5 ms·

Not trying to be rude, but what makes you believe that a universal cure for cancer would enable eternal life?

omgmajk 3y ago
No, it was more of a shortened version of I hope we solve aging, cancer, brain diseases and the like. I guess I should've been more clear.
- TaupeRanger 3y ago
  When you eliminate the things that kill you slowly, what remains are the things that kill you quickly. Perhaps in the future, almost everyone who dies will do so in under 5 minutes. That sounds great for the dying person, but maybe scary for family, friends, and coworkers? Interesting to consider.
  - omgmajk 3y ago
    Possibly, but I hope medicine rapidly advance so that such things happens less frequently.
- 9point6 3y ago
  Any kind of life extension breakthrough is going to introduce heaps of problems in how our society functions. It is fundamentally not designed to cope with people not retiring and dying. Plus, if we've not figured out how to live away from this planet in perpetuity around the same time, we're going to quickly run out of space too.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    > Any kind of life extension breakthrough is going to introduce heaps of problems in how our society functions. It is fundamentally not designed to cope with people not retiring and dying Looks like Japan is already there, and many developed countries are only increasing in population because of net immigration.
  - 542354234235 3y ago
    Yet we have seen that reducing disease, improving mortality rates, increasing life expectancy and quality of life leads to lower fertility rates. When people don’t have to put their children to work in the fields and factories, and children don’t die all the time from disease, people have less kids and focus more effort on them. Those were/are life extension breakthroughs that, while introducing their own societal problems and changes, were a huge benefit to society as a whole. Living in a rich country vs a poor country is living with life extension breakthroughs. Living now vs 200 years ago is living with life extension breakthroughs. Saying that the breakthroughs up to this point were ok, but any more would be some sort of unnatural abomination feels myopic and short sighted. Plus the idea that it is better to let people die rather than figure out how to adapt our society feels grotesque. How is the right answer “don’t research this life saving thing because if we save people’s lives then they will keep hanging around existing”?
bt4u 3y ago
[dead]
542354234235 3y ago
Not OP, but cancer isn’t a disease as much as it is an inevitable breakdown of our body processes in various ways, which manifest as different kinds of cancer. Our cells need to divide and make new cells, and it isn’t a perfect process. We have natural mechanisms to prevent or destroy any cell that divides wrong, but it’s a numbers game. We have 30 trillion cells in our body, and after a quintrillion divisions something is going to go wrong in a way that becomes cancerous. To be able to “cure” that would mean the ability to understand and manipulate the human body in such precise ways it would almost certainly also allow us to fix/cure/manipulate any body process, including aging.

No, it was more of a shortened version of I hope we solve aging, cancer, brain diseases and the like. I guess I should've been more clear.

TaupeRanger 3y ago
When you eliminate the things that kill you slowly, what remains are the things that kill you quickly. Perhaps in the future, almost everyone who dies will do so in under 5 minutes. That sounds great for the dying person, but maybe scary for family, friends, and coworkers? Interesting to consider.
- omgmajk 3y ago
  Possibly, but I hope medicine rapidly advance so that such things happens less frequently.
9point6 3y ago
Any kind of life extension breakthrough is going to introduce heaps of problems in how our society functions. It is fundamentally not designed to cope with people not retiring and dying. Plus, if we've not figured out how to live away from this planet in perpetuity around the same time, we're going to quickly run out of space too.
- belltaco 3y ago
  > Any kind of life extension breakthrough is going to introduce heaps of problems in how our society functions. It is fundamentally not designed to cope with people not retiring and dying Looks like Japan is already there, and many developed countries are only increasing in population because of net immigration.
- 542354234235 3y ago
  Yet we have seen that reducing disease, improving mortality rates, increasing life expectancy and quality of life leads to lower fertility rates. When people don’t have to put their children to work in the fields and factories, and children don’t die all the time from disease, people have less kids and focus more effort on them. Those were/are life extension breakthroughs that, while introducing their own societal problems and changes, were a huge benefit to society as a whole. Living in a rich country vs a poor country is living with life extension breakthroughs. Living now vs 200 years ago is living with life extension breakthroughs. Saying that the breakthroughs up to this point were ok, but any more would be some sort of unnatural abomination feels myopic and short sighted. Plus the idea that it is better to let people die rather than figure out how to adapt our society feels grotesque. How is the right answer “don’t research this life saving thing because if we save people’s lives then they will keep hanging around existing”?

bt4u 3y ago

[dead]

542354234235 3y ago

Not OP, but cancer isn’t a disease as much as it is an inevitable breakdown of our body processes in various ways, which manifest as different kinds of cancer. Our cells need to divide and make new cells, and it isn’t a perfect process. We have natural mechanisms to prevent or destroy any cell that divides wrong, but it’s a numbers game. We have 30 trillion cells in our body, and after a quintrillion divisions something is going to go wrong in a way that becomes cancerous. To be able to “cure” that would mean the ability to understand and manipulate the human body in such precise ways it would almost certainly also allow us to fix/cure/manipulate any body process, including aging.