a medicine/treatment to stop the aging process: good thing? worst idea ever?

[0rganism]

Poll question: a medicine/treatment to stop the aging process: good thing? worst idea ever?

Since the beginning of life itself, we have confronted as inevitable the process of eventual physical decay and death. Even in the absence of a violent and premature end, we still reside in what some might well regard as a ticking time bomb. As noted in Fight Club, "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." The telomeres shorten, the cells fail to replicate correctly and become senescant, organs fail, the body weakens, and eventually the processes needed to sustain life reach their unavoidable end. Few humans live more than 100 years.

However, as humans, we are endowed with an unusual gift to fight against these inevitabilities. We seek cures for cancer, we transfer organs from person to person, we vaccinate against diseases, we go deep into the mechanisms of life itself to find remedies for the poisons that afflict us. And in the meantime, we mitigate and rationalize the fears inspired by our finite lifespans with belief in post-death consciousness, or equate oblivion with bliss.

So hypothetically, let's suppose there were a medicine or periodic treatment one could have to extend natural life indefinitely. In this scenario, cellular aging was regarded a disease, and human researchers discovered a cure. Now you can take a pill, or have a periodic injection, that does away with the aging process: the body stays young and pliant, organs continue to function properly, cell replication occurs as "intended". Of course, at any time, a person can cease the treatment, and cell aging will resume -- but this is no longer unavoidable, it is "optional".

Death by violence, poisoning, natural disasters, and various other circumstances would still be possible, but humans (and any other animals to whom we choose to give the medication) no longer face death by aging as an ultimate consequence of birth. The scenario posits no extra technological advances, political fluctuations, or economic circumstances as premise; the treatment is generally available but you still have to get your meds through the usual processes, you still get your food from other plants and animals, and if you've stopped the aging process while virile, you can still reproduce.

The question is twofold: do you regard this treatment as beneficial, and would you partake of it yourself? If you don't see a suitable answer below, select "other" and explain your point of view...

Extra credit is awarded for discussing your answer and answering the qustion of which, if any, technologies to extend life artificially are to be embraced or discarded.

[billyskank]

1. I wouldn't want to live forever in this material embodiment

You have to work every single day to sustain yourself and no matter how hard you try, so much suffering comes to you, which cannot be avoided. 100 years is enough. ;)

[havocmom]

3. And for those wealthy enough to not have to work,

it would be the ultimate form of greed.

Distasteful either way.

[xchrom]

2. i simply do not know.

i have just buried my father due to being elderly frail -- ultimately dimentia.
it was hell.

[0rganism]

20. that is a hard, hard thing

I hope you can find some joy in remembering how things were before the dementia set in.

[SPKrazy]

4. It Will Be A Way To Enslave Us

so we can work forever

no thanks

I want out of here someday

just not yet

[Duer 157099]

5. Such a technology would have unimaginable consequences

Mostly negative, I fear (for the have-nots anyway).

The main devastating long-term effect on the species, though, would be in our attitude toward death itself. Death is the great equalizer. Death is the one single common denominator that all humans share.

Remove that (death by aging, that is) and the whole world gets turned on it's head.

I can imagine dozens of scenarios, all bad.

Unfortunately.

[0rganism]

8. as you point out, you can imagine some, and they are all bad :D

and as you also point out, that is unfortunate.

However, an economic argument is, IMHO, the weakest one against developing any particular technology. Certainly, one can postulate that it would only be available to the "haves and have mores", and some class of people would be "have nots" doomed to a shorter life expectency. Well, shoot, that's what we have already, so I don't see it as tech-dependent. It's more of an argument for socialized medicine than against extending life through artifice.

[Duer 157099]

19. The economic argument is a strong one, but not my main one

(I think)

I think my main issue would be in how the most profound effect would be in how our species views death. Since it is now "optional" it becomes a very nasty (VERY NASTY!) avenue, rather than an absolutely inevitable one.

If we think people are currently obsessed with staving off death, just imagine if it were *really* possible! Hah! It would make the Patriot Act (for example) look like infant play.

OMG, security at ALL costs! No RISKS, ever! Just think what kind of society that would be. Ugh!

[0rganism]

21. only death by aging is hypothesized to be "cured"

other avenues to death would still be... shall we say... open and available. what disappears is time-induced inevitability.

and even in this regard, I'm not convinced risk taking would be eliminated. Do we only risk our lives on occasion because it's a depreciating asset? Already we know that lung cancer is a likely outcome of smoking, and it's banned in many places, but you can still buy cigarettes.

[Duer 157099]

22. But that is exactly my point.

ALL risks would have to be completely removed to ensure that one does not die, since death is no longer inevitable.

Yes, we take risks because we know that death is inevitable, imho.

People would live in complete and utter fear constantly, and probably die from stress-related disease before age! lol...

[0rganism]

23. sorry, I doubt the correlation of risk-taking to inevitability of death

In fact, after some introspective consideration, I think it's very much the opposite.

Most of the physical risk-taking in my life occurred during my teens and early-twenties, when my marginal rate of survival due to aging-related illnesses was essentially 100%. I took risks because I foolishly underestimated the possible consequences. Risk taking, for me and those around me, was directly tied to an illusion of immortality and/or invulnerability. I think this is part of the reason young men are preferred as conscripts and recruits for military service: young males have an amazing capacity to ignore the true worth of life.

Conversely, as I and those I know age, we become more cautious in our activities. Each day the marginal survival chances drop a little bit, and chances of full recovery from serious injuries diminish even faster. While the total time remaining ticks away day by day, the value of each day increases proportionally, due to diminishing supply.

If we measured the value of survival as a depreciating asset, we would be more likely to take risks after 40 (just as insurance companies are less likely to insure the elderly at a preferred rate). However, this is not how we subjectively assess our lifespans. Early on, our days seem infinite, each as valuable as a grain of sand on a beach. As we age, we come to place a higher value on those days that remain to us. Only physical misery and accumulated suffering form the impetus for some to end their lives prematurely.

No, I do not think risk-taking generally would decrease as a result. What we'd see a lot more of is low-impact risks -- people would be more likely to do things with a moderate risk of serious but non-fatal injury, knowing that they'd have more time and ability to recover. Skiing, skateboarding, windsurfing, that kind of thing. Elderly people who slip on the ice and break a femur or hip may well spend the rest of their days on crutches; younger people would be less likely to have such an injury, and recover faster if they did. Remove degenerative aging from the parameters of life, and I'd expect people to want to go on with the things they liked to do in youth -- risky or not.

[Duer 157099]

25. I disagree, still

I had considered the points you posted, but I'm afraid that we cannot use the arguments you posit, since up until now (at least), whether conscious or not, death is a known inevitability and risk-taking is done with that as a backdrop (imho).

Youthful risk-taking is another matter though, since it's often unrelated to any sort of thinking whatsoever, lol.

I can imagine that if one were on the "immortality regimin" they would do everything possible to remove the other risks of death, even such as driving a car.

[0rganism]

30. you raise an interesting point in that regard

> I can imagine that if one were on the "immortality regimin" they would do everything
> possible to remove the other risks of death, even such as driving a car.

Now whether or not this is true (and I'm still not convinced of it), it seems one could make a reasonable case that the "immortality regimen" (nice way of looking at it, btw) leads one to exactly the kind of healthy, low-risk lifestyle one would want to use to maximize the quality of a finite life as well. We drive cars, and consider it an acceptable risk -- but maybe it's not an acceptable risk! Driving is not intrinsically safe, and I think we can agree on that much, but what is it that makes it an acceptable risk under current circumstances? Maybe, like teenagers indulging in unnecesary dangerous behavior, many of the risks we take on a daily basis are either rooted in faulty premises or no premises at all.

For instance, we tend to disregard tremendous environmental damage caused by certain practices until their negative effects are verified. Prudence would urge us to proceed precisely the other way, whether we are planning for immortality or not.

