World's only Immortal being.

[Jaybar]

Just give it to astronauts and a large colonizing group so they can travel to and colonize a new planet. Dummies.

[braaaanch]

I want to be able to afford to live forever when the time comes.

fucking lol.

i hope im getting whoosed.

[Chun Liroy]

I also think you're under-thinking the demand for this. I can't really see people who are seriously religious doing this, because well that kind of fucks with their whole "cycle of life"

Well I completely forgot about them, but still after this generation dies we can instill the new generation with different values by burning everything of importance to religion.

[Uzor]

Let me show you what I mean. First of, if it was only available to rich people, there wouldn't be much profit in it. They buy it, and then what? They're immortal for the rest of their life? If its a drug that needs to be taken all the time, then there's more profit in it. But then it will likely get more cost-effective over time and be available to a larger portion of the population.

If it get highly restricted, odds are politicians will get the great idea that they are important to lead the country, and that they need it for the country's best. This will eventually lead to people getting upset about why politicians should get to live forever when they can't. This will lead to a lot of tumult in the country, and likely lead to a lot of deaths and come at a great economic cost for the country when people refuse to work unless they can get the medicine too. After all, I would bet a great majority of people would want to live longer.

Now, if the medicine get available to a larger portion of the world, let's say, all of the rich countries, it would lead to a spike in population over the course of 100 years. Look at this chart:

clicky

As you can see, in richer countries where the average life span is roughly 70-80 years, women get on average 1-2.4 kids per woman. This leads to the population not growing much or at all. The way the world growth is today, it will cap out at around 10 billion, which is is roughly the same ammount that the world can support.

Now, the problem with an immortality medicine available to the richer countries is, of course, that every 100 years, the population would increase by 100-200%. This would not only lead to a huge increase in homelessness and unemployed, it would create chaos within the country itself, as there would not be enough food to support the new population.

This means it would need to be highly restricted, which would lead to the first situation where it would lead to great economic cost to the country.

The way I see it, the only possible use for the medicine would be for space travel, and not for public sale.

[Jaybar]

Increase infant mortality rates and wars. Problem solved.

[Uzor]

And those are supposed to be good things? >.O Why would you want to increase infant mortality rate when you increase life span? I highly doubt people will say "Oh well, we need to kill this infant". Especially when stupid people in America want to make abortion illegal.

[noblemountain]

There will never be a cure for something when the treatment makes more money.

[MoogleAura]

^^Wooooosh

Nobody dying, more and more people being born. The current population is already way over what the planet can sustain. Look at the millions of starving, destitute people around the world already.

I wouldn't be surprised if all the rich, immortals started killing off the poorer people and making holiday homes in Africa, India etc.

[Feedmenow]

Living forever isn't even good.

I mean, if people don't die from aging, the world will get overpopulated fast. And then everyone will die from other reasons, such as starvation, lack of water, or lack of space to actually sleep, assuming you can somehow circumvent the other problems.

There won't ever be a way to be immortal. You still need to eat and drink. And if the medicine get expensive, it will become an issue of "who can afford it" and "Who is important enough to get the treatment". And I can tell you right now, people will not be happy with politicians getting the immortality drug because they're considered more important than the rest. It will start a revolution and war. No one want politicians that live forever, except the politicians.

Read "A Modest Proposal". It has the solutions to all your problems.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

[Nightplague]

If you can see then then maybe you can see why your statement is not a very well thought out statement. If there is profit to be made, then we will see it eventually. Welcome to capitalism? I don't really know what to tell you.

I just seriously doubt something like this would be a thing where you simply chug a bottle of "Life-O-Max", as opposed to a rather painful process of slowly replacing parts and breeding new cells upon the victims.. Did I say victims? I mean patients. And what about the brain? How would it be replenished, and futher more memory kept intact? You'd have to reproduce exact copies for each individual, and it'd be more likely to find a permanent cure to all different kinds of mutaded cancer at once. And that, I can see happening actually. It isn't entirely ridiculous.

I imagine it works for jellyfish because their lives are based on impulses. They don't 'revive' themselves, they replenish themselves by consuming new "constructions material".

Demand alone isn't enough to drive something through. I don't believe there is profit to be made, that's my point.

[Feedmenow]

On a more serious note...

And what about the brain? How would it be replenished, and futher more memory kept intact? You'd have to reproduce exact copies for each individual, and it'd be more likely to find a permanent cure to all different kinds of mutaded cancer at once. And that, I can see happening actually. It isn't entirely ridiculous..

