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> That said, the economic impact of such cures isn't clear to me. If your population gains, on average, say, a year or two of life, the pay-as-you go pension sy

> That said, the economic impact of such cures isn't clear to me. If your population gains, on average, say, a year or two of life, the pay-as-you go pension systems that are already under strain in greying Europe will come under even bigger strain. And the alternative is? I mean people keep doing this "A is bad" ... okay what's B? Sometimes there's this implied, horrible option B. Sometimes there's just nothing. Never mind that there is still pretty decent child mortality from cancer. And if you count every disease that mRNA can fight ... there's a few really bad ones in there. > So it seems that each discovery like that will be balanced by us working longer. Personally, I as a 42 y.o. in Czechia, do not expect to get any meaningful state pension ever. There will be just too many of us. If medicine can keep us in a fit enough state, physically and mentally, I say bring it on! If not, there isn't a discussion to be had, because it won't happen.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Child cancer treatments are going to be driven by fundamentally different causes and require totally different treatments, fyi.
inglor_cz 5y ago
Of course we won't stop medicating people who can be saved just to protect the pension systems. At least democratic states won't, the politicians would be eaten alive by the grey voting bloc. And in this case rightly so. But that means that we really need to push with certain research forward. If you can live to be 90 and in good health, you won't mind working longer. (Though some people may mind if that means that, say, judges stay in their offices for 60 years). It is the intermediate stage that is bad. In that stage, people suffer from chronic diseases and bad health for decades, unable to enjoy life fully and work. I know that this isn't easy to solve. Biology of aging is complicated like hell, to the degree that not too long ago, aging was considered inevitable, untreatable and incurable, thus attracting almost no funding and scientific attention. This has been changing lately, but it will take some time before we see results in humans and not just in mice.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Of course we won't stop medicating people who can be saved just to protect the pension systems. At least democratic states won't, the politicians would be eaten alive by the grey voting bloc. And in this case rightly so. Why rightly so? Up until now, the number young people has been increasing in pretty much all societies such that society continuously had a greater supply of labor to continue meeting the bed pan changing demands of increasing number of old people. You introduce women’s independence and easy to use, cheap birth control (IUD), and that very well can change the parameters under which society operates, which necessitate changed to how it can operate. We are nowhere near technology where 50+ year olds are regularly able to contribute to the workforce in manual labor jobs, especially turning people over, bathing them, and otherwise laborious work it takes to take care of extremely old populations. We are already seeing this tussle in the US, where there are vast nursing and nursing aide “shortages”, or another way to look at it is society trying to figure out how many of its resources (pay for that kind of labor) to allocate to caring for sick/old people. It very well may be that society could be better off investing more in its young rather than old.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "rightly so" because I feel that denying people life saving treatments (and I really mean life saving, not prolonging life by a bare month in pain and misery) just for demographic reasons is immoral.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Society does not have unlimited resources, so I think a more useful way of characterizing it would be a better allocation of resources to accomplish society's goals. For example, my one of my grandparents' kidneys stopped working when they were mid 90s. In the US, they were entitled to taxpayer funded healthcare benefits which allowed them to receive dialysis. So US taxpayers paid for a van to come pick them up in a wheelchair 3x a week, perform the dialysis at the center for a few hours, bring them back. And they had to have a translator available since they did not speak English. This went on for 4 years until they died at 99. Even though it was my grandparent, I still think that was a ludicrous waste of society's resources. They should be given an option for assisted suicide. I hope that I can figure out a way to take myself out if I ever come into that kind of situation. I see no purpose for me to burden others with providing me with chronic care.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

Child cancer treatments are going to be driven by fundamentally different causes and require totally different treatments, fyi.

inglor_cz 5y ago

Of course we won't stop medicating people who can be saved just to protect the pension systems. At least democratic states won't, the politicians would be eaten alive by the grey voting bloc. And in this case rightly so. But that means that we really need to push with certain research forward. If you can live to be 90 and in good health, you won't mind working longer. (Though some people may mind if that means that, say, judges stay in their offices for 60 years). It is the intermediate stage that is bad. In that stage, people suffer from chronic diseases and bad health for decades, unable to enjoy life fully and work. I know that this isn't easy to solve. Biology of aging is complicated like hell, to the degree that not too long ago, aging was considered inevitable, untreatable and incurable, thus attracting almost no funding and scientific attention. This has been changing lately, but it will take some time before we see results in humans and not just in mice.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Of course we won't stop medicating people who can be saved just to protect the pension systems. At least democratic states won't, the politicians would be eaten alive by the grey voting bloc. And in this case rightly so. Why rightly so? Up until now, the number young people has been increasing in pretty much all societies such that society continuously had a greater supply of labor to continue meeting the bed pan changing demands of increasing number of old people. You introduce women’s independence and easy to use, cheap birth control (IUD), and that very well can change the parameters under which society operates, which necessitate changed to how it can operate. We are nowhere near technology where 50+ year olds are regularly able to contribute to the workforce in manual labor jobs, especially turning people over, bathing them, and otherwise laborious work it takes to take care of extremely old populations. We are already seeing this tussle in the US, where there are vast nursing and nursing aide “shortages”, or another way to look at it is society trying to figure out how many of its resources (pay for that kind of labor) to allocate to caring for sick/old people. It very well may be that society could be better off investing more in its young rather than old.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "rightly so" because I feel that denying people life saving treatments (and I really mean life saving, not prolonging life by a bare month in pain and misery) just for demographic reasons is immoral.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Society does not have unlimited resources, so I think a more useful way of characterizing it would be a better allocation of resources to accomplish society's goals. For example, my one of my grandparents' kidneys stopped working when they were mid 90s. In the US, they were entitled to taxpayer funded healthcare benefits which allowed them to receive dialysis. So US taxpayers paid for a van to come pick them up in a wheelchair 3x a week, perform the dialysis at the center for a few hours, bring them back. And they had to have a translator available since they did not speak English. This went on for 4 years until they died at 99. Even though it was my grandparent, I still think that was a ludicrous waste of society's resources. They should be given an option for assisted suicide. I hope that I can figure out a way to take myself out if I ever come into that kind of situation. I see no purpose for me to burden others with providing me with chronic care.