We allow dangerous poisons into our homes so we can getter a brighter shine on the oak table or get thicker, greener grass on the lawn. Is the benefit really worth the risk? Positing that assumed mortality makes it okay is like saying to a poisoner, "If I had a whole lake of water to drink, I wouldn't let you put a cup of cyanide into it, but since all I have is this canteen, go right ahead."

And wars -- wars would certainly count as exposure to unacceptable risk, except in the most pressing of circumstances. Which is, IMHO, exactly as it should be, immortals or otherwise.

In other words, by acting as if one would live forever (under your assumed behavior pattern), one acts in such a way as to maximize the chances of dying of old age (in this case, because we have a hypothetical cure for old age). However, I think it quite possible that this is, in fact, a prescription for right-living with or without the anti-aging treatment.

[Duer 157099]

36. You know what? You've convinced me.

It's a good idea. Perhaps it's the only idea that would cause our species to finally take "the long view" with regards to this planet, wars, "acceptable" risk, etc. Maybe death is exactly what's wrong with us.

Hmmmm. Let me consider this further. Then I'll rush out and patent the medicine, lol... (you think I'm kidding huh?)

[0rganism]

38. build it and they will come

> Perhaps it's the only idea that would cause our species to finally take
> "the long view" with regards to this planet, wars, "acceptable" risk, etc.

I dunno, it's a lot easier to bring a few individuals along with an idea than the human species as a whole, which seems overloaded with nutjobs and irresponsible nest-foulers.

> Maybe death is exactly what's wrong with us.

Maybe it's death itself, or maybe it's an attitude toward the impermanent as disposable and worthless, or maybe one feeds into the other?

I know we, as a species, don't respect and admire the fleeting days enough, we don't appreciate sufficiently what we have, and we don't understand the full value of what we take from others. We fear death, yet we mete it out to the world in vast quantities with scarcely an afterthought. Perhaps if we feared less for our own lives, we could find more time to care for others and the world around us.

> Then I'll rush out and patent the medicine, lol...

One thing is certain: you'd have no shortage of buyers.

[0rganism]

6. I didn't want to bias the poll, so here's my opinion

I'm conflicted over whether this would be beneficial for the world.

One might certainly argue that the natural state of things is impermanence, that death and decay is what keeps life balanced in an ecosystem, and that by removing the inevitability of natural death by aging one has essentially upped the chances of dying eventually in an even less pleasant way.

Conversely, I recognize that much is lost in senility and death, and much harm is done in the knowledge that death is certain. I think humans would be less at the mercy of fear-based belief in afterlife, if we had more confidence that we could live on as we do, without an expiration date preset by our genes.

I would take the treatment/medicine if I could, simply out of curiosity: I'd like to see more, and the time alotted seems too short.

[YankeyMCC]

7. 2 stories that explore this

Asimov's Robot and Empire Novels - "Spacers" are long lived, several centuries, via various medical treatments and "Settlers" have life spans like we have today. Spacers own 50 worlds, are very rich and stable to the point of stagnation. Settler worlds rapidly increase, most in the galaxy the scientific edge quickly switches to the Settlers (previously it was to the Spacers when they only competed against a stagnating, due to overpopulation, Earth). Settlers even develop an ethic that sees the extended life of Spacers (which presumably they could achieve in a generation or two if they wanted) as immoral.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy. Again it isn't immortality but extreme life extension. It's a boon to the fledgling Martian society but at first it's reserved only for the rich on Earth and is the source of much tension. The Earth is already overpopulated and the story goes pretty deep into the population issues raised by such life extension. The stories propose a solution based on the idea that anything that preserves human life is good and they must make the treatments available to all and find a way around the "Malthusian hump" so to speak. Of course they assume the treated aren't immortal and will live for 2 or 3 centuries. So the 'get over the hump' plan would fail just on any fault with that assumption.

