Life Extension politics
Jul. 19th, 2004 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drscottI do the obvious things to keep from falling apart too rapidly -- exercise, attention to good eating, avoidance of aging factors like smoke, sun, stress, and drugs. I take antioxidants and hormone boosters, and improve my lipid consumption by getting lots of salmon and flaxseed oil. But this just keeps you a bit healthier, and at best slows the rate of aging a little; as bioscience continues to progress, it's now forseeable that aging will be more drastically slowed (leading to healthy lifespans of 120 or more) or even halted ("immortality") in the near future.
Most people have bought the meme that "natural is good for you." To an extent this is true -- many of our dietary and obesity problems are due to modern changes away from the lifestyle we evolved under; processed foods (from the starch-heavy diets of early agrarian empires to corn-syrup-sweetened drinks) damage our bodies, lack of the exercise required to survive in a hunter-gatherer society leaves many prone to diseases of aging and death. But it's important to remember that the average lifespan in those supposedly healthy, natural times was mid-20s, and evolutionary pressure only extends to the creation and successful rearing of offspring. While there is evidence that longer lifespans can impove the survival of human groups by allowing increased childcare and accumulation of cultural knowledge, this was not a factor until relatively recently in human evolution, so in large part our body systems begin to decay at almost the same time our ability to procreate declines.
Life extension is becoming a more controversial topic as the reality of it draws closer. Reactionaries like Leon Kass, the Chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, believe efforts to extend human life are dangerous affronts to the social and moral order. Meanwhile, leftist critics object to any procedure that might create a longer-lived class of wealthy individuals who retain their wealth and power while poorer people lack access to the same procedures. The enemies of the future have any number of reasons to stop others from extending their lives, and unless their influence is limited by public pressure to continue anti-aging research, it's easy to imagine a regime which, Logan's Run-like, rations medical care to ensure that no one escapes the Reaper.
http://fightaging.org/ has lots of good information on this topic, with links to more scientific sites.
Most people have bought the meme that "natural is good for you." To an extent this is true -- many of our dietary and obesity problems are due to modern changes away from the lifestyle we evolved under; processed foods (from the starch-heavy diets of early agrarian empires to corn-syrup-sweetened drinks) damage our bodies, lack of the exercise required to survive in a hunter-gatherer society leaves many prone to diseases of aging and death. But it's important to remember that the average lifespan in those supposedly healthy, natural times was mid-20s, and evolutionary pressure only extends to the creation and successful rearing of offspring. While there is evidence that longer lifespans can impove the survival of human groups by allowing increased childcare and accumulation of cultural knowledge, this was not a factor until relatively recently in human evolution, so in large part our body systems begin to decay at almost the same time our ability to procreate declines.
Life extension is becoming a more controversial topic as the reality of it draws closer. Reactionaries like Leon Kass, the Chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, believe efforts to extend human life are dangerous affronts to the social and moral order. Meanwhile, leftist critics object to any procedure that might create a longer-lived class of wealthy individuals who retain their wealth and power while poorer people lack access to the same procedures. The enemies of the future have any number of reasons to stop others from extending their lives, and unless their influence is limited by public pressure to continue anti-aging research, it's easy to imagine a regime which, Logan's Run-like, rations medical care to ensure that no one escapes the Reaper.
http://fightaging.org/ has lots of good information on this topic, with links to more scientific sites.
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Life extension
Date: 2004-07-19 11:52 am (UTC)This idea, while great, has the potential to alter, negatively life's natural order of regulating the earth's population to keep it from overpopulating itself.
We can see that in some 3rd world populations where society still births many children, and with the increasing chance of children surviving than before, they are over populated and the food supply can't keep up.
Anyhow, something else to think about as well.
Re: Life extension
Date: 2004-07-19 12:07 pm (UTC)Cleary if everyone on Earth suddenly lived 40 years longer, a crisis would result. But when these changes happen over extended periods, so far at least there has been time for behavioral adjustments to avoid the worst side-effects; prime example: as populations have grown wealthy, birth rates have dropped dratsically to under replacement levels. While we weren't looking, the "population bomb," like the other predicted catastrophes of the 70s, fizzled out. It takes about one generation for a society to switch over.
Re: Life extension
Date: 2004-07-19 12:20 pm (UTC)Evidence is that the average median age in the US is higher now than in the past as a result.