Aging is not all bad(Was Recipe for immortality)
Graham Dellaire
popa0206 at PO-Box.McGill.CA
Sun Sep 24 11:45:40 EST 1995
Aging it seems is biologically conserved throughout most multicellular organisms
Why do you suppose this is?
One simple answer is that if we all lived forever we would soon exhaust all resources (food, land etc)
and then we along with many other organisms would die out completely. So although living forever
seems appealing it is not feasible... and again such technology would be invariably expensive.
Therefore only those that could afford it would live forever.... how would the poor prolitariate ever
survive that. But I digress.
I think a better use of technology would be to enable people to live a normal healthy life free of dimentia
and other age related forms of disease until the end of their life which might average between 70-110
yrs.
As well part of being human is the fact that we age. One generation gives way to the next and so on.
Each decade of life has its own challenges and joys. Can you imagine the unemployment statistics, if
for instance the "baby-boomers" never died! They hold many of the upper level jobs right now anyway.
Therefore the next generation would never be able to usurp their position in the job market.
Well just some extra things to think about!
Too bad ethics always lag so far behind science. Often we carry out procedures before we ask if they
should ever be done in the first place.
G.
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Graham Dellaire Snail Mail:
Red Cross, Research
McGill University Montreal Blood Services
Faculty of Medicine 3131 Sherbrooke St. East
Div. of Experimental Medicine Montreal, QC, Canada
E-mail: popa0206 at po-box.mcgill.ca H1W 1B2
B2XE at musicb.mcgill.ca
WWW Page: http://www.medcor.mcgill.ca/EXPMED/expmed.html
Fax: (514) 525 0881
Voice: (514) 527 1501 ext 175
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