What Would Radical Longevity Mean?
In a long post at WorldChanging, the author opines on the implications of significantly extending the healthy human life span under a number of scenarios. Here's a paragraph made interesting in light of my recent comments on immortality and perceptions thereof:
[*I'm skirting around the otherwise obvious term "immortality" for a few reasons: I consider it inaccurate (an immortal would never die, while someone with a radically long life could still be crushed by a bus); it's mythical (that is, it's a term redolent with symbolism and non-rational implications for many people); and it's presumptuous (even if we figure out how to keep the body going indefinitely, there are still enough questions about how the mind works for me to be uncomfortable about the assumption that it could go on forever).]
For my money, I'd say that none of the offered scenarios for rejuvenative medical technology are quite what is likely to happen in the real world. The "holy fire" option is closest, though:
In this scenario, your older body is subject to a regimen of biotechnological and nanotechnological treatments that effectively "resets" you to the aforementioned healthy twentysomething body. After that, aging re-commences, and you would presumably need another aging reset half a century later.
Rejuvenation medicine of the next few decades will probably be a good deal more complex and ongoing - a mix of advanced diagnostics enabled by nanomedicine, regenerative medicine, personalized drugs, whole body gene therapies and similar treatments for other cellular mechanisms that change with age (such as telomere lengthening). It will no doubt be fairly expensive in the early years - all the more reason to start saving now.
One objection:
Extending the human lifespan by 30, 50, 100, 500 years (or more) doesn't have an immediate and noticeable result.
It does for me! Not being dead or crippled by age-related degeneration is a wonderful state to be in, and I will certainly notice having a great deal more of it. That is true wealth - time and health.
On a related note, it is good to see that Aubrey de Grey's ideas regarding "acturial escape velocity" have escaped and are doing well in the wild. These are important concepts for people to grasp - that each advance in healthy life extension technology and life span means that you stand a better chance of benefiting from the next advance in line ... and the next, and the next, and so forth. The path to the far future is paved by small advances in medicine.
It's very likely that we will be the ones who get to decide how a world of radically long lives turns out. If we manage to survive the next decade, it's a good bet we'll be seeing the latter half of the twenty-first century. If we make it to 2075 (or so), it's hard to imagine researchers not having figured by then out how to live much longer still, barring some sort of planetary disaster. Radical longevity will be ours to choose, if we want it.
Developing radical life extension technology - in effect engineering an end to aging - rapidly enough to help those alive now is far from a given. As a species we are capable of many things that we have not yet accomplished. Medical research must be actively supported, funded and encouraged if it is to happen; in that sense, the future of healthy life extension is in all of our hands.
It will be a combination of "majic pill" and "holy fire". Some of the SENS stuff (mitochondrial DNA gene therapy, amyloid vaccine, lysosomal aggregate treatment) looks like it may only require a single treatment and it is done. This is the "magic pill". Other stuff (AGE crosslinks) will require periodic treatments (AGE crosslink breakers) every 30-40 years, making this the "holy fire". The deletion of telemere genes along with decadenal "reseeding" of stem cell centers in the body (the SENS cure for cancer) as well as the periodic stem cell regeneration of the body also seems "holy fire" to me.
However, as time goes on, the "holy fire" treatments should become cheaper as technology advances. What will be expensive in 2020 will be cheap in 2050.
I do not see any conceivable possibility for the "Dorian Grey" or "Immortal children" scenario.
I disagree with the website on the immediacy of the social effects of extending healthy human lifespan by 50 years or so. I think the effects will be dramatic and mostly positive. The immediate effect will be that most people will feel "freer" in how they make their life choices. Especially guys. Men will be less likely to want to get married and have kids (why do I need to do this when I can live like a free 20-something into the foreseeable future). Many guys already don't want to do the "settle-down" thing. With increased lifespan, they will want to do it even less.
Young women will winge about this until they, too, figure out the score and decide the freedom is not so bad.
Actually, you don't need life extension to create these social effects. You only need to "square the curve" so that you die at 65 with a perfect body.