Would you want to live to be a thousand years old?
Ooh I don't like Clare Short! Almost pure prejudice I know but she's so stridently 'holier than thou' and was such a poor International Development Secretary of State. She was on Radio Four's Start the Week today talking about poverty and dividing up the world's resources. She wants people to read poetry rather than buy consumer goods. But she had no real answer to Andrew Marr's question about who would make them do it.
Kathy Sykes popped up to say that people don't need to be rich. She's a scientist who became more famous by flying off to exotic countries to be filmed doing faux-small-science experiments for TV audiences. She was on the show to publicise her new TV series for which I guess she gets a lot more than the 15 thousand dollars a year that she claims is all that people need to be happy. And I guess that Clare gets paid a lot more than that as well.
But what of living to be 1,000? Clare demonstrated the sort of politician she is by seemingly failing to listen to what Dr Aubrey de Grey was saying and angrily coming up with all sorts of instant objections. He was talking about a collection of essays exploring the politics of human enhancement and life extension being published by Demos and the Wellcome Trust. He believes "that the first person to reach 1000 years old may already be alive and [talked about] why this is something we should strive for".
The programme is, as so often, well worth a 'listen again' if you missed it......
posted by Hughes Views @ 10:01 am
3 comments
3 Comments:
First of all, the first people who will ever live to be 1000 years old, regardless of being already born or not, are either going to be filthy rich or absolutely poor, either way they will be treated like lab rats (hence the poor, it is easier to get poor people to play the guinea pig role).
So, would I like to be 1000? Well, I'd have to be rich and yet not famous so I could enjoy it, but I would, there would be plenty of time to learn, plenty of things to see, plenty of people to meet.
But the most important question here should be: do I think Earth will last another 1000 years, at this present rate of destruction of the ecosphere.
There my answer would be "probably no".
Mine would be, "Hell, yes!" and a greater proportion of us will be healthy and productive. But there will be fewer of us. And that's OK.
dcver - I'm sure the earth will last 1,000 years and fairly certain that mankind will as well. But I wonder what life will be like? Will we have retreated as Prof Lovelock suggests and then perhaps recovered? It's a shame we won't be here to find out.
There was some brief discussion about who might get the treatment on the programme.
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