EXPENDING OUR LIFE TIME IN THE NEAR BY FUTURE!!!

Question

As I was watching the Discovery channel, I heard about expending the human life time in the upcoming decades or even the upcoming years. I don't know why, but I'm really getting excited from only imagining that I will be able to double or even triple my life time! As the Discovery channel said, the scientists are currently experimenting this kind of staff on bio mice by slowing down the gene that controls the aging process. So what they say is that in the near by future, we would be able to take 'small' pills and double or even triple our life time by slowing down that gene! So my question is, when do you think is this going to happen, is it really possible that our generation will last a lot longer? Please take this question seriously, I'm not kind of joking about that, maybe in 30 years from know we would take a pill and live up to 200 years old! Throughout the 22nd century!

Answer 1

I'm curious to see what the availability and cost of the drug will be.  Will it be very expensive to buy, and will there be any restrictions?  What if only the most important people in the world are allowed to take it?  What if only people who can afford it are able to get it?  That wouldn't be fair to the lower-class and poverty-stricken people of the world.

I think that if it IS introduced, it should only be available to people who need it; that is, people who are sick or dying, who haven't lived a full life.  Rather than a man dying of cancer only having 3 years to live, maybe he could live 9 years.

If it was mass produced, then the world would become WAY too crowded.  Charts and models already show a trend at which in a couple decades and centuries, Earth will be very densely populated.  With a new drug like this, then the situation would be worse.

I also must add that aging is not the only thing that ends the life of a person.  Factors that also play a role include normal wear and tear of the body, murders, suicides, or just unfortunate things like car crashes.

Chances are, in 200 years of living, there will be at least one of those things that will kill you.

Very interesting topic, though!  I'm eager to see what happens to the test subjects.

Adam

p.s. I think you mean 'extending', not expending.  Expending means to use up something, and extending means to lengthen something.