The View From the Edge
This is why cryonics is important - it is the only viable chance at great longevity for the billions who will not live to see the technologies of radical life extension: "there's bad timing, and then there's this: Instead of a day late and a dollar short, most of us are a day early and ... well, money doesn't even play into it, because we're gonna die. ... But a lot of us alive today are likely to really have our noses rubbed in that vexing mortality thing, because it's looking more and more as if nanotech-boosted medicinal biology is going to make 'life extension' an everyday term. Nanobots will be able to repair the slightest defect arising from defective genes, a detrimental environment, and even, yes, aging. In short, people are going to live forever. ... Which is all well and good - hell, great - for anyone around when our progressive, humane national health care system of the future starts accepting appointments for regular 3,000-mile/3-year nanobot tune-ups. (It's fun to imagine Jiffy-Lube-like life-extension outlets - without the pneumatic lug-nut tighteners, one hopes - but it'll probably be geekier and more complicated than that.) Many of the rest of us, though, will live to be just close enough to the breakthrough to know that it's coming, and to eat our deteriorating hearts out: Those lucky blankety-blanks are going to live forever, and all I get is this lousy shroud."
Link: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-09-08/blog-forum/arthur-salm-immortality-its-the-new-health-care