The Scientist guest columnist Jack Woodall makes the case that why we should solve the medical problems of aging.
How different our lives could be if we lived twice as long and retained full possession of our health and senses, and no one would have to retire unless they wished to. A doubling of current average life expectancy to 160 years does not imply that everyone will live that long. There will still be attrition due to accidents and disease, with many people dying before they reach their 100th or even 50th birthday, and others living to 200 or more.
Such increasing longevity would require us to develop a progressively deeper understanding of apoptosis, cancer, and diseases such as Alzheimer, and how to conquer them or, at the very least, significantly delay their onset. We would not want to abolish death altogether, at least until we had a better idea of the implications of a much longer lifespan.
People who knew they stood a good chance of living for two centuries or more would be more likely to take seriously the problems of global warming and environmental pollution, since they would start to feel the severity of the impact.
Futuresheet 
March 6, 2007 at 1:35 pm |
Woodall thinks that we should try to solve the medical problems of aging?
isn’t that what all of us have been trying to do for years? all of a sudden
he thinks that if we lived for 200 years we would feel an urgency to solve
the problem of global warming. still another “new” theory to give credence
to “how to live longer”