Social changes after the success for anti-aging
Suppose that telomerase induction factor is found and that it is
synthesized with very cheap cost. Or suppose that some other method is foud
and that it can prevent and reverse the aging with very low risk. The way to
the success is not a question here. What I want to ask is the problems after
the success. What will be caused in the human society by that success?
For example, the population problem will become more serious. A society of
ever young people will need more houses and employment of course. What are
the most serious problems in short term and in long term?
Keep in mind that other changes will be taking place, and will have
taken place, by the time any such method becomes available. (Ben
Bova's optimistic predictions put the date at 2030-2050.) By 2030 we
will have almost certainly expanded off the earth, with colonies in
space, on the moon, and perhaps on Mars, as well.
With all this extra space, population probably won't be a huge
problem. In fact, colonists will probably be encouraged to have large
families, in the interest of populating the colonies. Employment
probably won't be a problem either - in an ever-expanding society,
there's room for trillions upon trillions of people in just our own
Solar System, and plenty of things for them to do.
I don't think the problems will come from the medicine itself, but
rather from oppressive governments trying to prohibit the use of them
(like drugs today, for example). Religious groups will undoubtedly
lobby furiously to the government, which in turn will possibly enact
serious bans on life-extension medicines. This will, as with drugs
today and alcohol in the 1920's, create a huge black market for the
medicine, which will often pawn off flawed treatments to its patients.
Deaths would follow, the bans would become stricter, people would be
forced to their deaths by the government. Eventually, with no huge
government to enforce bans in the colonies, you would have
extraterrestrial civilizations of extremely old, healthy people, wise
beyond imagination. Perhaps this would cause an exodus from earth,
and the governments would try to stop that be refusing emigration, and
a revolution could follow.
Man, that was an interesting line of thought. Just let your thoughts
go and they run all over the place, huh?