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I'll pull three short snippets from a recent RedOrbit article as illustrative of topics that crop up here every so often:
In the 1950s, the number of centenarians was estimated to be a few thousand worldwide. That figure is now estimated to be at more than 340,000, and rising.
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According to Census Bureau estimates, Japan is expected to have the largest population of people over the age of 100 - 627,000 by 2050. The median age in Japan is expected to rise from 37 in 1990 to 55 by 2050.
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The current life span is 78, but a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that an average of Americans would prefer to live to the age of 89, while one in five said they would like to live beyond age 90. Only 8 percent said they hope to live to see their 100th birthday and beyond.
If you have 8% of the population on your side, you can get a lot done. But fundamentally the issue is that most people live in the world of their parents and grandparents, their views on aging shaped by what has happened to people who did not have access to the technologies that will exist in 20 or 40 or 60 years time. When you're young, being old doesn't look all that great - and whatever self-protective rationalizations occur later in life, you were right. The experience and insight that comes with years of life is good, but degenerative aging is horrible, truly horrible.
People expect the course of life they have seen happen already to those they know best, not the course of life that is possible with biotechnology that will be developed over the next couple of decades. The trend in life expectancy is presently upward, a few months every year thanks new medical technologies that are but a tiny hint of what will come in years ahead. Extending those trends through a time of revolution in biotechnology is naive - pins stuck in the map because someone somewhere (such as the life insurance industry) needs an answer. If bloated regulatory powers win out and slow medical advances to a crawl, then yes, Japan will likely have only 600,000 centenarians in 2050. But for that to be the case, rather than a world in which people routinely undergo rejuvenation therapies and few die before reaching 100 years of age, we must collectively fail to achieve progress in biotechnologies aimed at repairing damaged human tissues.
For aging can be repaired, its damage removed through tools that can be visualized today, and the next 20 to 40 years are sufficient to see that goal accomplished. But that vast distributed development project will only take place if people want it to take place. If most people have little interest in living longer, because they assume degenerative aging is writ in stone and being older means being frail and suffering, then development will be slow and we'll all age to death.
Cheery thoughts. But recognizing the problem is an early step on the way to doing something about it.
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Posted by Reason
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