank then uses to back loans to other people wishing to borrow. The interest given to the investor is skimmed from the interest charged to the borrower; the bank pockets the proceeds. (There are some complications here, but this is the extremely simple version.)
If there were only one immortal in the world, this might work. If everyone were immortal, I think we’d revise our idea of the entire economy. I mean, if you knew you could save $1.00 a day and buy yourself a backyard pool in 250 years, why borrow and pay interest when you can afford to simply wait? And if you don’t borrow money, how will the bank pay interest to its investors?
Let me ask another important detail about the nature of these Microscopic Magic Pixies that grant immortality. At what effective age is immortality set? Does one not age beyond 25? Beyond 50? Beyond 100? How active is this immortal, how brittle are his bones, how elastic his skin and muscles? Can he still work in an office – on a farm? Aren’t women limited to a given egg supply at birth – would they not become non-fertile after their supply runs out, at whatever age this happens?
Eternal life is one thing. Eternal youth is another. What happens to society has to be based on which one of these two things we’re speaking of.
