[ALittleLight]

I think the main idea is to realize that aging is a disease we all have and it's lethal and we aren't doing enough to combat it. What's the budget for senescence research and why isn't it two or three orders of magnitude more?

Why isn't every ninety year old automatically enrolled in an experimental program to reduce senescence? Eighty? Seventy?

We should be desperate and taking desperate measures to fight aging tooth and nail. Instead, we seem to be casually studying it.

If we applied the world's productive and research efforts, and obliterated redtape, how much progress would we make?

[dragonwriter]

> I think the main idea is to realize that aging is a disease we all have and it's lethal and we aren't doing enough to combat it.

But...its not.

Its a label for the aggregate of the accumulated effects many different conditions and traumas. Its a very loose multicause syndrome, not a disease.

> Why isn't every ninety year old automatically enrolled in an experimental program to reduce senescence?

Because consent, among other reasons.

> We should be desperate and taking desperate measures to fight aging tooth and nail.

On a social level I think this is wrong for the same reason it is often wrong to desperately scrap at extending life on an individual level: the expected return in terms of life extension does not warrant the expected cost in terms of immediate quality of life.

[Kednicma]

...Are you suggesting sacrificing the old in order to save the old?

[ALittleLight]

Yes, of course. Given that they are going to die regardless, using the elderly for experimentation seems reasonable. We could be as humane and considerate and provide anaesthesia and care as much as possible, but it's a false kindness to let the dying die because trying to save them is risky and uncomfortable.

With twenty years of massive effort like this, and hard risk taking, would we have improvements against aging? Would the human-years saved be massively greater than the human-years we lost in experimentation? I think both answers are likely "Yes".

[dragonwriter]

> ...Are you suggesting sacrificing the old in order to save the old?

Sacrificing the liberty and quality of life of the current old for the benefit of the future (probably just rich) old.

[echlebek]

I don't know if death can really be considered a disease, since it's a fundamental part of evolution. If anything, lack of death could be detrimental to a species.

[computerphage]

You're wrong. Death is not a fundamental part of evolution.

Natural selection does not imply that the only type of selective pressure is survival. Death is merely one factor that affects reproduction. Further, only premature death matters directly for reproduction. Most people die long after they reproduce (or have had a chance to reproduce).

That's not to say that curing aging won't change the trajectory of the human species' evolution, but to be frank I don't really care about the human species. I care about humans. If someone said: "we should continually kill off the weakest 50% of humans to make the species stronger", I'd say that person is a monster.

[benlivengood]

According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4635662/ the only non-specific cause of death for senility (R54) is insufficient for cause of death and must be split into predicted causes if no positively identified disease or disorder was the cause of death.

Postponing death is a matter of treating diseases and disorders and preventing accidents and violence.

Evolution has non-death mechanisms too; bacteria exchange plasmids. With genetic modifications we're beyond the need for death anyway if we want species-level improvements.

[computerphage]

> Evolution has non-death mechanisms too

Very importantly: different reproduction rates. This is already more important in human evolution than premature death.