Live Forever- Heads Up! Discovery channel..hard science's progress so far

[sam11111]

A heads up for you -

The "Curiosity" series will air a look at what serious researchers are doing to let us live forever.

Airs this Sun. at (? 9p ? pacific zone? Check ur listing).

I know of nematodes tweaked in the lab to live seven times normal spans...in human terms 500 years.

i.e. If the tweaks work in us, we will live 500 yrs.

(Dr kenyon of U. California, SF )
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Last I heard, Bush cut funds for NIH research (adjusted for inflation).
We should make more funding for research a Dem goal!

[droidamus2]

1. My only questions are

Number one, why would anybody want to live and toil for 500 years. Sounds like a nightmare not a dream scenario to me. Number two, if humans started living for 500 years wouldn't that have major implications for overpopulation and unemployment. Lastly, it is bad enough when we have 80 and 90 year old people with ideas that were formed in the 1930's or '40s running things would you really want somebody running things that formed their opinions and ideas three centuries ago? Just sounds like a bad idea all the way around.

[trotsky]

2. The same thoughts run through my head when I think about living forever.

Why would you want to? And how terrible for the planet would it be?

Let's focus on getting rid of the scourges that keep us from living typical lives: cancer, childhood diseases, diabetes, etc. Life extension can wait.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Why would anyone who is healthy want to die?

Because that's the only alternative to living forever.

[Codeine]

5. Beats the hell out of dying.

Assuming reasonable health I would prefer to exist for as long as is possible.

[pokerfan]

4. It reminded me of this short story by Robert Charles Wilson

Reprinted here in its entirety (~9K words): www.tor.com/stories/2010/08/divided-by-infinity

[uppityperson]

6. Would that extra 400 yrs be healthy active or fragile as an older person is?

400 yrs of increasing frailness, on a walker, taste buds/sense of smell gone, hearing, vision fading, wrinkling up like a prune?

Or 400 more yrs of being able to get around, etc? Yes, I know some 90 yr olds are active, but the majority aren't and I'd rather not get 400 yrs of that.