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Posted on Nov 29, 2006, 1 p.m.
By Bill Freeman
Something I run into occasionally is people comparing the idea of healthy life extension to the idea of faith in an afterlife, or similarly, making the assumption that anyone interested in superlongevity believes that it is somehow a "given". Well, superlongevity is not a given. It certainly won't be for a long, long time, if ever, since each time someone crosses a new "upper limit" of human age, new challenges at keeping that person alive are going to present themselves.
Something I run into occasionally is people comparing the idea of healthy life extension to the idea of faith in an afterlife, or similarly, making the assumption that anyone interested in superlongevity believes that it is somehow a "given".
Well, superlongevity is not a given. It certainly won't be for a long, long time, if ever, since each time someone crosses a new "upper limit" of human age, new challenges at keeping that person alive are going to present themselves. And remember that aging is only one challenge sentient beings face; surely in the future there will be new and unanticipated threats to sustaining our lives, but for now, age-related death is an immediate concern for so many that it can scarcely be ignored. Supporting longevity research is a way of addressing this concern, and this sort of support has nothing to do with blind faith.
Blind faith in longevity science coming to "rescue" you is just as silly as blind faith in the notion of pink rabbits coming to make you breakfast tomorrow morning. Supporting longevity research is acknowledging that there is nothing special about aging that makes it any less solvable than any other complex engineering problem -- it's not a mystical force or a cosmic directive, it's a biological process. And the means of counteracting this process won't be mystical forces either -- they'll be the result of a lot of hard work and scientific inquiry.
Most modern articles are written with the daily-paper reader in mind: someone who skims articles, notices one or two things that make him go, "Hmm, wow, I didn't know that!", before going off to watch the latest nighttime drama. It is essential that anyone who takes life extension seriously learn to read scientific literature and develop good critical thinking skills.
