Aging: Humanity's Biggest Problem

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Aging is humanity's biggest problem, because it causes the most death and suffering compared to all other causes put together. That includes causes such as starvation, violence, infectious diseases, environmental degradation, accidents—you name it. Aging is also much more likely to cause suffering and death for you personally and most of the people you know more than any other problem. Concerns about the effects of defeating aging are legitimate but do not outweigh the merits of saving so many lives and alleviating so much suffering.

Death and Suffering

The number of people killed by aging is enormous and far larger than all other causes of death combined. Out of the 150,000 people that die each day worldwide, aging kills 100,000 people. That means two-thirds of all deaths are caused by aging each day. Perhaps, an easier way to understand these huge numbers is by the following illustration: aging causes the equivalent of about thirty World Trade Centers or sixty Katrinas every single day. In the developed world, aging causes 90 percent of all deaths. In a single year, 36 million lives are lost due to aging versus 18 million due to all of the other causes of death.

Besides the huge number of deaths caused by aging, aging also causes the most human misery and loss compared to all causes combined on a personal and societal level. Most people do not die of aging instantly; few die peacefully in their sleep without suffering for years from chronic, age-related diseases. Usually, the older people become the more likely they are to develop diseases caused by the aging process such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. Older people often suffer from many diseases of aging at the same time. These diseases steadily increase disability and frailty years before eventually killing their victim. Families have to watch helplessly the inexorable physical and mental decline of an affected family member. Other family members are often forced to become caregivers; independence is lost both for themselves as well as for their disabled family member. In developed countries, aging costs society literally trillions of dollars per year for health care provided in the last year of a victim's life. This cost is more than a person consumes in their entire lifetime up to that point.

The Pro-Aging Trance

Despite all of the gigantic problems caused by aging, there seems to be little interest in actually doing something about it. There is no movement to defeat aging comparable to other causes such as global warming, AIDS, or—ironically—age-related diseases such as cancer and heart disease. In fact, there is almost no "movement" to defeat aging whatsoever. Why is that?

The reason why few people are interested in defeating aging is simply because it has not been possible to do much about aging until recently. This attitude has been termed the pro-aging trance. Since aging is seen as a grim yet inevitable reality, many people—that ordinarily think it is a good idea to cure any other age-related disease—try to put the horror of aging out of their minds by inventing reasons that make the elimination of aging as a cause of death not only seem impossible but also undesirable.

Concerns About Defeating Aging

Concerns about the effects of defeating aging are legitimate but do not outweigh the merits of saving so many lives and alleviating so much suffering—especially given the fact that there are foreseeable solutions for each of these concerns. Even if you find some of the proposed solutions (listed below) unconvincing, these concerns are likely not as important in comparison to the alternative—years of suffering and eventual death for you, your family, and your friends—which is guaranteed to happen if aging is not defeated. Another way to think about this is to consider if you are willing to sacrifice yourself and everyone you know in addition to the 100,000 people that die of aging every day for concerns that are theoretical at best and already have solutions at least as realistic as the concerns are themselves. If you do not mind suffering and dying of aging, other people should at least be given the chance to decide for themselves instead of having that choice gradually taken away from them by the aging process.

Besides the short solutions offered below, more detailed explanations regarding most of these concerns are available at an archived version of the Methusaleh Foundation's "Why End Aging?" page and a longer version can be found at an archived version of sens.org's "Why we should do all we can to hasten the defeat of human aging" page.

Societal Concerns

Overpopulation will become much worse.
Even if everyone stopped aging today, the population would not double soon. Since people would still be born at the same rate they are now, it would take at least a generation for overpopulation to become much worse. In that time, people might adapt to longer lifespans by having fewer children. However, if the rate of procreation does not automatically adjust enough to prevent runaway population growth, then as population increases, there will be growing pressure on society to deal with the problem. Society could adopt policies that encourage its citizens to have on average one child per family.

