By Kristina Roic
Be careful what you wish for because apparently, we are all going to live forever.
The authors of Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever claim that in the next two decades science will reverse aging in humans.
Experiments show that gene manipulation in worms has enabled them to live six times their regular lifespan. If anti-aging scientists succeed in achieving the same result in humans, we too could live six times longer.
Great. Just what this overpopulated, polluted world needs: a bunch of plastic 600-year-olds running around.
Sure, living that long might be interesting considering all the changes you might see. Thanks to anti-aging science you might even pull it off disease-free. But aside from this being completely unnatural, just think about the tremendous stress life extension would place on the earth’s ability to provide for basic human needs.
Immortality goes beyond our biological capabilities. It would force nature to balance the equilibrium, which could have devastating consequences. Newton explained it when he said, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And in this case it’s overpopulation.
But Dr. Terry Grossman, co-author of the book, says life extension would have no bearing on overpopulation because “birth rates in economically strong pockets of the globe are falling.”
It does not matter that birth rates are low in Japan and Western Europe. Extending lives by six times or more would only exacerbate overpopulation.
According to the Population Institute, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C., the current world population is over 6.3 billion and will increase by 2.5 billion in the next 47 years. This will contribute to a near doubling of food requirements.
Dr. Grossman, however, says that by the time immortality is actualized, future technological shifts will have been developed to take care of pollution and food scarcity problems already associated with overpopulation.
I’m no scientific expert but I know it’s weak to base an argument on future concepts that haven’t even been developed yet. But, if science allows people to live forever then we better find some solutions to pollution and food scarcity problems and we better do it fast.
We are already in a vicious cycle of the survival of the richest. The U.S., which accounts for six per cent of the global population, already consumes 30 per cent of its resources.
A child born today in the U.S. will produce 52 tons of garbage, consume 10 million gallons of water, and use five times the energy of a child born in the developing world by the age of 75.
Longer life expectancy in the developed world means those people will consume even more resources.
So, if you really want to do the world a favour, resist the urge to take the magic blue pill and embrace mortality.