| >Some of us actually appreciate being a life form, expiration date and all. Good for you. Some of us, however, think that people should be able to choose their own fates, time of death included. People are not defined by their expiration dates, but by their lives, accomplishments and so on. To accept death as "natural" makes as much sense as accepting polio as natural and just allowing the disease to ravage the body instead of applying medicine. Hey, it's "natural" after all, right? Can't be bad if it's from nature, right? >To live long/forever is to halt evolution. FYI evolution does not mean progress, just adaptation. What does it matter to halt or slow down this completely arbitrary mechanism at this point in our evolution? (Which many would argue happened a long time ago anyways.) >I'm more than happy to take my shot at life, live my 8 decades, then get out of life's way. After a certain stage in life, we take more than we contribute in terms of scarce resource. It's funny to think that the life expectancy has increased so much in the last few millennia. What would you have said if the average life span was around 25 like it was a few thousand years ago? >When my time comes, I will be more than happy to get out of the way and let time march on. Okay, go ahead and be apathetic about death if you want, but don't pretend you're some vanguard of the sanctity of life. I'm not saying life extension will be without problems, of course. All I'm saying is that accepting death as inevitable when we are ever closer to conquering it, is not noble, it's defeatist. It's clinging to tradition. I say research away and may our children live to at least 200. |