…is it a cause of death?
There will be unintended consequences (good ones, in my opinion) of making it one. It implies that aging is itself a disease, and one that should be fought directly, rather than coming up with palliatives for individual symptoms of it (e.g., hypertension, muscle degeneration, senility, etc.), which would mean that the medical establishment would have to take gerontological research a lot more seriously than it currently does, both in terms of interest and resources. It also flies in the face of the deathist belief that we shouldn’t seek longer life, because it’s not “natural” (the naturalistic fallacy).
However (since 1957, I think) we don’t put ‘old age’ on a death certificate, but one or more specific terminal conditions that we normally think of as worthy of treatment and cure.
Interestingly, there are many people (including a few major bioethicists) who are in favor of doing what we can to treat and cure ‘disease’ and physical damage states, but believe it’s wrong to interfere with ‘normal aging.’
But beyond a certain point, where’s the difference?
What does a person who is kept free of all recognized disease, has good vision, good hearing, good muscle tone, good cardiovascular function, good lung function, no diabetes, no Alzheimer’s, no cancer, no osteoporosis etc (and many of these are considered age *related* diseases, as their probability increases with time), even look like? How much is left to ‘not interfere with’ besides maybe hair graying/loss? (Which we already consider to be something acceptable to fix) What *do* they die of?
Even some age-fundamental biological functions like breaking undesirable cross-linking (which might be part of a complete treatment of diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or some lens-related vision deficits, among other things), or rebuilding telomeres (which might be a part of cancer treatments) tend to fall naturally out of treating recognized disease states…
For those who want to vigorously improve health, yet not alter ‘normal aging’ (as opposed to those who openly state that this is their goal) I call this ‘walking backwards into life extension.’
Fewer people will be making it to “old age,” anyway, under Obamacare. Problem solved.
A common argument against life extension is that it would lead to a population explosion. Assuming the number of children per person and the time between generations are unchanged, the total population will vary linearly with increase in life span. So doubling the average lifespan would double our population (at equilibrium). However, it is likely that increasing the lifespan would also increase time between generations. If I knew I would live two hundred years, I would likely wait till I was fifty or so to have children.
I think the problem most people have with life extension, however, is the typical “nature is ideal” assumption, the belief that we “ought” to have an age limit because it is nature’s way.
Another argument is that we wouldn’t know what to do with more time. Perhaps some people wouldn’t, but I can certainly think of ways to spend an extra five decades. Longer lives would likely decrease the shortsightedness that is such a problem today. It might even decrease war. The more value one assigns to one’s life, the less carelessly one throws it thrown away.
Ouch! Hopefully this is going to be dealt with properly in the near future. You in the USA really don’t want Canadian style health care.
Folks who think we don’t deserve to live longer should all volunteer for “early retirement” (from living). Lead by example …
Every dollar collected under “Death Tax” provisions be allocated to solving the cause-of-death listed on the medical examiner’s results. It’s a “Sin Tax” for the sin of dying with too much money anyway, so apply it to the relevant sin – dying.
Rand, if your life is as long as your second sentence of this post, you’re golden (*grin*)
Sadly, it’s easier to type long sentences, even completely grammatical ones, than to live to old age.