Below, Moshe Pritsker responds to the question:
The boundaries of science are continually expanding as scientists become increasingly integral to finding solutions for larger social issues, such as poverty, conflict, financial crises, etc. On what specific issue/problem do you feel we need to bring the scientific lens to bear?
We need to start seriously working on increasing the length of human life. Why should we die so early? Currently, the average length of human life is about 75 years, even in the most developed countries with the best healthcare systems. I want to live longer--I have a lot of plans and need time to finish everything. I want my parents, relatives and friends to live longer--I am afraid to lose them one day forever. Most of the people I know want the same.
Can we do something to slow the aging? I don't want to be old. Nobody wants to be old. I am 35 years old. I am okay; I work hard and go to the gym, but I know I am not the same as I was 10 years ago. I am still active and energetic, but there are more and more wrinkles and grey hair, and it has become more difficult to pull all-nighters. I know it is going to be even worse in 10 years. Moreover, I don't like to see wrinkles on the faces of women I used to date 10 years ago. I don't want to see women stressed out about their biological clock, and taking wrong turns in their life because of this. I want all the women to remain beautiful for a long, long time. I hate to see my male friends getting slower in their life, adjusting to gradually appearing diseases and loss of energy.
Humanity solved a lot of problems and produced a lot of things that made our lives easier and more productive. We use airplanes for fast travel and internet for instant communication. We have numerous devices that make cooking easy and listening to music even easier. For the most part, we even solved the problem of death in young age, developing antibiotics against infectious diseases and sophisticated surgeries against accidental traumas. Can we do something to slow aging? I mean something that works, not another set of university studies on "theories of aging" and futuristic arguments on imaginary "ethical dilemmas of immortality." It can be a peel, or a cream, or a set of procedures--something that works, please. Hurry up because I have only 40 years left, approximately.
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This is a hard one.
There are some good overall approaches that seem to work, such as diet restriction, exercise, and avoiding unhealthy behaviors (smoking, etc.). There are also increasingly good targeted treatments, such as cancer treatments, organ replacement, and so on.
Unfortunately, though, you're faced with the statistics of entropy. Your repair systems will degrade over time, errors will creep into your cells, and eventually one of those things will kill you.
Stem cell treatments may end up extending life a fair amount, taking relatively error-free cells from your own body, replicating them, and putting them back in. I think we'll see this done in the next twenty years for specific diseases and organ replacement. It may result in considerable life extention as well as providing a more youthful appearance and feeling.
All of this is extremely early and speculative. For now, I'd keep going to the gym.
We need to put massive research in nanomachines that will repair us at DNA levels. That would give us near immortality.
Why not just try to improve the quality of the time you have left?
@Guy
Having lived a long and interesting life and still living it to the max I would just like to extend it as long as possible.Encouraging the advancement of knowledge is fulfilling and interesting.It improves my quality of life and gives me hope for the future.
hmm...work expands to fill the time. I would speculate that another 100 years of life (thus making 175 average) would not proportionately increase our happiness or productivity. I shouldn't offer that as a reason for not trying, but simply feel that an hour is an "hour" for the reason of how much we can get done and how many we have left. I don't think the human condition is remotely prepared to capitilize on even more spare time (lol!). Though, not a sufficient reason to avoid the question...im interested in trying...why not?
Lengthening of human life is one of the problems to tackle when trying to obtain health care equity across a population. On a personal level, some people are frantic that their parents might die too soon, others whether they themselves will die before they're ready. As I'm coming to examine the broader picture, I can see that we have limited health dollars (no matter what percentage of GDP we devote to it) and there will always be the toss-up as to whether we spend those scarce dollars on fantastic treatments for older people to give them 2 more years life, or we spend them on 100 very young people to vaccinate them against killer diseases like polio and whooping cough.
Departments of Health all over the world, plus the WHO and others are constantly trying to balance the health needs and wants of people against the available and feasible dollars. I doubt we'll ever reach a consensus on the best way to do it. If you like think tanks to which you can contribute, try my scrappy little start-up blog at :http://nosquares.wordpress.com.
No one wants to join! Where are the thinkers??
Here's a naive idea, more for laughs than anything else, although I would like to know if it's scientifically possible: if we could make all the cells in the body cancerous, we could potentially lengthen human life. Cancer cells divide indefinitely without ever aging. A problem is that these cells are highly migratory. They could migrate and produce an ear on the head, etc. But again, what will happen to environmental pollution, land and habitat loss, global warming, etc. with immortal humans being around? It may make them more responsible, but any guarantees?