Natural Death: We Should be Worried About It

Edge magazine recently ran their yearly question, which this year is "what should we be worried about?" There are more than a hundred and fifty responses from various authors and folk in the public eye, and I'll confess to not having read more than a handful - time is ever fleeting, and none of us have enough of it between dawn and dusk. Thus while I noticed Aubrey de Grey's response, I missed seeing this rather better one. You should definitely read the whole thing, not just the concluding except below: What Should We Be Worried About: Natural Death Even if the probability of quickly finding a technological method to delay or reverse senescence is low, we have been devoting far too little effort to it. After all, no matter what else we might achieve with our work in life, we soon won't be around to enjoy it. There are other problems on the planet to worry about, but none more personally important. And yet, despite this motivation, there is very little money being spent on longevity research. Because there is no history of success, and because of widely held religious beliefs, government won't fund it. And because achieving success will be difficult, and the marketplace is flooded with false claims, industry has little interest in solving the problem. Although the profit could be astronomical, there is no easy path to attain it, unlike for cosmetic improvements. Over a hundred times more money is spent on R&D for curing baldness than for curing aging. We may someday find ou...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs