Life Extension.

Personally, If this was to happen I would imagine some form of birth control law would have to be put in place to help prevent the world from over populating.

 

It sounds ethical but why would someone want to stay old for years longer unless they are very well off.

If it were to take place (assume it becomes common technology), the aging population problem will get worse. Heavier burdens will be placed on each working labour to support the society, welfare and medical costs gonna rise, probably less tax income at the same time because of the gradually diminishing production (and hence income) in the economy.

The working class will be more and more discontented because of their lower standard of living, plus they may need to save more than ever for their longer lifespan or they just gonna live miserably for years to come (depends on the welfare policy in your place). Eventually people will be tempted to migrate to other places.

Whether a birth control is needed it is hard to say. For an economy to keep running smoothly you need fresh meat all the time, on the other hand you have overpopulation on the global scale... My guess is eventually some kind of ban will be in place for such technology in certain areas.

No idea~ Just a pure "what if" scenario in my head.
Available in my lifetime?
We are extending our lifespan all the time along with our medical advancement.

 

Wrong. Availability of life extension programs tends to imply availability of high technology and hence a high standard of living. The birthrate is negative in every country with that standard of living currently, and still falling. There's no reason to believe that it won't continue to fall as children tend to be seen as economic burdens on a family unit rather than 2-5 year investments (when they start being productive in third world contexts).

Typical fear of death gut reaction. Since death seems inevitable yet terrible, you (and most other people) have comforted yourselves by rationalizing the notion that it must be in some way good. If instead you lived indefinitely at a fixed biological age of 25 or so in a society that was otherwise open and not 'degrading', your statement boils down to a desire to commit suicide.

True life extension technologies don't exist in a vacuum. They're going to come hand in hand with higher economic productivity per person and greater availability of basic technologies like clean, stable energy sources.

Once again, not in a vacuum. The economy won't really function the way it does right now, and even right now our economy is generally driven by the demand of a healthcare hungry, top-heavy elderly class. That and a bunch of teenagers that want to newest iPod. Indefinite life extension will tend to imply scarcity free economics, which don't work at all in the same way as our current economy.


To Raccoon: Yes, I do think it will be available in our lifetimes. I suspect that the first person to live to 10,000 is alive today, and the first person to live to 150 was alive 50 years ago. I also suspect that those two will be high-fiving when they're both 25,000. In other news: this will give true power to the phrase 'get off my lawn'. When I was your age, people died because their bodies slowly drowned in the byproducts of their own metabolism.

 

Presently, there is no scientifically proven way to extend lifespan (i.e., increasing average maximum life span), except by caloric restriction (CR). This requires an extremely spartan diet of <30% fewer calories than one would consume at one's normal set point. Furthermore, the diet must be optimally formulated to the extent that we understand optimum nutrition. The basic idea is to pack as much nutrition into as few calories as possible, that is, down to around the 30% level. Caloric restriction seems to extend average maximum lifespan across species from one celled organisms to humans and research on this has been going on since the 1930's. No other protocols claimed to confer life extension have proven reliable. For more information, google "CRON" or "caloric restriction with optimum nutrition."

 

WOW from your response (is that serious?) I am not even sure whether we are on the same page at all. Am I really that suck in making things clear to others in words?

 

*** In mice.

There's no proof that it works in humans, and furthermore if it did we'd ultimately be talking about a pretty trivial extension. I think raccoon is talking about non-trivial extensions with reliable improvements in quality of life.

 

No, I don't agree with many of your perspectives, but I understand what you are saying. I think patricky just likes shock value, he is actually decent once you learn to dismiss everything he says.

This is assuming this is the same Patrick I know from the chat room. Considering they both call MBTI "lies" I assume it is.

Patrick has good points buried beneath the over-the-top facade. Neither of you delve into the intricacies that would sufficiently explain your opinion.

 

The preponderance of the evidence is against you.

Science. 2009 Jul 10;325(5937):201-4.
Caloric restriction delays disease onset and mortality in rhesus monkeys.
Colman RJ, Anderson RM, Johnson SC, Kastman EK, Kosmatka KJ, Beasley TM, Allison DB, Cruzen C, Simmons HA, Kemnitz JW, Weindruch R.

Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53715, USA. rcolman@primate.wisc.edu
Caloric restriction (CR), without malnutrition, delays aging and extends life span in diverse species; however, its effect on resistance to illness and mortality in primates has not been clearly established. We report findings of a 20-year longitudinal adult-onset CR study in rhesus monkeys aimed at filling this critical gap in aging research. In a population of rhesus macaques maintained at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, moderate CR lowered the incidence of aging-related deaths. At the time point reported, 50% of control fed animals survived as compared with 80% of the CR animals. Furthermore, CR delayed the onset of age-associated pathologies. Specifically, CR reduced the incidence of diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and brain atrophy. These data demonstrate that CR slows aging in a primate species.

PMID: 19590001 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Also:

John O. Holloszya, Luigi Fontanaa, Caloric restriction in humans. Experimental Gerontology Volume 42, Issue 8, August 2007, Pages 709-712

Mattison JA, Roth GS, Lane MA, Ingram DK. Dietary restriction in aging nonhuman primates. Interdiscip Top Gerontol. 2007;35:137-58.

Ingram DK, Young J, Mattison JA. Calorie restriction in nonhuman primates: assessing effects on brain and behavioral aging. Neuroscience. 2007 Apr 14;145(4):1359-64. Epub 2007 Jan 16.

Holloszy JO, Fontana L. Caloric restriction in humans. Exp Gerontol. 2007 Aug;42(8):709-12. Epub 2007 Mar 31.

Raman A, Baum ST, Colman RJ, Kemnitz JW, Weindruch R, Schoeller DA. Metabolizable energy intake during long-term calorie restriction in rhesus monkeys. Exp Gerontol. 2007 Oct;42(10):988-94. Epub 2007 Jul 6.

Fowler CG, Chiasson KB, Hart DB, Beasley TM, Kemnitz J, Weindruch R. Tympanometry in rhesus monkeys: effects of aging and caloric restriction. Int J Audiol. 2008 Apr;47(4):209-14.

Anderson RM, Shanmuganayagam D, Weindruch R. Caloric restriction and aging: studies in mice and monkeys. Toxicol Pathol. 2009;37(1):47-51. Epub 2008 Dec 15.

Willcox DC, Willcox BJ, Todoriki H, Curb JD, Suzuki M. Caloric restriction and human longevity: what can we learn from the Okinawans? Biogerontology. 2006 Jun;7(3):173-7.

Qin W, et al. Calorie restriction attenuates Alzheimer's disease type brain amyloidosis in Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus). J Alzheimers Dis. 2006 Dec;10(4):417-22.

Al-Regaiey KA, et al. Effects of caloric restriction and growth hormone resistance on insulin-related intermediates in the skeletal muscle. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2007 Jan;62(1):18-26.

Fontana L, Klein S. Aging, adiposity, and calorie restriction. JAMA. 2007 Mar 7;297(9):986-94.

McKiernan SH, et al. Adult-onset calorie restriction delays the accumulation of mitochondrial enzyme abnormalities in aging rat kidney tubular epithelial cells. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. 2007 Jun;292(6):F1751-60. Epub 2007 Mar 6.

Willcox BJ, et al. Caloric restriction, the traditional Okinawan diet, and healthy aging: the diet of the world's longest-lived people and its potential impact on morbidity and life span. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2007 Oct;1114:434-55.

www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6659.long

http://patient-research.elsevier.com/patientresearch/displayAbs?key=S0735109705025775


And thousands more.

 

There are plenty of questions left unanswered, what adverse affects could there be? Does it reduce risk of age related death while increasing deaths unrelated to aging (not dying of heart disease at 80 might not be helpful if you've already died of the flu at 30)? What would it do to someone psychologically to live that way (starvation studies have shown very adverse effects)? Is it even possible to maintain for long enough? Are the benefits/risks the same for all people?

In summary: you go first! :tongue:

 

+1

I'm having the same problem myself.

Like GMO, Life extension is awesome in the science world but I can imagine there is going to be a whole load of truck problems to go with it in the real world.

