[kiba]

I'm not against research to better understand aging and diseases that are a consequence of aging such as dementia and various cancers. But when I read this announcement I feel an air of arrogance that fucking annoys me.

Your feeling of arrogance seems to be a product of a cultural programmed reaction. There's no shortage of movies, cultural works, and tv shows that tell us that immortality is unwanted, unattainable, selfish, or somehow otherwise bad, starting with our oldest myths and stories, Epic of Gilgamesh.

If the goal of medicine is to cure or prevent every diseases and dysfunction in the human body, then we must conclude that as an unavoidable side effect that being healthier will extend long life.

If we care about our fellow human beings, especially the elderly, then we do not want them to live in pain, to be in dementia, or otherwise have a poor quality of life. We must also recognize that many of them may not want to die.

I applaud the pursuit of longevity and health so long it is paired with the egalitarian outcome in that everybody will be entitled and receive it, regardless of who they are and what they did.

[daenney]

> I applaud the pursuit of longevity and health so long it is paired with the egalitarian outcome in that everybody will be entitled and receive it, regardless of who they are and what they did.

And therein lies the crux. I don’t believe that’ll be the actual outcome.

[kiba]

We are already doing the unegalitarian distribution of medicine with horrifically expensive drugs for fighting cancers.

We are also seeing relatively egalitarian drugs like mRNA vaccine against COVID being distributed to the population at large, only that some refused it. Meanwhile, the third world just lag behind in vaccination.

Some of which can be solved through better social cohesion and better systems, but a lot of the challenge will be simply in getting the cost of technology down or finding cheaper way to do something.

Therapies for longevity is unlikely to be a single drug or treatment, more likely a whole series of them. I also don't know if they're going to be expensive or cheap.

However, the best and most effective medicine in the world are often very cheap or relatively so, such as mRNA vaccines(~25 USD or so) and they saved countless lives. I am hopeful that more effective medicine will be cheap and affordable, or at least basically 'self-funding' in that lives saved will dramatically affect the economic balance sheet of countries for the better.

[timonovici]

> I applaud the pursuit of longevity and health so long it is paired with the egalitarian outcome in that everybody will be entitled and receive it, regardless of who they are and what they did.

Aren't Americans struggling getting diabetes medicine? And chemo? Is it a reasonable expectation that this treatment, whatever it is, will be any different?