Look into stem cell research for recovering lost or degrading tissues or organs. If the jellyfish/lobster approach to slowing aging can be applied to humans, then we can prevent stem cells from being needed in the first place.

[Nightplague]

On a more serious note...Look into stem cell research for recovering lost or degrading tissues or organs. If the jellyfish/lobster approach to slowing aging can be applied to humans, then we can prevent stem cells from being needed in the first place.

It's not the regeneration of the organ that's improbable, as much as maintaining the memory if it was done.

[Pirian]

I just seriously doubt something like this would be a thing where you simply chug a bottle of "Life-O-Max", as opposed to a rather painful process of slowly replacing parts and breeding new cells upon the victims.. Did I say victims? I mean patients. And what about the brain? How would it be replenished, and futher more memory kept intact? You'd have to reproduce exact copies for each individual, and it'd be more likely to find a permanent cure to all different kinds of mutaded cancer at once. And that, I can see happening actually. It isn't entirely ridiculous.

I imagine it works for jellyfish because their lives are based on impulses. They don't 'revive' themselves, they replenish themselves by consuming new "constructions material".

Demand alone isn't enough to drive something through. I don't believe there is profit to be made, that's my point.

Take some biology classes and get back to me. It is obvious you have no idea at all about what you are talking about.

Spoiler: show

Your brain doesn't break down on its own. It only does due to disease. The majority of age is because of mistakes during mitosis that aren't corrected and build up over time, which is what the article addresses.

[Feedmenow]

It's not going to fix the memory lost due to degradation, but it will (hopefully) stop the degrading.

[Pirian]

It's not going to fix the memory lost due to degradation, but it will (hopefully) stop the degrading.

Exactly. A lot of degradation comes from disuse anyways. I remember reading somewhere that senior citizens that put their brain to use often, with things such as crossword puzzles, were very significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer's. Funny how that works with most of your body, huh?

[Galkaeater]

Theres always the genophage if things get out of hand

[Chun Liroy]

There's always darwinism if this thing gets out of hand.

[kuronosan]

^^Wooooosh

Nobody dying, more and more people being born. The current population is already way over what the planet can sustain. Look at the millions of starving, destitute people around the world already.

I wouldn't be surprised if all the rich, immortals started killing off the poorer people and making holiday homes in Africa, India etc.

Are you kidding me?

Do you know how much food is wasted every day in the U.S. alone?

The populations of the world aren't starving or poor. People are fucking greedy and don't want to share.

I'd say if anything the problem is places where people can live are zoned commercial and shitty stores and malls that are 10 miles away from the next closest shitty store and mall is taking up valuable real-estate that could be used to give people homes.

Food is the least of this planet's worries.

And, what Pririan said about aging is correct. Mitotic errors which cleave the ends of our DNA are what result in aging. Eventually essential factors are taken from our chromosomes to the point where Mitosis can no longer correctly replicate the cells and they are not properly replaced. When this process has reached the point where our body can't keep up with it anymore, we die.

[Uzor]

Read "A Modest Proposal". It has the solutions to all your problems.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

I'm going to assume this is a joke post, as children will never become food for the majority of the world.

On the off-chance you're serious, it still poses problems, as the majority of the energy is lost every time you go up the food chain. That is, the majority of the energy consumed by a child would be lost when eaten by a human.

For example, producing 1kg of salmon requires 4kg kg of fish, that could otherwise be used as food. A more serious solution to the food problem if this becomes a reality is to become a vegetarian. 60% of all the food we grow, are used to feed the animals which we eat. This food could in stead be used to feed us. This would also support any eventual water shortage we could face, as it requires roughly 35000 liters of water to produce 1kg of meat.

So as you can see, meat is a rather inefficient source of food, albeit important one.

And, as Kuronosan said, a fuckload of food is wasted every day.

[Zoolander]

Hah yea above just beat me to it, we have plenty of food. There is no food crisis in the world, at least not in the way a lot of people seem to think. There is however, a very big lack of equal and efficient distribution and many people lack the ability to acquire food, which needs to change. Like for example, Ireland was exporting food during that stupid potato famine. Or out in Bangladesh, they had a famine without the food production per head going down at all.

Think we are a long ways away from having a serious debate about the effects of everlasting life, lol. Although IDK how the fuck anyone can claim that it wouldn't be a huge money maker, some of these posts seem like weird trolling attempts.