The Largest Issue Ever

Alright.

This topic is going to be the largest issue/crisis that mankind has EVER had to face, and it is coming VERY soon. Wars will be waged, riots will rage, civil war will devastate many countries; primarily populous industrializing nations such as China and India.

The Topic
<font color="red"><b>Life Extending Gerontomical Treatments</font> </b>

Right now, at present, scientists can keep fruit flies alive indefinatley, and a number of treatments are being developed such as telomerase inhibitors that could be the cure for cancer, telomerase enhancers, which can keep your cells reproducing indefinatley and stop parts of your body from againg, and genetic mismatch and repair techniques.
We could very well be the first generation that can live to see their 300th birthday, far past the traditional "three score and 10 years".

We will not be the fraile old people we see today, but active and healthy with the body of a 30 year old for as long as we live. (We will probably get hit by a bus or something eventually, so we are not truley immortal).

I dont know about you people, but I would have a very different state of mind if I was going to live a thousand years, than if I was going to live 70.

So.....

What do you people think about this?
Do you want live forever?(not technically)

I personaly will wait for a good tested treatment before I take it, and I will take every treatment for as long as I live. I am a Strong athiest, so I really dont care much for dieing. As for the people that want to prevent these treatments from coming, I'm all for those people dieing.

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You cannot start a movement of more than five people without at least one *ucking idiot.
--Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Mars)

 

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I think it would cause all sorts of ecological issues. We have enough trouble coping with the world population as it is. I'm very much against messing with the ecosystem. Cause and effect and all that.

BTW I guess I'm as close to an atheist as dammit, so I'm not taking this from a religious viewpoint either.

 

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Taking a firm stand against treatments after you die?
Or, are you volunteering to be the guinea pig?

How Strong can you be, if you don't care for dying?
Surely you've got some spunk in you.

I'm all for you taking those treatments, especially before they're fully tested.

 

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Why would you want to live forever?

why? i can't think of one good reason.

 

By saying I don't care much for dying, I meant that I would like to die as late as possible.

I am not volunteering to be a guinea pig unless Im 80 years old on the brink of death and the treatment is the only chance I have.

I said that I'm all for those people dying, because theyll die anyways. I'd bet youd feel the same way if there was a group of psychos trying to stop an AIDS vaccine or something like that.

 

tetra,

You say: "I am not volunteering to be a guinea pig unless Im 80 years old on the brink of death and the treatment is the only chance I have."

My dad is 49, aunt #1 is 59 and aunt #2 is 55. All three are on the brink of dying from different causes and all three are receiving trial treatments. It is most likely that none of them will be cured but much might be gained from the research to help others down the road. Would you do it at their ages - which would be 31 years, 21 years and 25 years earlier than age 80?

 

yes

yes

 

Helping Others

Screw taking experimental treatments. If it doesnt directly benefit me, I refuse to participate. I dont give a flying shit about others down the road who may benefit if I take experimental drugs.

 

Yes?

Thanks. Good for you. I think. Maybe. Maybe not. I just don't know.

After seeing what's happening in my family, I just don't know what I would do. Honestly, depending on the disease, right now I think I might opt for no treatment at all and just let the disease take its course. I'd actually try to live out the rest of my life in a manner conducive to the way it is now - enjoyable. When the time came, I'd opt for pain management (I am a whimp about pain). A patient-controlled morphine pump sounds like a good idea. Hopefully, I'd ride out the worst of it out in a coma.

I've seen too many relatively young, active, happy and vibrant people become like walking-dead (physically), their lives taken over by the medical community - living from day-to-day planning their next pill, their next doctor visit, their next hospital stay - chemically imbalanced and in need of more chemicals to combat the extreme depression - many times wishing they were dead - crying out that they do not want to live this way - but now, still hopeful for a cure - all because they were told that something showed up in their blood or under a microscope during routine testing. Prior to being given that information, they had no symptoms. The surgeries and chemical treatments (non-experimental), while supposedly sustaining their lives, have not cured them and the side effects have mostly stripped them of the ability to enjoy the remainder of their lives.

I often wonder what the last few years would have been like for them if, when they got the news that something showed up, they would have said something like - Well, thanks for the information! I'll be sure to make the most of my remaining time.

You're right. This is a large issue. I'm sure many families are dealing with it as we speak...

 

Murder, rape, muggings, child molesting, Palestine, Israel, IRA, British Army, Brirish politics, laws that mean shit, arseholes with chips on their shoulders, wars, AIDS, do-gooders who know shit about nothing, police, soaps, newspapers. Would I like 270 years of this shit, nah, I want to die when my time comes and let some other idiot carry on the life cycle.

