I’m pretty certain that even if we figure out how to halt or reverse “aging” as in “the (set of) root cause(s) of the progressive syndrome of morbidities and heighten d disease risk universal among 80+ year old people today”, that there would be other forms of long-term accumulating damage to understand and reverse on longer time scales than a single century.
Some examples of long-term accumulating damage that we’ll eventually need to address, but not before people are reliably living to 100+: lead ion accumulation over a lifetime, ditto a bunch of other long-lived poisons, scar tissue accumulation, accumulation of various “dusts” (ex: asbestos) in the lungs, etc.
I think we’re currently, as a civilization, hunting for whatever lifespan/heathspan low-hanging fruit might exist, and will eventually shift to more systematic approaches as our civilization further understands aging and learns to do nanotech.
In the mean time, I’m basically keeping my eyes open for preventable permanent damage sources to avoid, to make my personal time limit less urgent. I take dust inhalation very seriously, ditto trace heavy metal exposure, ditto sunburn.
I’m pretty certain that even if we figure out how to halt or reverse “aging” as in “the (set of) root cause(s) of the progressive syndrome of morbidities and heighten d disease risk universal among 80+ year old people today”, that there would be other forms of long-term accumulating damage to understand and reverse on longer time scales than a single century.
Some examples of long-term accumulating damage that we’ll eventually need to address, but not before people are reliably living to 100+: lead ion accumulation over a lifetime, ditto a bunch of other long-lived poisons, scar tissue accumulation, accumulation of various “dusts” (ex: asbestos) in the lungs, etc.
I think we’re currently, as a civilization, hunting for whatever lifespan/heathspan low-hanging fruit might exist, and will eventually shift to more systematic approaches as our civilization further understands aging and learns to do nanotech.
In the mean time, I’m basically keeping my eyes open for preventable permanent damage sources to avoid, to make my personal time limit less urgent. I take dust inhalation very seriously, ditto trace heavy metal exposure, ditto sunburn.