Personally, I think it's good that we live for a few decades rather than a few centuries - the Settler attitude - but I would like to see us maybe get a couple more decades and be healthier for the decades we do have. Yet, I can not see any extension of an individual life as wrong and I certainly wouldn't want to prohibit research along those lines so the question is can we as a society start learning to develop responsible policy along with our scientific and technological advances. We don't exactly have the best track record so far, although we haven't killed ourselves yet we're on track to do so because of our non-sustainable practices. And long life is also a 'sustainability question'

[0rganism]

10. sustainability -- one permutation of the hypothesis would be automatic sterilization

In the scenario I polled, I wanted to change as little as possible: only aging is stopped. Sort of a baseline hypothesis, as close to our current circumstances as possible.

Change it slightly by having sterilization result from the process, and it's a different question -- sustainability increases by setting the growth rate of extended population to zero. But maybe that's not enough. Maybe then we hypothesize further, that right to breed is awarded by lottery alone, and only in proportion to replacement population at some nominal "sustainable" level.

But then, we're confronted with the question of whether the population we have now is sustainable, and at what level of consumption. Should we apply Malthusian measures on general principle, by somehow discouraging large families?

Quickly enough, we enter the realms of science fiction -- but I think these are principles worth thinking about.

[YankeyMCC]

13. I think you entered science fiction the moment you asked the question actually

;)

[0rganism]

15. yet so close to the edge of reality...

researchers have isolated the main cause of aging, and found cells that appear to transcend such limitations; how long before it can be prevented entirely? What will happen to society when it is? I wonder if the inventors will be honored, cursed, or both...

[YankeyMCC]

16. Well I think sustainability questions are

reflect the situation Right Now. And certainly voluntary sterilization is a right now technology.

Yup, I've read some of the mass media stories about recent breakthroughs and it does seem like there's some tantalizing avenues being pursued. Might be in a generation or two we have a true Methuselah issue to deal with. Which makes that a science fiction scenario - as close as it may be it's still yet to be whereas the need for sustainable policies and practices and the technical ability for population control is right now.

I guess my point is if we can gain a bit of social maturity and start living in the world in a sustainable way, if we reconnect with the ecology we depend on, and recognize that Development doesn't mean unchecked growth but Improving the lot of humanity, then we may have the maturity to deal with extending life spans in a sustainable way without the suffering that would come if it was suddenly thrust upon us today.

Personally, I don't want to have the responsibility of living much more than a century, and I think it's good for human society right now and for the foreseeable future that we have a generational turnover as it is today. It makes for a relatively healthy progress. But sometime in the long run humanity may have the maturity and society that can support longer life spans. In fact if we do somehow get our act together to address the current ecological crisis then that will say a lot and IMHO be cause for great optimism for our future.

[The Witch]

9. I would do it.

I am in the happiest place in my life ever, and in this happiest of places has come the most terrifying and paralyzing fear of death ever. It stops me in my tracks, makes me want to throw up, freezes me with fear.

Perhaps all I need is a way to make the fear go away.

[0rganism]

12. I know what you mean

I'm in the process of confronting the concept of mortality myself -- not in any immediate way, just in general. It would seem the harshest of cruelty for consciousness to know that it must someday experience its own end; traditional "afterlife" religions seem to me only a means of masking these natural fears, sugarcoated stories of heaven and angels to bemuse our childlike fancy, while just beyond the peaceful facade lies a dark abatoire of desparate carnage. I think the greatest solace I've found so far is the knowledge that every living thing that has preceded us has died; it is an integral part of the natural order, I doubt sentient consciousness could evolve in its absence.

By dying, we tie ourselves to humanity and the biosphere in the same way as all other plants and animals. It is a bond stronger than birth, and stronger than reproduction. As another poster says, death is the great equalizer, and I would go one step further, it is the only complete and honest equalizer. Death brings humanity to a common ground with Einstein and Hitler, death alone unites the fate of killers and victims, death is at once the final obligation and the final liberation. As far as I know, no one commands the dead, no one controls the dead, no one demands anything from the dead. Likewise, the dead command none, control none, demand nothing. There is no freewill and no subjugation of freewill, the cup is empty that none may drink.

