
Turning Back the Clock on Aging Cells - mhb
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/science/aging-dna-epigenetics-cells.html
======
orangecat
My unrealistically optimistic hope for the post-COVID19 world is that we
realize how terrible aging is both from a humanitarian and economic
perspective. If everyone had the risk profiles of 30 year olds, this pandemic
would be orders of magnitude less harmful.

~~~
tomp
Not sure about economic perspective... Lots of old people dying prematurely is
basically a huge relief on pension funds and health insurance (old slowly
dying people are the most expensive to treat).

Moral perspective is obviously different, though I'm not sure there's
additional value to _old_ human life over just _human life_.

~~~
chousuke
There's also the possibility that you won't _need_ all those pensions and
health care money if people can stay healthy and productive well past their
"natural" prime. The amount of accumulated knowledge and skills lost due to
aging is also non-trivial.

~~~
frequentnapper
but maybe that's a good thing. In my experience, most people are not flexible
in their mindset and so are averse to change their ideas based on changing
times. This would create a world like that of Altered Carbon where people at
the top just keep accumulating resources and never die and their ideals never
change.

~~~
red75prime
> their ideals never change

That wasn't enough. They are explicitly shown as slowly becoming amoral
monsters. In the end Laurens Bancroft says as much in open text to further
drive the point down.

------
jaytaylor
Paywall bypass: [http://archive.is/INUDK](http://archive.is/INUDK)

