While we probably won’t make big improvements in aging, once we address a few major diseases, and devise better ways to monitor the body, it’ll be a lot more common for people to live to 100.
Hopefully, Blue Zone research will give us some insight.
> While we probably won’t make big improvements in aging
Why? Ageing is molecular deterioration. In fact, all disease can be described as not being in the place they need to be or the structure/configuration they need to be.
Right now we have very few tools able to do anything more than assist the body's self-healing capabilities (including e.g. vaccines "training" the immune system) or some targeted biochemical attacks, or providing missing molecules. These are powerful, but it's like trying to fix an intricate detail while wearing boxing gloves. Actually, it's like the same metaphor but with boxing gloves the size of a city block.
In the coming decades we will develop molecularly precise tools able to manipulate individual molecules in-situ. I expect that at that time it will become quaint to talk of "ageing" rather than an amalgam of age-correleated diseases that are each addressable by molecularly precise treatments available for a price. A complete cocktail of treatments, which would take maybe a century to develop, would take any elderly person and give them a biological age of 25 with perfect health.
There is no biological reason why this is not possible. And every year we get closer to achieving molecular-scale tools.
> it’ll be a lot more common for people to live to 100.
Would you really want to though? I'm relatively young, but after about 70 I don't think I'd really want to live anymore.
This is mainly due to genetics, as the body and brain start to give around that time (in my family).
I'm sure it's different for other's, but for many just the fact that their bones are brittle enough to prevent basic things would be too much of a constraint to handle.
There's also the mental aspect of things. At some point I just want to "move on." As you lose loved ones (assuming we haven't cured all of death) and experience great sadness in life, you may not want to live in the torment of all your memories. Or maybe the positive memories out-weigh the bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>> Would you really want to though? I'm relatively young, but after about 70 I don't think I'd really want to live anymore.
All the people that I know that are in their 70s say that it all went by really fast. And they don't look like they are tired of living. This reminds me of the phrase "Youth is wasted on the young"
I guess I was assuming that it’s possible to have a good life in my 90’s. Your sample size of the 2 people seems a bit anecdotal. Know anyone famous in their 90’s?
Jimmy Carter
Henry Kissinger
Dick Van Dyke
Stan Lee
Chuck Yeager - broke the sound barrier
Anyway, that’s your choice. I suppose if we do learn how to treat aging to delay some of the symptoms, you can always change your mind.
It's more than just the two for reference. It's either dead or dying at that age for most people. In addition, my 94 year old neighbour is housebound and has leukaemia and just wishes someone would kill him. My grandmother is 93 and she can't even recognise any members of her own family any more and just wants to go to sleep forever. That's more the state of things.
The above are minor and major celebrities. They have a higher standard of care.
If we can increase quality of life significantly, I'm all for it but until then, shoot me when I get to 80.
Counter-anecdote, I just had the pleasure of meeting a 90-year-old man who was still very mobile, very compus mentis (we had a nice chat that I could have had with someone of any age), and who was surrounded by a loving, social family. Who would complain about that?
No one would complain about that, but few people are that fortunate. In my academic field, I know of some elderly scholars who managed to reach their 80s and 90s. Only two are still in a condition to do scholarship. The rest had, at best, to give it up because they could feel their minds deteriorating, or, at worst, they just completely vanished from the scene and it turned out they were suffering from dementia and their families had to take care of them.
I’d love to live to an advanced age if I could still do what I do now, but I agree with the OP that old age in a deteriorated state would suck.
While we probably won’t make big improvements in aging, once we address a few major diseases, and devise better ways to monitor the body, it’ll be a lot more common for people to live to 100.
Hopefully, Blue Zone research will give us some insight.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone