yeah, I"m necroing a thread. Deal with it.
Two years have passed, and I find nothing saying they did it.
However, there were a number of questions and speculations in this thread that bear re-examination. At this point, nanometer scale manufacturing is commonplace. Assemblers do not yet exist, or if they do it is a very well kept secret. The prerequisites for their existence are no longer speculative, and that is FAR beyond the bounds of this doctor's probably fraudulent claims.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey has stated many times that the first man to reach 150 has likely already been born, with far less radical interventions than are theoretically possible with nanotech assemblers.
As was noted earlier in the thread, immunosuppressant therapies are now commonplace, and I personally know someone who was cured of terminal cancer by stem cell implantation.
Cyberpunk isn't dead, it's just not fiction anymore.
Being able to direct our own evolution is essentially inevitable. The consequences will be many, some intended and some not.
The ethical concerns are also many. But far less so than chopping off somebody's head in order to preserve another person. So, I am going to present an ethical argument IN FAVOR of life extension. The words are mine, the arguments are not. Though I came to the same conclusion, it was Dr. deGrey who convinced me of the inevitability of human immortality, though he dislikes the term. Or at least claims to.
I will dismiss out of hand the religious argument that death is natural. I find the people who promulgate such nonsense while being immunized against various diseases, going to doctors and, if need be, specialists, etc. to maintain their health far beyond the 'natural' span offensive, as well as morally bankrupt. If you actually believed that crap, you'd never see a doctor. Disease is natural too. We have spent countless lifetimes intentionally curbing or eradicating it. This is not a valid argument.
One I won't dismiss, and that gets brought up frequently as a "counter" to those of us desiring life extension, is the spectre of overpopulation. This one is actually a valid concern, but it's misplaced. It will happen anyway, as we have no natural predation sufficient to keep our open ended and unrestricted reproductive system in check. Life extension may exacerbate that problem by a few years. Maybe as much as a decade, if everyone living today were made undying. I'll come back to this, there is a solution. It is not, properly, an argument against life extension. It is a problem unto itself that MIGHT be exacerbated by life extension.
Another that I hear frequently expressed is the idiotic idea of becoming bored with living. Boredom, frankly, is brought on by either captivity (rare) or being boring. Other than that, it's a passing mood. As show stopping arguments go, it's ludicrous. There is a whole universe to explore, and if the proponents of string theory are correct, possibly many more. Besides, if life bores you that much, do the ecosystem a favor and become fertilizer. Yeah, I said that.
And that brings me back to overpopulation. I'll write much more on these intertwined subjects later, but the answer to overpopulation lies in the above paragraph. There is a WHOLE UNIVERSE that we have not explored. The biggest obstacle to interstellar exploration is our lifespan, as with our current understanding of the physical world, we cannot go faster than just a bit below the speed of light. Not by acceleration, at any rate. Which means that the distances are daunting. Given time dilation, this is less of a bugbear than people make it, but shipboard people would by necessity be a separate nation unto themselves, as ships would have a population that ages much more slowly (in comparison) to those left behind. Life extension actually eases this burden, as those who care to live will be around when the ships return.
But even within our own solar system, we've barely begun. Terraforming Mars appears to be well within our technological reach. Likely was around the time I was born, aside from sufficient rockets, which came to fruition just 8 months later.
Moreover, since it is LIKELY that such therapies would be based on nanotechnology, the problem of only the wealthy having access to it should decline very rapidly. It's going to happen that way, frankly, but it need not remain that way. The very wealthy will have it first because they will be the ones who can finance the initial research! This is not "unfair", it's simply inevitable. The only way to have it immediately widely disseminated would be to get a government to commit to the project via taxation for a very long time. While the idea of a hundred year 'special' tax is likely to appeal to every politician that ever lived, keeping that project as the actual recipient of the funds would simply not happen. Politicians are motivated by a lust for power, primarily, and any good they might do with it if they achieve it is at best a secondary consideration. Yes, I'm sure there are exceptions. But I've met a lot of politicians in my life, and not one of them failed to have that obvious lust for power. Not even Ron Paul, even though I do believe he meant well. So it falls to the very wealthy, and due to the jealousies and prejudices that allow civilization to be centrally ruled, it must needs be done in secret. This, I object to, but I am not unrealistic about it.
However, the man who finances and develops such therapies will be able to name his price. At first. If he's smart enough to build a system of open ended life extension, he's likely also smart enough to know that charging everyone a small amount is far more sustainable and desirable than charging a few exorbitant amounts. Besides, he would likely have friends and family that he wanted to keep around, and after a decade or so, the secret would no longer be secret.
Once it is known that it is possible, others will develop it, even if they don't have access to the initial research. We have seen this again and again with technology. What is revolutionary today is commonplace, mass produced, and done by machines in a very short period of time. Rapid development and deployment of technology at levels that were science fiction when I was a young adult are yesterday's news. This will happen.
Further, the inevitable development of nanotech assemblers is going to fundamentally alter how we interact with the universe REGARDLESS of whether it is applied to medical technology. So ALL of these things need to be addressed.
And, of course, one of my personal favorite reasons for having unlimited lifespans: "What the Captain meant" will become a historical phrase, cuz the captain will be able to speak for himself.
To be revisited.