 

There is one other thing as it has been a long time since i was here last. Does anyone here remember a girl named Lori who used to post on this site as I have some news for her about book publishing.

 

I would defiantly want to live as long as possible and so would most people that had the chance, especially when death is knocking at their door. The major problem is overpopulation. The technology is not as close as some may think but it is there. Before it is refined major social changes must take place, like population control. This also puts op many questions about human behavior changes that might take place. A friend of mine once suggested that if you could live forever then people would begin to lock themselves into their houses trying to avoid getting hit by that bus. Death would still be feared and maybe many would still try to avoid it much further. IOW what use would a young 50 year old be in a world where the average age is 300. Might be difficult to get a job.

 

hi gang


one thing for sure,to solve this debate,its simple i didnt remember coming into this shithole of a world,and i certainly will not remember leaving it.so chill out make the most of what life has to other,and thats not much!!!
part from being taxed all ya life.

rich

 

BRING IT ON

I'm all for the treatments, IMHO if this technology is developed and becomes widley used I also believe that MUCH more focus will be put on leaving this 3rd rock from the sun and soeing the seeds of humanity in other corners of the universe.

I want to see the future, we are on the brink of some MAJOR leaps forward in technology etc and I for one would be disapointed to miss it. I want to be able to take holidays on the moon or mars or beyond, drive a flying car, talk to my computer...BRING IT ON. And if it turns out that staying alive is a bad idea then I'll stop taking the treatments and drop off the planet when I'm ready.

 

I think that very few people would be able to get a treatment that would extend their life signifigantly, and those that would would just have to agree not to have any kids at all. It doesn't solve the problem but it does clean it up. The treatment would cost a good deal of money and people would be opposed to it because most guys that can wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills are assholes (heh, that means they have to use twice as many bills) so people wouldn't want them getting the treatment anyway. There are still at least millions of people without proper medical care all around the world, maybe billions, and introducing something like that would take a long time to reach the third world countries.

 

Ah anti-aging, one of my favorite subjects that made me post a similar topic here about 18 months ago.

Only the foolish want to die, and nearly everyone wants to live forever and cheat death. Most people have assumed this is impossible and that led to the creation of the mythologies we know as religions. These are still being used to provide many with a psychological escape from the fear of eventual non-existence.

Once the anti-aging cures are in widespread use then I suspect that the power of religions will begin to fade. Once people have reach ages of several hundred years with the prospect of unlimited life spans then religionists will be very rare.

The most significant result will be that human life will for the first time be viewed as very precious and any risk to losing a life will be minimized to an extent never before considered. Who for example would risk losing their life in a military operation? I.e. wars will cease to exist. But that requires that the treatment or cure is made available on a worldwide scale. And the rich nations must see the benefit of widespread distribution.

The cost of treatment will be an unlikely issue since I would not object to a 200 hundred-year mortgage to pay for it. Once you start thinking very long term then many aspects of life that we take for granted, as short-lived creatures will begin to change dramatically. However, in the very short term it is likely that only the rich will be able to afford the treatment, but once the knowledge becomes widespread then there will be a rush and a revolution to make it available to everyone.

Population control will then become a serious issue and Catholicism will be forced to give in to the inevitable and promote widespread contraception. Another death-blow to the power of stupidity. Such controls can be removed once we have developed ways to escape the planet and begin living on other worlds or in space cities.

Meanwhile retirement for example will have no meaning, as it didn’t in the first part of the 20th century. People would typically have many careers over the centuries, assuming that machines do not take over the need to work.

Humans with unlimited life spans will cause dramatic changes to the way life is viewed and how we live our lives.

I hope this begins to occur within my current potential short lifetime.

Cris

 

Absolutely agree with Cris. Even if I wanted to live 300 yrs or more (and the jury is still out on that), population control would be the downfall. Remember "soilent green"? How could we ever feed and shelter the new populations of super-seniors. Our planet is too small now! For the time being, let's leave well enough alone, lest we find ourselves "weeding out" the slightly less desirables in favor of feeding the lucky and the strong. An absolute nightmare!

Badfish

 

Now my memory isn't that great, but I seem to remember something in one of the Startrek episodes where people voluntarly went to die when they reached a certain age to make room for the next. Not exactly what I'd call progress.

 

I think we call "volunteering to die" suicide, don't we? How do you put your family through that, I mean, you're only 175! It would be the ultimate procrastination.

 

It depends if democracy survives.

You must realize that the proportion of senior citizens compared to the young has been increasing for some decades now. If the current trend continues then the elderly will soon outnumber the young. And the elderly tend to vote more than the young.

I don't see the elderly voting for their own destruction, but if they are threatened then I do see them voting for mandatory abortions for those who breed without a license.

Cris