But it is a path I, too, fear to walk. It's as if every living thing climbed together on a steep mountain trail, with precipices and hazards at every turn, and we travelers know that at some point, we will surely fall from some cliff to the undiscovered country below. What should we do for our loved ones, is it not as cruel that we must see them fall as well, or them us? All we can do, for now, is celebrate the journey together while we can.

[Nikia]

11. If it were availbale, I'd probably use it

Unless it involved growing people for that specific use. I'd be alright using material from fetuses that were miscarried or would be aborted anyway. I would especially not be alright with technology like that in the movie "The Island" that takes organs or tissues from live human beings.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. Actually, I'm working on something to help

with slowing down the aging process. It is experimental, but short term results show a loss of stress and less acute pain-all done without using drugs or herbs, etc.

As for living a long life-I had an ancestor who died in 1687 at the age of 106. I don't know if I'd wish to live that long, but at least I know there is a possibility that I've genetically inherited the tendancy to long life.

[Mendocino]

17. Would this just be for DU'ers,

or could freepers get it too?

[Duer 157099]

18. Hehe, and therein lies the rub...

Oh, such a complexification this would impose on an already complexified world.

At first I was thinking: well, maybe immaturity is part of our problem, and that if we were able to *really* mature, we'd do better. But then I remembered that many of the really worst sorts of people were *old*. Is it aging itself that's part of the problem? Hmmm. Perhaps maturity sans aging would make for a nice mix.

[dysfunctional press]

24. at what age could you start taking the meds...?

could some psychotic mother who never wants to see her cute lil' toddlers grow up keep them perpetually young?

or would the medication only work post-pubescently?

[Duer 157099]

26. I think it'd have to be post-maturity

It would be simply cruel to do otherwise, and perhaps not even possible.

[dysfunctional press]

27. "not even possible"...?

as if the medication posed in the op was possible...?

they always say that "youth is wasted on the young"...and which of us hasn't said to themselves- "if i knew then what i know now..."

and because the medication would hold off physical aging, while i'd imagine not inhibiting emotional and/or mental growth- it might be fun to be entering high school with a few extra years of life experience(maybe a decade or so) under your belt.

[Duer 157099]

28. I think it *is* possible

it would be much trickier to halt the maturation process, and riskier as well, since so many things are interrelated biologically during maturation.

imho, of course, lol

But halting the aging process itself is quite conceivable

[0rganism]

29. hypothetically, the therapy would only stop degenerative aging

For the hypothetical scenario, I think we may as well assume that the medication affects nothing except the degeneration that occurs after one reaches adulthood. Up to that point, I'd presume that the treatment would have zero effect. Go ahead and assume that it only has effect while one takes the drug/treatment/whatever, and it only stops aging during the time the therapy is active. If you take it when you're 30, you stop the aging process at 30. If you let it slide for 10 years, you've aged to 40 and you can't recover those years by restarting. And so on.

Now whether this is a realistic assumption or not is sort of beside the point, since it's a supposition to begin with. Just assume the ideal case for the purposes of this thought experiment. Any "real" version of such therapy certainly could be fraught with cancer risks, fraudulent prescriptions, abusive caregivers, and who knows what else; let's ignore all that for now.

[pitohui]

31. aging sucks, if you love life, you want it to continue

if people are bored and tired of life, they always have the option of suicide or simply refusing the treatment

those who love life want it to continue of course

i do think the technology should only be legal for use by those who are sterilized after having had one and one child only, and really i think people who do not choose to reproduce at all should get first shot at the technology, until the population of the earth is stabilized at a reasonable level

don't romanticize aging, there is nothing beautiful or worthwhile about losing your memory and your mind and all you have worked so hard to learn, aging is a terrible tragedy and we only tolerate it because the alternative is even worse

[sarge43]

32. One question

If we were to live in a healthy state for as long as we wished, barring accidents or natural disasters, what is to be done about population control? If we're not getting out of the way, so to speak, where are we going to put all those babies?

