Who Wants to Live Forever?
20th June 2012
If Aubrey de Grey’s predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger. A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to “cure” aging — banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.
June 20th, 2012 at 08:45
Great. Now we have even more unemployment to look forward to, as ‘eternal’ seniors keep hanging on and on and on to their jobs.
Add in automation (which is destroying jobs at a faster rate than it creates them), and the ballooning population of the world, and we have One Big Mess. But I’m sure the Invisible Hand has a solution, if we all just pray hard enough and repent of our Sinful Ways. (And maybe offer a few ‘progs’ in sacrifice…”making a pleasing odor unto the Lord”.)
June 20th, 2012 at 10:32
If anyone is going to live to 150, it will probably be my mother-in-law. I don’t know why – maybe something bad I did in a past life.
June 20th, 2012 at 10:36
Makes me think of an episode of “Third Rock from the Sun” when Dick (John Lithgow) takes up smoking. Sally (Kristen Johnson) says, “I hear those take years off of your life.”, to which Dick replies, “Yes, but they’re the later years and they’re not much fun anyway.”
June 20th, 2012 at 10:37
Hefner would be the exception to that.
June 20th, 2012 at 10:40
Dennis Leary: “Yeah, I know. They say smoking takes ten years off your life. But which ten is it? It’s the ten at the end when you’re a drooling idiot in pampers and you can’t remember your own name. Boy, I’m sure looking forward to that!“