Another Most Interesting Conversation

[speed]

On 60 Minutes last night, a British scientist was interviewed/profiled, who claims in 20 or 30 years, science will be able to extend human life almost indefinately--1,000 years or more was claimed. Apparently his work and ideas are not the work of a crazed wacko, but scientifically testable and logical hypotheses (so said the critics interviewed).

Anyway, I found this to be incredibly interesting, and like the program, wondered what the implications for such a scientific breakthrough could be? Imagine a world already overpopulated and underemployed, coping with a population that neither dies off, or ages. Wow!

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

this longer life theory became the basis for the book "inheirit the earth" which i have just noticed is missing so i can't for sure tell you the name of the publisher although i'm pretty sure it might be "tor sci-fi"

 

[Lord SteveO]

I think the scientist was making a bit of an iffy claim there.
At a guess, we are at least 50 years from making most people live over 100.
Whilst there is lots of research into anit-ageing etc, i can tell you from work i have done into the area that we are a long way off.
Designing cosmetic wrinkle romving creams is nowhere near making the human body live for an indefinate length of time.
We can barely extend the lifespan of worms or flies without complications or hidden disadvantage to the animal.
I could find some links but i'm short of time.

As far as is it worth it, well i'm not sure.
The planet is overpopulated, there is not nearly enough resources (at least not enough that are accesible to all) and concentrating on such work is pretty pointless.

The other side of such research is that if you can make a person live longer, you can also make a person live shorter. Could this posibly lead ot some sort of life-span control? I'd hope not, there are better ways to control populations that such means.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

I think the scientist was making a bit of an iffy claim there.
At a guess, we are at least 50 years from making most people live over 100.
Whilst there is lots of research into anit-ageing etc, i can tell you from work i have done into the area that we are a long way off.
Designing cosmetic wrinkle romving creams is nowhere near making the human body live for an indefinate length of time.
We can barely extend the lifespan of worms or flies without complications or hidden disadvantage to the animal.
I could find some links but i'm short of time.

As far as is it worth it, well i'm not sure.
The planet is overpopulated, there is not nearly enough resources (at least not enough that are accesible to all) and concentrating on such work is pretty pointless.

The other side of such research is that if you can make a person live longer, you can also make a person live shorter. Could this posibly lead ot some sort of life-span control? I'd hope not, there are better ways to control populations that such means.

trying to make people live forever is a really bad idea

 

[koglos]

Like most of the so-called "advances" in our society, this is disrespectful to the process of natural selection. Whether it will be us or our children generations into the future, our species will eventually pay the price. Most likely it will come in the form of a virus. It's spread will be aided by all of our global travel and whatnot. And it will kill everybody.

Our research should focus on how to co-exist with our environment, not how to manipulate nature to fulfill our self-serving and short-sighted fantasies.

 

[ProjectedBlack]

Who honestly wants to live 1,000 years? There's no point in extending the human life-span, there's plenty of us to take the dead's place, possibly even too much which leads me to believe that the Earth is in line for another catostrophic disaster to thin out the population, whether it be of human creation or that of nature.

 

[derek]

tandem to this medical advance will also be the military technology to wipe us out, so it doesnt really matter

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

tandem to this medical advance will also be the military technology to wipe us out, so it doesnt really matter

sadly this is prolly acurate