Only the rich will benefit.
There are are several possibilities for a broad and fair distribution of the therapies that would defeat aging. As with many new technologies, the rich may benefit first, but the rest of society will eventually gain the same benefits. Alternatively, society might choose to subsidize these therapies just as it subsidizes public education because of the enormous advantages (such as saving trillions of dollars per year for health care provided in the last year of an aging victim's life) that society would gain in adopting therapies that defeat aging as quickly as possible.

Cultural evolution will stagnate; there will be substantially less innovation because many people will become very old.
Since older people would be just as healthy as younger people and would also have much more experience to draw upon, older people would likely be more creative and innovative than younger people.

If old people will not die, they would bankrupt the health care and/or pension system.
Since older people would be just as healthy as younger people, there would be no need for a pension system, and health care costs would be the same for the old as for the young.

Dictators will live forever.
Other methods of "regime change" exist such as assassination, coup d'état, invasion, and the spread of democracy. Almost all dictatorships do not end due to the natural death of the dictator anyway; there is always a new dictator that takes over.

Priority Concerns

There are more urgent problems facing the world like the environment and starving people.
While the world has many problems, they are not as important in comparison to aging which causes the most suffering and death of all other causes combined. Also, working to defeat aging does not mean that other problems should not be worked on too.

We should become better people first.
With so much life at stake due to lack of aging, it is likely that people would want reduce risks from longer-term threats such as environmental degradation and violence much more than they do today.

Medical Concerns

If people lived significantly longer lives, they would just suffer more frailty, decrepitude, and dementia.
Since older people would be just as healthy as younger people, older people would not be frail, decrepit, or demented no matter how long they would live.

We should focus on the quality of life—not on the length of life.
Since defeating aging would make older people just as healthy as younger people, longer lives would be a welcome side effect.

Even with a youthful body, the brain will still age.
The defeat of aging would rejuvenate the brain as well as the rest of the body.

Personal Concerns

We would not afford to retire; we would have to work all of the time.
Some people might choose to work all of their lives, but others would be able to retire either permanently or semi-permanently by living off savings and investments.

With so much time, we would have no motivation to excel.
Since people will have much more time to excel, it is more likely that they will do more than they can do now rather than less.

With so much life at stake, we would avoid everything that is fun but risky.
Instead of avoiding fun but risky activities, we would significantly reduce or eliminate their risks just as we would have eliminated the risk of dying from aging.

Living forever would be boring.
Since even repetitive activities such as eating never get boring, boredom cannot become a permanent problem. The normal process of forgetting might also motivate people to engage in activities that they already performed even if those activities were less repetitive.

We would forget so much of our past that we would not be the same person.
Since people forget most of what they experience, there is no reason to think that this would become a much bigger issue with longer lifespans.

I am too old to have any chance of benefiting.
Even if you are too old, defeating aging would have a positive effect on the younger members of your family—not to mention the 100,000 people that could be saved if you help bring the defeat of aging closer by even a single day.

Philosophical Concerns

Life is already long enough.
Since older people would be just as healthy as younger people, there is no reason to think that they would not want to live longer than they do now. If for some reason they would choose not to live longer, they would have that choice, but they should also have the choice of continuing to live.

It would be playing god and not be natural to defeat aging.
Since almost everyone that raises this concern plays god all the time by inventing and using "unnatural" technology to combat natural diseases and disasters, it is arbitrary to single out the defeat of aging as a special case.

Life would become meaningless or inhuman without the stages of life that a person goes through due to aging.
This is a personal value judgment and would not be an issue since using the therapies that would defeat aging would be voluntary just as any medical technology that extends life today.

We would be denying future generations the right to be born.
Hypothetical people do not have rights and should certainly not restrict the right of real people to live and avoid suffering. Since everyone that is not pregnant all of the time denies hypothetical people the so-called right to exist every day and no one is worried about this, there is no reason to apply a double standard to the consequences of defeating aging.