🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <541@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1992Apr17.115049.27094@u.washington.edu> rbradbur@u.washington.edu writes:
>|Current medical practices end up compressing diseases into the last few
>|years of life in a generally fruitless but expensive effort (Fries, 1988).
>
>What's wrong with that?  So it doesn't increase my lifespan, it *does*
>decrease the time I spend suffering through to my death.  It increases
>my *effective* lifespan.
>
The primary problem is that we cannot afford to continue to do this.
Health care is currently consuming about 13% of GNP.  This is due to
the fact that we have to use increasingly expensive methods to keep
people alive in those last few years and that an ever increasing
percentage of the population is moving into this "expensive care group".
About 30% of the medicare budget goes to keeping people alive in the
last year of their life.

>In my perfect world I would be healthy until the last month or so,
>and then die suddenly.

Ah, but this isn't the way it works!  If you smoke you die relatively
quickly (usually from small-cell carcinoma of the lung) in your 60's.
If you are lucky to live into your late 80's your chances of coming
down with Alzheimer's rise significantly (estimates predict 30%
or more of the population > 85) where you end up in a semi-vegetative
state consuming a lots of health care dollars.  Estimates put
the cost of caring for Alzheimer's patients at several *trillion*
dollars in the early part of the next century.  [I am assuming that
Alzheimer's is an aging related disease caused by a genetic defect
in protein turnover in cells of the brain leading to eventual cell
death and that retarding the aging rate will postpone this as well
as other "diseases of aging".]

>
>|Thus one should argue that much of the $3+ billion spent on heart
>|disease and cancer research by NIH should instead be redirected into
>|research in retarding the rate of aging (and reducing the overall
>|disease rate), something which should result in the extension of
>|lifespan.
>
>Only if I can stay healthy until the last few years.  Extending my
>life, per se, is meaningless if I am stuck in bed.

Reduction in the rate of aging in animals tends to reduce the disease
incidence per time period.  Many fatal conditions (esp. cancer) would
occur much later in life but have the same time course they now have.
People who have a poor quality of health (e.g. smokers, obese, arthritic)
if they choose to extend their life would of course be extending the
"suffering" associated with their conditions.

>
>|  2) When I propose that we should be striving to live to 150, many
>|     people react quite negatively.  Is this because they don't understand
>|     that it would involve slowing the aging rate or because they fear
>|     overpopulation or is something else at work?
>
>I am not sure I *want* a slowed aging rate.  That seems like it would leave
>me *longer* in the debilitated, aged state.
>

This is a good example of how difficult it is to discuss this topic.
Different body systems start "aging" sometime between 20 and 30.
This starts out as a gradual process that ends up as an exponential
progression in your 60's and 70's.  For example cancer rates increase
roughly with age^5.  Retarding the aging rate would postpone the time
at which the curve shows a sharp increase until much later.

Additionally you need to consider the rate of medical progress.
40 years ago we didn't even know the structure of DNA.  Now we
are using it to put genes into people.  If you can retard the
rate of aging you may reach the point where advances in science
and medical technology are running ahead of the aging process.

Robert Bradbury