 

My opinion is that life extension is a great idea in theory, but even if it were possible for me, I might need some convincing. I don't particular see why the issue would be 'ethical' or not?

Major challenges? People fearing that if someone in the world partakes in one, the four horsemen are going to ride across america and strike every down (Cuz, you know, this is going to happen to america. Read your science fiction.) I guess one thing that I've always thought about is that information could start to divide people even further; with people living to be...I don't know, 150, they amount of knowledge you could accumulate in that time, with experience, is vast. The "new comers" would be at a disadvantage, but they also have the aid of the same people who might be taking their job. I don't know.

I suppose that it COULD happen in my lifetime, I know many smart people (and some fanatics) are working on it and our life span, with medicine, is still increasing. I think that this will be a resource, just like everything else, marked by supply and demand but I figure the supply will 'somehow' outweight the demand; making it very accessible to the public. Like Patrick said, most non-third world populations are in decline, but I think that a cap and trade system of sorts could be implemented just in case something goes out of hand.

Would I do it? That question has plagued me for years and my problems stem from my creed, my morality, and the plan fact that I might not want to LIVE that long. Supposedly living longer will require us to extend the phases of our life, so I heard, but I'm not sure of that.

 

The understanding of 'ethical' changes as time goes on I would say, but I don't think life extension is very smart.
One challege that comes to mind is overpopulation, which is already a huge problem.
I don't think it will be available in my lifetime. Maybe in two hundred years, we'll get to the point where people will be expected to live longer than a hundred, but not anytime soon.
A method of life extension would be to, piece by piece, replace all your body parts with robotic parts, then end up with a human brain inside a robot. Then you've got a super strong robot with alzheimers.
No...I'll just keep trying to be healthy naturally, then hopefully die beside my wife (Mila Kunis) in a comfy couch. Oh, and she'll die with me - we'll still be that much in love...sort of like the Notebook meets Star Wars.

I just threw in Star Wars.

 

Like GMO, life extension is going to be awesome in the real world, and have tons of armchair, misinformed freshman philosopher detractors in the public venue. Go tell someone who isn't starving to death in a third world country how horrible their GMO crops are.

 

I don't think at this point, I'd want to live forever, or even for longer than I'm naturally supposed to.

I sometimes look forward to death, in the sense of it being likened to flopping into bed late at night, after a very long stretch of busy, stressful. sleepless and demanding weeks or months.

It's natural. To me, human's have been dabbling in things that cause them to have power and control over aspects of natural order, and neither ethical or non ethical is really the issue here for me. I guess my thoughts are more along the lines of; "is it responsible?" Again, that which we are not meant to control becoming sick because of our control, is what human's often miss when we reflect on what's gone wrong in the world. What we tend to focus on, is the certain specifics that we can identify, and cannot see the chain of events that occured from before all this. I don't mean to tangent off topic, but I think it's relivent in a sense, because life extension suggests that we keep on going against the grain of nature.

 

You might want to read up on the test reports on GMO.

For a newcomer you certainly know how to make an entrance.
I'm just pointing out that there will be some form of complication that we will have to expect. Stem cell technology and other bio technologys are still fairly new and are yet to undergo more tests and studys, since this thread is about life extension I'll try to stay to the subject.
I am personally suprised on the lack of tests that were done on GMO crops before they were grown and fed to lifestock and the general public. Monsanto, are you going to trust a company that is responsible for creating bio weapons to create safe edible food? Personally I'm not taking my chances.

I hoping that stem cell technology works and is safe, but knowing humans there will be problems. I'm just hoping that the proper tests will be conducted before putting it out there for the public and medical services.

As far as life extension goes, meh. I don't need it nor want it at this stage and knowing me I'll probably get what I need to do, done, before I die.

The sort of people that would probably want to live longer are the ones who have farted around with their lives and feel for some reason they want to live on and get things finished or have more fun, the ones who want to see their great, great grandchildern, or do more work here on the planet.

Personally,

I welcome death.

 

Such as?

 

I was addressing hotkebab.

 

On what, good sir?