If your tachyon anti-aging regimen fails you should give epigenetics a try.
Cells age as they divide, multiply and perform tasks for a number of reasons, including DNA damage, diminishing autophagy (eating bad stuff), and oxidation (internal and external).
If you can reprogram older cells to divide into an embyonic state, you can reverse the aging process.
Tinkering in my basement lab, I developed an anti-aging elixir that did indeed result in reverse-aging, which is why my 66 yo body now looks like that of a 20yo. Unfortunately, my cats ate my lab notes, so I can’t share it with the world.
However, Dr. David Sinclair may be on a similar road. So you’d better act fast if you want to beat him to market.
I for one quite like the idea of everyone walking around looking like a hot 20-something; the world would be more aesthetically pleasant. (Here, I am assuming that said elixir of youth is so widespread and cheap that everyone has access to it).
In all seriousness, though, over-crowding would become a pretty serious issue, right?
If people are no longer dying of the myriad of conditions we (usefully) bundle together as ‘old age’, then population - and competition for resources - is going to rise very quickly indeed. However, I suppose there is the fact that pretty much everyone is going to be of working age all of the time (no more of those lazy, parasitic retirees suckling from the teat of hard-working taxpayers) - so perhaps this increase in global productivity might mitigate that. I wonder, also, what a 200-year-old in the body of a 20-something might achieve in terms of economic usefulness. Would they be a god-like uber-employee? Would they be impossible to work with? Would they be driven quite literally insane by the stressors of surviving centuries longer than their brain is evolved to?
Then there are the social implications. Would it be creepy for a 100-year old to date a 20-year old, if they both appeared to be in the same age bracket? Would ‘elderly’ people in young bodies still appear in mannerism to be old? (Would a 120-year-old woman in the form of an 18-year-old still speak and act like an old woman? Which is to say, to what extent is elderly behaviour a result of having an elderly body? Dunno…)
What about sports? Most athletes tap out at around 30, but if you can stay young forever, then you’ve got infinity years to get good at baseball, soccer or curling - the Olympics are going to be intense.
And how far back does the elixir allow you to go? If someone wanted to regress to looking 16, is that okay? 15? 14? How old exactly is a 60-year-old in the body of a 14-year-old? I can think of all sorts of horrid ethical implications and dilemmas stemming from adults choosing to look like children.
