Are Actuaries in Fact Paragons of Rationality When It Comes to the Prospects for Radical Life Extension?

The output of the actuarial community often demonstrates its members to be ahead of the curve when it comes to the near future of medicine and great uncertainty over coming trends in life expectancy. This is a time of very rapid progress in the underlying biotechnologies applicable to medical research, and also a time in which both the aging research community and broader medical community are beginning a sweep change in their approach to age-related disease. There is every reason to expect that the near future of human adult life expectancy will look nothing like the past fifty years of slow and fairly steady growth: once the research community begins to actually try to address the causes of aging through medicine, then all bets are off. A likely outcome, indeed the outcome I'd expect if repair-based strategies like the SENS research projects gain large-scale funding and support, is a large upward leap in life span with comparatively little advance warning. Actuaries are, in theory at least, aware of all of this: it is their job to take account of uncertainty in their projections. Enormous sums of money flow through life insurance companies, pension funds, and other areas of business related to life span. There is thus an equally enormous incentive for these organizations and their allies to understand the state of progress in medicine. Having a solid grasp of the uncertainty of the future is necessary to these businesses, and for many years the actuarial community has been...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs