6 ms·
I think what dismays me about this article is that it contains exactly the kind of profound vacuity that passes, inexplicably, for wisdom about the possibility
by theothermkn 9y ago
I think what dismays me about this article is that it contains exactly the kind of profound vacuity that passes, inexplicably, for wisdom about the possibility and impact of life extension and the character of those who are interested in it. It's difficult to know where to begin.
First, and most glaringly, death is not a solution to overpopulation, in any sense. It hasn't worked so far, for example. Additionally, there was a great video by Numberphile, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpj0E0a0mlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpj0E0a0mlU, where he shows that the current 1.1% global growth rate results in us overpopulating the Universe in something like 9000 years. Sooner, rather than later, we will face a real population crisis, even in the face of 80-year lifespans. Growth rates absolutely will come down, one way or the other, in a way that will be functionally indistinguishable from outlawing procreation.
Second, transhumanists, and the subset of truly whacko pseudoscientific transhumanists (however large a fraction you think that is), represents not nearly everybody who is interested in longevity, nor do they characterize, at all, the entirety of those populations. I wouldn't characterize Aubrey de Grey as a transhumanist, for example. The smear doesn't stick, even if we were to allow smear tactics as legitimate.
Third, and finally, there is absolutely no guarantee that life extension technology will be expensive. None. Further, there is no reason to think that its cost would not decline over time, indefinitely. How much could an Alzheimer's vaccine actually cost, once every 50 years, lets say? How expensive could a CRISPR therapy be? If it were routine and assembly-lined? What about the decline in lifestyle cost after one has paid off one's mortgage and taken care of all the other mostly one-time expenses?
As thinkers, we truly need to do much, much better than this article.
- QAPereo 9y agohttps://undark.org/article/peak-pharma-drug-discovery/ https://undark.org/article/peak-pharma-drug-discovery/ Offers a fair amount of substance to back the notion that in general, medicine is going to be breathtakingly expensive in the near future. The state of biological and novel treatments now seem to support that notion. If you want to say that may change, even reverse, you need to offer more than personal incredulity to be convincing.
- philipkglass 9y agoThe article claims that the costs for developing small-molecule drugs are soaring, as the number of druggable targets without good existing drugs falls and the difficulty of finding something sufficiently improved and new goes up. It also claims that the dwindling number of molecules that do make it to the market are going to increasingly be targeting small patient populations and charging enormous sums while still under patent to make up for those huge development costs. I agree with all that. It doesn't say that small-molecule drugs developed today will remain expensive after the patents expire. Small molecule drugs discovered now should have approximately the same manufacturing cost as those discovered 10 years ago, even though the discovery cost has gone up a lot. So this is not going to make medicine in general breathtakingly expensive; in our lifetimes most people will never have the rare disorders that orphan drugs target, and in a couple of decades the exclusivity will be gone anyway. I don't even think anyone expects a simple "take one pill per day" small molecule drug to prevent deleterious effects of aging. It would be great if that happened, of course. It couldn't be monopolized after the patent expires and it would be the complete opposite of an orphan drug; nearly everyone is going to suffer from aging eventually. More likely IMO it'll take genetic interventions, biologics, and a bunch of analytical techniques and frequently adjusted treatments to suppress deleterious aging effects, if it's possible at all.
- QAPereo 9y agoFirst point: Get used to this. Moderately-priced mass-market drugs will disappear. Or rather, they will go off-patent and become generics. With no R&D expenses to recoup, they will become cheap commodities, costing a few dozen or hundred dollars per treatment. New drugs, especially those protected from competition by the Orphan Drug Act, will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Don’t be surprised when the first million-dollar treatment hits the market. Which dovetails with: These developments are no kind of tragedy — drugs cannot do much more to lengthen human lifespan. Nor are these developments the result of a conspiracy or of unusual levels of greed. They are just the end-stage of the depletion of a resource. We are specifically talking about life extension, and the claim is that the modern pharmacopoeia is moving away from traditional drugs, to far more expensive alternatives with more therapeutic potential.
- Gatsky 9y agoAbout your 3rd point, recent results (clonal haematopoeisis, single cell genomics) do in fact suggest that life extension interventions will be highly technical, ongoing and very expensive.
- philipkglass 9y agoI agree with highly technical and ongoing. I'm agnostic about "very expensive." Initially very expensive, sure. But how much of the expensive stuff can be eventually automated and routinized? I'd guess "a lot," since that's my general guess about the future, and in that case the cost would fall a lot as well. If I'm wrong -- and I could be wrong; many predictions of widespread automation have been premature -- then I agree that the costs could remain very high.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoAt first. Civilization develops through automating things; there's nothing suggesting the methods for longevity won't improve past initial stages.