What if we overcome ageing?

[mistermack]

If medicine overcomes ageing one day, and has cures for virtually every disease, what would happen?

That might not be too far away, acutally.
It would be a disaster if it happened now, with room on the Earth running out.
But if we colonise space, room will never run out.

If the ageing process is conquered, and we find a cure for all cancer, you could live for thousands of years.

But how would YOU feel about it? Would you want to go on living for thousands of years?
I wonder how many people would eventually commit suicide?

After all, nowadays, suicide isn't really killing yourself. Your death is already a fact. A suicide just fixes the date.
But, if death was NOT inevitable, suicide would be a very different step.

I actually think all of this WILL happen, one day.

[Jason]

We'd have to get up pretty damn early in the morning..

[hiyymer]

Perhaps it's the other way around. Prolonging death would speed up the process of the microbes getting the better of us. We are an almost stationary target for those with a short life span and faster rate of mutation. Rather than eradicating disease, it's starting to go the other way. It seems like almost every bug that we could kill with the right antibiotic a few years ago is starting to become resistant.

About the issue of living for a thousand years... I have mixed feelings. In one way I am relieved that I will be dead before we start genetically re-engineering the human body. It's going to get ugly.

[Pensioner]

Waits for some cunt to take the piss out of Pensioner

[Jason]

There is no direct causal relationship of microbial adaptation to antibiotics and the increased life spans of human beings. Ever watch a commercial that claims X kills 99.9% of germs? Yeah. That 0.1% is immune and then they pass on that immunity to their baby microbes until we've got unstoppable hordes of microbes immune to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics is the cause. Evolution is a bitch and humans are stupid.

[hiyymer]

There is no direct causal relationship of microbial adaptation to antibiotics and the increased life spans of human beings. Ever watch a commercial that claims X kills 99.9% of germs? Yeah. That 0.1% is immune and then they pass on that immunity to their baby microbes until we've got unstoppable hordes of microbes immune to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics is the cause. Evolution is a bitch and humans are stupid.

But how did the 0.1% become immune. Wouldn't it have to be a genetic variation? And isn't the time rate of occurrence of genetic mutations related to the rate of genetic reproduction? If my genes are copied a few times in my reproductive life span of a few decades, how many times has a microbe DNA replicated in that same time span. I am no expert, but explain why this would not be so.

[Bella Fortuna]

Waits for some cunt to take the piss out of Pensioner

We already have, you just don't remember it.

[Bella Fortuna]

I can't think of any more unpleasant and depressing fate than to live forever.

[hiyymer]

There is no direct causal relationship of microbial adaptation to antibiotics and the increased life spans of human beings. Ever watch a commercial that claims X kills 99.9% of germs? Yeah. That 0.1% is immune and then they pass on that immunity to their baby microbes until we've got unstoppable hordes of microbes immune to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics is the cause. Evolution is a bitch and humans are stupid.

I didn't mean that it was related to an INCREASED life span. Merely to the human life span being longer than the microbe lifespan. It's already happening. In other words I disagree that we will ever eradicate disease, quite apart from increasing our longevity.

[Jason]

There is no direct causal relationship of microbial adaptation to antibiotics and the increased life spans of human beings. Ever watch a commercial that claims X kills 99.9% of germs? Yeah. That 0.1% is immune and then they pass on that immunity to their baby microbes until we've got unstoppable hordes of microbes immune to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics is the cause. Evolution is a bitch and humans are stupid.

But how did the 0.1% become immune. Wouldn't it have to be a genetic variation? And isn't the time rate of occurrence of genetic mutations related to the rate of genetic reproduction? If my genes are copied a few times in my reproductive life span of a few decades, how many times has a microbe DNA replicated in that same time span. I am no expert, but explain why this would not be so.

