A nice turn of phrase spun here:

According to the Milken Institute, "It's been estimated that $2.6 T was added to the U.S. every year, just due to the extension of life in the past century. Solving cancer today is worth $46.5 T to the U.S., and adds $125 T to the world economy" (queue up the 53:30 minute mark).

The way I presently see it, the flip side of the Longevity Dividend, is the Mortality Tariff. As a society, we pay huge unrecoverable costs as a penalty for living short, disease-ravaged, frail lives. Counter to conventional so-called wisdom that might view super longevity as some kind of starry-eyed whimsical pursuit, I would argue that the costs of mortality to society are so high that inaction to contain these costs is fiscally irresponsible. Of course, in recent years one of the most active and articulate champions for the cause of putting realistic costs upon the impacts of aging is Dr. Aubrey de Grey.

Some people respond more readily to the repair of the broken window in front of them than a call to general renovation; there is merit to this sort of argument. The costs of age-related degeneration and death are so high that one has to argue the same sort of blindness and acceptance of aging as seen elsewhere are at work - otherwise, would we not pouring every last spare cent into this great work? If people can look ahead to save for the future, they can look ahead to fund longevity research.

This first decade of the 21st century forms a tipping point for public support of scientific research to extend healthy life and repair aging. We've come very far in just the past few years, with the rise of comparatively well supported new organizations and research groups, growth in the community and much more publicity. A handful more years of this and we'll start to meet the young people who have no idea why supporting healthy life extension is such a big deal. It'll be obvious to them, and obvious to all who were once ignorant or unsure. This is the way of progress; nothing unusual here, and getting from where we were to where we need to be is "just" a matter of hard work and good organization.

Posted by Reason at October 9, 2007 7:53 PM | TrackBack (0)