Scientists are waging a war against human aging. But what happens next?

[applegrove]

by Sean Illing at Vox

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/5/4/15433348/aubrey-de-grey-life-extension-aging-death-science-medicine

"SNIP..............


This is not an isolated view. There is a broader anti-aging movement afoot, which seems to be growing every day. As Tad Friend describes colorfully in a recent New Yorker essay, millions of venture capital dollars are being dumped into longevity research, some of it promising and some of it not. Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, is among the lead financiers (he’s a patron of Grey’s organization as well).

Grey’s work is particularly interesting. For too long, he argues, scientists have been looking for solutions in all the wrong places. There is no monocausal explanation for aging. We age because the many physical systems that make up our body begin to fail at the same time and in mutually detrimental ways.

So he’s developed what he calls a “divide-and-conquer strategy,” isolating the seven known causes of aging and tackling them individually. Whether it’s cell loss or corrosive mitochondrial mutations, Grey believes each problem is essentially mechanical, and can therefore be solved.

.......

If we develop these anti-aging technologies, who will have access to them? Will inequality deepen even further in a post-aging world? And what about the additional resources required to support humans living 200 or 300 or 500 years? The planet is stretched as it is with 7 billion people living roughly 70 years on average (women tend to live three to five years longer than men) — and is already facing serious stresses around food, water, and global warming going forward.


..................SNIP"

[Coventina]

1. This will only benefit the 1%

The rest of us will see our lifespans shortened dramatically.

Just my pessimistic prediction.....

[applegrove]

3. I predict this is why the GOP wants the old and poor to die with their AHCA: not enough room in the

Last edited Sat May 6, 2017, 09:09 PM - Edit history (1)

future for fully two extra generations of people. So the 1% will benefit and be able to afford to live to 140 and room will be made for them.

[2naSalit]

2. waging a war against human aging...

why? We already live too long for the biosphere to handle... since we can't seem to stop over-reproducing.

[still_one]

4. F**K Peter Thiel. Another rich asshole who supports trump.

[Soxfan58]

5. Great!!!

Living on a dead planet.

[Ilsa]

6. They more research into making the planet sustainable

and "reversing" effects of climate change. More research into teaching people about birth control and population limits.

Frankly, I think the conclusion of Dan Brown's Inferno (The book. The movie changed and screwed up the ending.) provides an interesting research-based solution to the population problem: create a virus that renders 1/3 of the population sterile.

[Victor_c3]

7. I believe that aging was engineered through evolution

If an organism has the potential to live indefinitely, it continues to consume resources and competes with its offspring which reduces overall adaptability of the species in the long run. Or at least that's my guess.

by getting old and dying off, we are making room for newer and better adapted individuals. If extremely long lives were beneficial to a species, we surely would have evolved that way.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. We will see.

whatever happens, I'm sure there will be no shortage of people willing to complain about it.

[applegrove]

9. What if some partisan rich Republican ends up owning it? Pretty

easy to swing elections by changing the make up of the electorate.