A Brief Letter to the Long Retired
Life isn't fair, but you've probably figured that out by now. Your body is corroding, and there's nothing great about that. I guess I'm not telling you anything you don't know here.
So try this on for size: in among all of the modern wonders of medicine, many of which you have become familiar with, some few scientists are working on ways to control the causes of aging and thus put a halt to all age-related disease.
"All?" you might well ask. Well, aging is just another medical condition, so why not? We didn't put up with tuberculosis once we could do something about it. Coughing up your lungs just because everyone else up until that point did as much? That would have been silly.
The good news then is that people are working to make the world a better place. The march of medicine continues. The bad news is that control of aging isn't going to happen soon enough for today's oldest, not even in the best of worlds. There is just too much to do, too little money, and too few people working on it.
Wherever there is progress, someone is the last to miss out. Life isn't fair, as you know. But control over aging could happen in time for the children and grandchildren of today's oldest - if there were more funding and more workers.
You could be a curmudgeon and say "to hell with them, let them take their chances on suffering everything I have." I've known some folk who dug themselves into that mindset; pain is an unpleasant companion.
There are more gracious legacies to leave behind, such as doing something to make the world a lasting better place. So why not fund the daylights out of those scientists working on aging? There is a lot to be said for helping to ensure that your children and grandchildren won't have to suffer your pains and indignities.
The short truth of it is that old age is a blessing, but marred by the unwanted failures of the the flesh. Being old used to be a lot worse than it is today, and one day it will be a lot better than it is now. That is all down to the march of medicine, and a few brave souls deciding to improve the world for their descendants.
Will control over the causes of aging arrive in time for your children and grandchildren? That's a question only you can answer. Fund the daylights out of those scientists, I say. You can find most of them at the SENS Research Foundation, and here's a link were you inclined to think about donating: