Modern medicine has come a long way to make our everyday lives easier. Also it has all but wiped out diseases like polio and malaria in the first world, and advancements in technology push medicine to new heights each day. Already there is much talk about extending the lifespan of humans to new lengths. This exciting discussion has drawn some of the brightest minds together and without a doubt we will develop some sort of technique to extend our lifespans. However, it is unlikely that everyone will be able to benefit from these hypothetical procedures and they will most likely be expensive, as is all new medicine.

Even though the vaccine for polio has been around for decades, polio still remains unchecked in the third world. Our lack of ability to spread health to all classes of people around the world reflects our elitist attitudes. Those with power simply do not care about the villages in Africa suffering from TB, malaria and AIDS.

So it seems that this new, exciting, and expensive medicine would only be available to upper class citizens living in the first world. Since population growth is already a concern among world leaders, it can be assumed that these ''philosophers stones'' would not be handed out like cell phones, even if they were that easy to produce. At this point we would enter a world where the social elite live longer and longer lives, while the life expectancy of the rest of the world stay static. It sounds like science fiction and even mythology but in order to avoid population explosion that would be the likely distribution.

So what would be the social risks and consequences of this future? Is death something to be feared and loathed, or is it to be embraced? These unanswered questions need to be brought up in this discussion of longevity. If we are able to become permanent, should we?


much of my inspiration for this blog came from
http://www.prb.org/pdf06/NIA_FutureofLifeExpectancy.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?_r=1