I'm sure I could google the reproductive cycle of microbial life and come up with an average, but I won't. It's fucking fast. Why is the 0.1% immune? A genetic aberration which lay dormant in a small subset of the population neither doing harm nor benefiting the carriers until the advent of antibiotics at which time it became very advantageous. I suspect initially it may have been very rare. Perhaps 0.000001% or less to make up a number. There is a body of evidence which shows that the advance of antibiotics from its humble beginnings with penicillin to today has not kept pace with the evolutionary rate of adaptation of the microbial life it is meant to kill. In other words, we're losing the war.

If you want to know more as GenesForLife.

[Jason]

There is no direct causal relationship of microbial adaptation to antibiotics and the increased life spans of human beings. Ever watch a commercial that claims X kills 99.9% of germs? Yeah. That 0.1% is immune and then they pass on that immunity to their baby microbes until we've got unstoppable hordes of microbes immune to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics is the cause. Evolution is a bitch and humans are stupid.

I didn't mean that it was related to an INCREASED life span. Merely to the human life span being longer than the microbe lifespan. It's already happening. In other words I disagree that we will ever eradicate disease, quite apart from increasing our longevity.

Of course. I agree. We'll not only fail to eradicate disease, we may end up living our lives in closed circuit scrubbed environments. Now that's a cheering thought.

[Tero]

We must keep ageing of rocks trees etc., otherwise the fundies will win.

[rasetsu]

There is no direct causal relationship of microbial adaptation to antibiotics and the increased life spans of human beings. Ever watch a commercial that claims X kills 99.9% of germs? Yeah. That 0.1% is immune and then they pass on that immunity to their baby microbes until we've got unstoppable hordes of microbes immune to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics is the cause. Evolution is a bitch and humans are stupid.

But how did the 0.1% become immune. Wouldn't it have to be a genetic variation? And isn't the time rate of occurrence of genetic mutations related to the rate of genetic reproduction? If my genes are copied a few times in my reproductive life span of a few decades, how many times has a microbe DNA replicated in that same time span. I am no expert, but explain why this would not be so.

No. Mutation rate is linear, as it affects percentage of DNA mutated per time. Faster reproducers reproduce less mutants more often.

[Ian]

I'm convinved that Mistermack's OP is not fantasy. It's very possible that science will be able to reduce the death rate to almost zero. This isn't to say we could be stuck in old age for centuries - rejuvination drugs and constant monitoring of our systems by nanobots within our bodies may keep us in a youthful state for a very long time. By the end of the century, you could meet someone who appeared to be in their 20s only to find out that he or she is middle-aged.

What this does to current economic models is impossible to fully grasp. What it does to social standards is equally difficult. Basically, everything will go up in the air (though not all at once, I think). I highly recommend Physics Of The Future by Michio Kaku.

However, consider that computer science is also proceeding rapidly. Within the next 15-20 years, if Moore's Law holds the way it has been holding for generations now, we'll see the first computer with the cognitive capabilites of a human to go along with the speed and accuracy of a computer. After that point, the devlopment of technology could explode. This is a very short and rough description of a view of what is known as the Technological Singularity. Anyway, one expected development is the ability to completely upload your mind -your thought processes, all your memories, everything- into cyberspace. Movies like The Matrix hint at this capability. And living out your life in a blissful cybernetic realm is one way to alleviate the problems caused by too many people never dying here on Earth. Of course, there are economic and ethical questions which arise from this possibility as well. The definitive work on the subject is probably The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil.

[rasetsu]

Oh, and while lifespan limitations due to natural causes may be reduced, the unnatural ones, including governments and tyrannical majorities, will remain.

The problem with living forever is the strain on limited resources. We're currently outstripping certain resources. There will be a time at which there aren't enough resources to support everybody living forever (and making babies). (This applies to the Matrix solution as well, because organic life is very inexpensive. The first cyber citizens will be the rich, the powerful, and the famous. Being organic may one day be a mark of shame.)1

Roll out the death panels. Hello Logan's Run, Hunger Games, Battle Royale.....



1 Side issue for another thread. Both physical and mental limitations are an artifact of organic life. In artificial life, what limits do we keep, erase, or break? Is it a good thing for us to live as gods?