From a cynical point of view, the biggest problem with life extension is that you usually end up extending the <i>worst</i> years of life rather than the best. The article somewhat covers this, but if anti aging treatments only manage to keep people alive who are barely functional, you've actually made things worse for society as a whole instead of better. We need ways to extend productive years of life and potentially keep people in the workforce (or at least the socially contributing force) longer. I'm hopeful for some of the treatments mentioned, but I think a lot of them are going to fall into the "we managed to keep people in a hospital bed for an extra year" category.<p>On a side note - has anyone heard anything from Calico recently? I seem to remember a lot of hopeful statements when they started up years ago with the intent of doing a lot of the research mentioned in this article, and then they went silent.
I find it amazing that people unironically advocate the <i>deaths of literally everyone</i> because they can't be arsed to deal with overpopulation. If immortality were the default, it would rightly be seen as batshit insane to force everyone to die to solve overpopulation.
That would mean we've invented a huge population problem, and hundred+ year working lives.<p>Do people really want to live forever? My impression amongst my now mainly middle aged friends is that no, that's for a hope for the naivety of youth. Or the hyper-wealthy who can fund a hedonistic century or three. In my fifties I am quite chilled and happy that I come with an as yet unknown expiry date.<p>Am I intrigued what life will be like in the 23rd century? Definitely, presuming we get past our little climate emergency, which I doubt. Do I want 300 years of mainly boredom and frustration working my way to get there? Most certainly not. :)
I think it's not quite right to put it in the same category as normal disease or initially have the goal of "curing" it, but I do believe that understanding and attempting to mitigate or at least partially reverse some of the underlying mechanisms of aging is the primary path forward for medicine.<p>I think the SENS approach is most realistic <a href="https://sens.org" rel="nofollow">https://sens.org</a>
Accidental death is ~50/100k/lifetime. So 0.9995^n = 1/2 is our accidental halflife. Works out to about 100,000 years on average. Someone please check;)