[swatow]

I think that, in spite of some pro-aging/death views, society acts to prevent aging and death by treating disease.

You seem to want a radical solution, but I think the main reason that there are few people trying to directly prevent aging/death, is because the medical profession doesn't consider this possible at this time.

[fizixer]

Here's the truth about the medical profession, based on my internet search over the last couple of years as an enthusiast on this topic.

It's a sleeping giant. It's like the mechanical engineers of 1880s who had the idea of the impossibility of flight so entrenched in their minds that not only they kept claiming that it's impossible, they were quite proactive in dismissing the efforts of those trying to do something about it. (I always like to use this link: http://www.spacequotations.com/predictions.html).

If people had attempted flight in 1690s, it would not have gotten us anywhere. The science and engineering wasn't developed enough. But at some point, someone had to realize that "yes, now we have enough knowledge, resources and tools, to give it a last push". And that was what flight pioneers realized in 1890s, and 1900s.

For aging, are we in the 1690s, or 1890s of flight?

If it comes down to medical community agreeing to seek an answer to that, consider that a solved problem for someone like me.

The problem is, most medical researchers simply dismiss the idea as over-ambitious, resort to ad-hominems, socioeconomic criticisms, and (surprise, surprise) the pro-aging trance, instead of technical critique. So the honest discussion about the technology gets lost in all that noise.

[dullcrisp]

> Here's the truth about the medical profession, based on my internet search over the last couple of years as an enthusiast on this topic.

You say this without irony?

[hueving]

You don't have to be a member of a community to recognize something about it from the outside.

People can critique scientology without being members. The same can be done with medical research goals.

[dullcrisp]

Yes, but the criticisms of Scientology having merit doesn't mean that these criticisms have merit. And people thinking that airplanes were overly ambitious when they were just around the corner doesn't mean that a cure for death is just around the corner.

Both those things might be true, but I would need stronger evidence than has been presented thus far to convince me.

[Udo]

Take it from someone who went to medical school: you'd be hard-pressed to find people with an anti-aging/anti-death stance among a random sample of medical professionals.

It's a social experiment you can actually do yourself: find an MD or med researcher who's easy to talk to and ask them about the subject. Chances are, they mirror the exact position laid out by fizixer. You might argue this is because they reflect the opinion of our population at large, but - anecdote alert - in personal conversations I found that medical professionals are in fact more likely to assert that death is natural and/or can't be opposed on religious grounds.

Similarly, regarding life extension, the majority opinion seems to be that this is literally evil since it would flood the industrialized nations with elderly and sick people. Yes, that means they can't wrap their heads around what life extension actually stands for (which is the opposite of what they claim).

That said, hueving is absolutely correct: judge an argument by its merits, not by the credentials of the person putting it forth.