Now you might argue that one additional year for an adult is more valuable to society than one additional year for a child, but I'd rather not quibble over the exact value of a year of life. There are counterarguments; how many genius do you think we lose in Africa because of inadequate medicine and education?
EDIT: If it's cheaper than optimizing on the low end, then of course I would support optimizing on the high end. But given the large number of human beings that die young for stupid reasons, I can't imagine that the high end is cheaper. Thanks for pointing out Aubrey de Grey, though. I'll do some reading.
If we accept that there's no reason why we couldn't defeat aging (mostly with periodical repair of the molecular damage that accumulates as a by-product of metabolism -- not need to understand how everything work, just keep damage under a certain threshold) and that we will some day do it, we should do everything to bring that day closer;
100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades.
This would be one of the most important things that humanity ever did, and once we do, we'll look back at our current lack of enthusiasm in curing aging as a great sin of omission (we could have did it sooner, but just took our time).
I'm all for vaccines, but right now it's not anti-aging research that is taking money away from vaccines. There are a billion other places to cut first.
If you're looking for a very important field that is dramatically under-funded, it's hard to get more marginal utility than in curing human senescence.
So you're talking about immortality? I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system capable of surviving such an invention.
When I read anti-aging, I assume the extension of lifespan, not immortality.
I really like your posts on this issue though, I'm going to check out the links you provided.
I will most likely never be an infant in Africa, but am very probable to eventually become an old person in the industrialized world.
It might sounds cold-hearted, but for me infant mortality in the third world is someone else's problem.
Considering that the value produced by the programmer (or whoever) can be reinvested or dedicated eventually to fighting infant mortality, I think there's a balance to be reached. It's not as simple as saying that infant mortality must have priority over anti-aging.
the idea is not to make more people to productive age, but to increase the span of this productive age. and decrease/prevent the suffering at the end.
When that is taken into account, the fight against the diseases of aging (actually reversing aging, not just making people live a couple of years more in a senescent state) is incredibly under-funded compared to all kinds of other things.
Vaccines are important, but they're already getting attention. What about saving that kid's life when he's 80 years old? Your dollars make a bigger difference when used doing research in fields that are currently overlooked because aging isn't considered a disease by most (yet).
SENS.org is where I donate most of my charity money.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/39
and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8554766938711591377&...
and
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312367066
for background info.
Please at least read/see those before making the same "it won't work/wouldn't be a good thing" arguments that everybody has made a thousand times when first introduced to this. Thank you.
I will do that. Thanks for your informed post.
