Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I just don't see why this sort of thing qualifies as a need and not a want. Such a treatment, were it to ever actually leave a lab setting and become a consumer product, would almost certainly be so prohibitively expensive that only the ultra-wealthy could get it.
Why should our uber-rich overlords get to extend their lives even a single year while there are people starving to death around the world? There are so many better ways to spend research grant money.
Would you say that there is no need for better research for curing cancer just because new treatments will be super expensive, so only uber-rich zilionairs will benefit?
Probably not. (I hope)
Aging-caused diseases are really just some other type of health problems that leads to death. And curing such things is what medicine is doing. Heart bypass is a great example of helping to survive such problem.
And yes, new tech is usually expensive. And with adoption it became not only cheaper but better. Compare first mobile phones that was super expensive and could do nearly nothing to todays cheap smartphone that is more powerful than the computer that helped us to land on the Moon. If you care about health of poor and middle class people, you could rather help to accelerate the adoption, so more people can afford aging-reversal medicine sooner and not suffer from aging.
I think I see where you're coming from, but I disagree that longevity treatments are equivalent to medical research that seeks to cure diseases.
The way I see it, everything dies eventually, even the stars above. I think it's one thing to seek to ensure that everyone gets to reach their 'natural' end (i.e. old age) by addressing things like cancer or degenerative diseases, and a totally different thing to artificially extend a lifespan past those natural limits.
I don't really have logic there to back it up, it's just a different category in my head. The only time I really see this sort of stuff talked about is by loony wealthy people doing crazy shit like stealing their kid's plasma in the name of living longer, which is probably coloring my perception unfairly of real longevity research.
Edit: fixed a typo and clarification