I was thinking this as I read through this thread;
This living forever idea is great but so set apart from modern science it's amazing how serious some can be about it.
Live forever with your deafness or blindness from birth! Got herpes in college? It's only another infinity years of those outbreaks! If you were able to live infinite years you would ultimately wind up in some vegetative state. Between accidents dismembering people, un-curable ailments, etc.
Re:Longevity Inc
by reasonattlm on Sunday June 26, 2016 @08:39PM
(#11983569)
It is quite amazing to me that someone can seriously suggest that a scientific community with the biotechnology to control aging as a chronic medical condition would somehow lack the biotechnology to defeat inherited and infectious disease.
If you actually spend any time looking at what is going on in the labs, treatments for any and all viral infections, universal cancer therapies, ways to repair some of the cell and tissue damage that causes aging, ways to repair any and all genetic defects, and more, are all on the verge and will emerge over the next decade or two.
Re:Longevity Inc
by codingdave on Sunday June 26, 2016 @09:52PM
(#11983774)
That is easy to say... but there are still chronic pain cases where people do not even have a diagnosis of what is wrong. There are blood disorders for which the recommended treatment is still bleeding the patient. Chemotherapy is basically poisoning people and hoping they survive but the cancer does not. All of these things will hopefully one day seem barbaric and we will have better answers. But we are absolutely not on the verge of having all the answers.
There are terrible experiences we can have as human beings. I'm going through one myself right now, as I work to diagnose some terrible chronic pains, while my wife is in rehab care after a pretty bad accident that has left her unable to move without help.
If we can heal 100% from these experiences, sure, longevity sounds good. But under our current medical knowledge, that is a big "If".