Aging Research

I think aging research is one of the most dangerous things going on in our society today. At first glance, it appears to be a good thing, trying to figure out how people age so that we can better treat the ravages of old age, maybe even prevent it. The problem is that aging is very closely related to dying, and if people don't die, then there won't be any room for any new people. Remember, life is like a merry-go-round. People have to get off before more people can get on. Basically, the quest to stop the aging process is a selfish attempt by some people to stay on the roller coaster longer.

I see two main possible scenarios happening if people do discover how to halt aging, and make no mistake about it, they will figure it out.

The first scenario is that the drug, assuming that it's a drug, is made available to everyone. Maybe it will be free so everyone can have it, or maybe it will just be cheap enough that most people will have it. Maybe it will be made available to the whole world, or maybe just those people who are loyal to whoever supplies the drug, it doesn't matter. The point it that the world will eventually reach a state where the world is full of people who won't die, at least not through aging. At that point, people will have to stop having children.

That's a little bit of an exaggeration. You will need some children to replace those who die through accident or aggression. Each person living will still be able to have two children, on average. It's just percentage of your life that you spend raising kids will be much smaller (assuming that we don't also slow down the rate at which kids grow up). That means that at anyone time, a much smaller percentage of the people will have kids, which means that kids will be spread much further apart, geographically, and won't be able to play with each other.

At least, that's what I was initially going to write. Now that I'm actually writing it, I realize that you could put all of the people who are currently raising kids in the same area, then the kids could all play with each other. There's a couple of other options also, but the point is that kids will be able to play with each other as they're growing up, and that's obviously an important part of development.

So maybe the only downsides to this scenario is that, one, for most of our lives, there won't be any children in our lives, and two, a lot of people who would have been born won't ever get the chance.

The second main scenario is that this immortality will only be available to the very powerful. I actually think this is the more likely of the two scenarios, after all, someone is going to control the drug, and why would they make it available to everyone else? These people will never lose power.

More than likely, the secret to making this drug, if that's what it is, will get out. There will probably be a couple of different power centers that will control the drug, and they will probably be at war. And the people who will fight this war? These people who have the drug can still die through violence, so you can bet your sweet hiney that they're not going to risk their precious lives. It's much better to risk the lives of the poor slobs who would die eventually anyway. They're lives are much more expendable.

And how will these immortals get the rest of us to fight for them? Probably through patriotism. There'll be a lot of rhetoric about how we all have to "stand united", about how these other people are killing our people, and about all of the evil things they're doing, and we'll believe it. There'll be name-calling on the radio, and putting down the "yellow-bellied liberals" who are afraid to fight the enemy.

Okay, I'm getting a little off topic here. Eventually, one of these powere will beat out the others, and then we'll all live happy lives, carefully looked after by these wise immortals who only have our best interests at heart. What a joyful world it will be then.

Also, my daughter is getting hungry, so I have to get her something to eat.

The End.