Nearly Getting the Picture
The tenor of the more educated pro-death op-eds is changing, as illustrated by this piece in the Times Online. Authors are finding it harder to deny the plausibility of healthy life extension science, more or less steer their way around the Tithonus Error, and demonstrate whistful longing amidst the still-flaky justifications for standing aside and permitting untold billions of avoidable deaths. People fear the degeneration and powerlessness of aging; if that can be avoided, who would not choose to live longer? "If, however, science could offer us not just long life but long-drawn-out youth and health as well, if life extension were in effect youth extension and if the passing decades hardly touched us, perhaps one would answer the question differently. If one could be as youthful and fit at 90 as one was at 30, wouldn't one immediately grab the pills and swallow them? I wonder." Healthy life extension will be youth extension: given that age is no more than an accumulation of damage, and the best solution is to repair and prevent that damage, any progress towards longer life is progress towards longer youth.
Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2340456,00.html