The human birth rate hasn't changed in tens of thousands of years; the death rate certainly has. The world's human population has tripled in my life time, thanks to better health care, more efficient food production, etc. If we were to eliminate another killer - old age, how much more could the environment take?

So, do we have strictly enforced population control - only a select few have very few children? Who decides, how is it enforced, to what extremes are we willing to go - forced sterilization, forced abortions, infanticide?

[0rganism]

34. Hey! That's more than one question! ;)

> what is to be done about population control?
> where are we going to put all those babies?
> how much more could the environment take?
> do we have strictly enforced population control?
> Who decides, how is it enforced, to what extremes are we willing to go?

While I don't hypothesize a solution to the problem of population growth as part of the question, let me suggest to you that all else equal (i.e., no stipulations of extra birth control or euthenasia) this would only accellerate a serious problem we already face. The only sustainable exponential population growth rate, long term, is zero. Indeed, even with death functioning as well as it does, you've seen the human population triple in your lifetime.

THAT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. Even another doubling would be disastrous. IIRC, global population is still increasing at about 1.2% annually, which leads to another doubling in approximately 60 years. What are we going to do about it?

If you have questions about this, I suggest you check out a particularly good presentation/essay by Dr. Albert Bartlett, Prof. Emeritus in Physics, University of Colorado, entitled "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy".
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461

Anyway, the questions you raise apply NOW. And I do mean, RIGHT NOW, with or without death by aging. Hell, in a lot of the places where birth rates are the fastest, you'll see that relatively few people are dying of aging-related disorders anyway -- that's hardly even an issue. War, malnutrition, and AIDS seem to be the best answers to overpopulation humanity has provided so far.

In short, your questions are not hypothetical in nature, and I don't have any better answers for you. I would offer this much: "the best contraceptive is the confidence that one's child will survive."

[0rganism]

33. looking at the results so far (n=30)

            | beneficial | detrimental | unsure 
------------+------------+-------------+--------
users       |      5     |      2      |   13     
------------+------------+-------------+--------
abstainers  |      1     |      7      |    0      
------------+------------+-------------+--------
unsure      |      1     |      0      |    0
------------+------------+-------------+--------

informal observations:
~2/3 are inclined to use the treatment
~1/4 would not use the treatment
~1/4 view the net effect of treatment as positive
~1/3 view it as negative
a plurality is unsure whether the treatment would have a positive impact, overall
those who would not use the treatment seem more certain in their (generally negative) estimation of its overall impact than those who would use it

[Lyric]

35. It could potentially destroy civilization as we know it.

Imagine the psychological devastation the poor would feel, watching THEIR loved ones grow old and die while Paris Hilton lives on forever and ever.

There would be a revolution on a global scale. This isn't the sort of thing that poor people are going to "suck up and deal with". This goes far beyond the injustices they've ever been dealt before--even the disparity in quality medical care between rich and poor isn't as devastating as this would be. To know that some ditzy, promiscuous party girl gets to live forever because she inherited billions while your own hardworking father's body is slowly breaking down because he can't afford the medicine to stop it--poor people would literally go insane with rage and frustration.

If it were available to EVERYONE, regardless of credit score/ability to pay, then I'd be cautiously open to it. But if it's going to be "sold", meaning that only some people will be able to afford it? No way. Not in a million years.

[0rganism]

37. Why should anyone regard the current situation as acceptable?

I find the economic disparity idea intriguing, because in itself it's not an argument against any particular technology. Rather, it's a powerful argument for socialized healthcare and equitable distribution of wealth.

But as you point out, a great many people are poor, and simply "suck it up". If it takes a cure for aging to get people around the world, rich and poor, to acknowledge and deal with these inequities, then perhaps that's a point in its favor. A civilization that willfully excludes from its benefits those who lack sufficient "bio-survival tickets" might be one that richly deserves destruction. Why should anyone tolerate that?