I totally agree that there are disadvantages to indefinite lifespans. It's just that those disadvantages are overwhelmed by the fact that aging kills 100,000 people every day. And it's not just that people die, it's that they spend decades becoming frail and less capable. They can't enjoy as many things as they used to. Their vision, hearing, and even their minds fail them.

If we lived in a world without aging, only a sadistic monster would want to inflict such suffering on others.

Halting aging to me is science fiction, mostly of the dystopian kind.

First, eliminating aging won't make people immortal. People will still die from accidents, violence, disease, and suicide. I vaguely remember doing the math, and without aging, life expectancy would be around 300 years. (The variance in LE would be huge though, since one's age would have no effect on mortality.)

Second, arguments about overpopulation prove too much. If you're against anti-aging because of overpopulation, you should also be against reproductive freedom. After all, any couple that has more than two children is contributing to overpopulation. Anyways, there's a simple solution to overpopulation: A one child policy. Even if everyone's immortal, you'll only end up with 2x the original population. (8 billion people have 4 billion children, who have 2 billion children, who have 1 billion children...) I submit that such a policy is more humane than forcing everyone to spend decades becoming senescent before dying.

And finally: Who are we to decide for our descendants that anti-aging technologies are bad? Assuming no civilizational collapse, future generations will be smarter, wiser, and more knowledgable than we are. It's better to invent these technologies sooner so that they can choose for themselves whether or not to use them. If they agree with us, we'll have wasted some research money. But if we're wrong, we'll have condemned millions to die. Unless we're damn sure it's bad, the cost-benefit analysis favors inventing anti-aging tech.

Edit: link

As far as the loaded question is concerned, I did sense an inflammatory tone in kobeya's response with the gas chambers question. Your response, on the other hand, is more discussion-oriented and open-minded.

1. Advancement: Having immortality would reduce the need to re-learn and re-experience everything over and over again. While the learning and experiencing process in itself is innovative (because just like life itself, it evolves through mutation between one specimen to the other), you could argue that having a 200 years old Einstein around wouldn't be bad for science.

2. Resources: with immortality, the issue of family will be very different. Being young forever, you probably wouldn't feel as great of a need to raise children (which serve, among other purposes, the assure your genetic continuity after death). A rich, self centered, immortal population would probably see a decline in its numbers.

The idea of immortality is appealing and frightening all at once. It would create a completely new society and world order, and I'm not sure it's a world I'd (forever) like to live in.

With that being said, I think wisdom is one area that (assuming the right mind-set) can continue to grow richer with age. I think it would result in much better politicians, judges, teachers and similar roles that involve application or imparting of wisdom.

There's string theory but it's still unproven stuff. I failed to see how new scientists will actually solve the problem beyond having fresh new minds to look at it from a different direction.

Perhaps we don't need old scientists to die, but just new scientists.

I think that is caused by we know the end of life is closer. We do not want to take the effort to change. If we know we will live forever or much longer, I think we are more apt to be flexible and change.