X-Message-Number: 14728
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Re:  Immortality by 2029?
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 12:59:41 PDT

In Cryonet #14722, Scott Badger wrote,
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message #14722
>Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 19:06:25 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Scott Badger <>
>Subject: Immortality by 2029?
>
>Forwarding from Extropian List:
>
>***********************************
>From Internet Wire,
>


>http://www1.internetwire.com/iwire/release_clickthrough?release_id=17292&category=Medical/Health
>-
>
>"Human Immortality Is Achievable By The Year 2029,"
>Proclaims Ronald Klatz, M.D., Pioneering Biotech Guru
>And Founding Physician Of Anti-Aging Movement
>
>CHICAGO, IL -- (INTERNET WIRE) -- 10/02/2000 -- In the
>
>October 2000 issue of Anti-Aging Medical News, an
>official scientific newsletter servicing a
>physician readership in excess of 50,000 worldwide,
>Dr. Ronald Klatz, Senior Fellow at Tufts University,
>President of the 10,000 member American Academy of
>Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M, Chicago, IL), and
>inventor/administrator of more than 100 US biotech
>patents, advances his longstanding thesis that life
>expectancy projections based on pastcast models will
>be quickly abandoned in favor of a new forecasting
>projection of longevity that focuses on five emerging
>technologies which, taken collectively, will be the
>singlemost important innovation that delivers
>boundless vitality to humankind within the next three
>decades.
>

I skimmed through the paper on A4M's Website, <http://www.worldhealth.net>, 
and I have the following observations:

(1)  I don't know what Klatz means when he writes that medical knowledge is 
"doubling" every 3.5 years.

(A) Medical knowledge isn't fungible.  Some discoveries are much more 
important than others, as well differing in kind.  "Doubling" the amount of 
less-important knowledge doesn't necessarily get us closer to immortality.

(B) Knowledge is still generated by humans.  Automating certain processes, 
like gene sequencing, makes certain tasks more efficient, but humans still 
have to evaluate the significance of what these processes turn up.  And the 
number of working biomedical scientists certainly isn't doubling in the 
world every 3.5 years.  Indeed, in the U.S. a lot of scientists have trouble 
finding jobs in their chosen fields.  So how can the alleged rate of 
knowledge-generation be growing orders of magnitude faster than the growth 
of human capabilities?

(2)  Assuming that Klatz's extrapolation is nonetheless on target, it 
reinforces my feeling that the cryonics movement has lost the initiative in 
conquering death.  For a long time cryonicists were nearly the only ones 
talking about how progress will conquer aging and mortality, but today 
people outside of the movement are arguing that we can attain these goals in 
a matter of a few decades without having to take the cold ambulance ride to 
some remoter future.  I find that encouraging, but the trend isn't 
necessarily good for cryonics per se, especially if cryonics is viewed as 
pseudo-scientific and technologically stalled, unlike stem cell engineering, 
for example.

(3)  Klatz ends his paper with a recommendation that people who plan to live 
much longer than currently possible, using the foreseeable technologies he 
discusses, begin to deal with the long-term consequences of their current 
actions, especially regarding the livability of the planet.  (For example, 
you need LOTS of sunscreen to go outside in the daytime in Punta Arenas, 
Chile, this austral summer!)

I have been thinking a lot about that myself lately, especially since I'm 
struck by how few elders I know display what I would consider wisdom, 
prudence or good judgment.  I suspect the idea of the elders' wisdom is a 
cultural myth that was more plausible in premodern times when the problems 
of life were simpler and old people were genuinely scarce, hence their 
advice was more valued.

Today a much larger cohort of people can survive to advanced ages, and with 
the larger sample living in a more complex and changeable environment we can 
see that a lot of them don't seem all that competent, even if they are 
relatively healthy.  Modern civilization has built a kind of prosthetic 
environment that protects people from many consequences of their own 
stupidity, so we can see that a lot of basically imprudent and improvident 
people have survived to old age, as currently defined.  But do they have 
"wisdom"?  I don't see evidence of it.

Klatz's advice also implies that radical free-market libertarianism might 
conflict with long-term livability.  Although a lot of Immortalists are 
libertarian, the converse isn't true.  Libertarians for the most part are 
short-range "greedonists," as Mike Perry calls them, who opppose efforts to 
protect the environment because they interfere with libertarians' idea of 
having a good time.  They "discount the future" because they don't expect to 
be alive beyond a few decades to deal with the consequences of their current 
activities.  A serious libertarian Immortalist, it seems to me, would try to 
integrate long-term costs into his life planning, and would be more open to 
doing something about environmental degradation, even if that means giving 
up some current luxuries.  Health doesn't exist in a vacuum, after all.

(4)  Finally, it's interesting that Klatz and FM-2030 (unfortunately now 
cryonically indisposed) both picked approximately the same date for the 
conquest of death.

Trans-millennially yours,

Mark Plus, Expansionary
"Letting go of the 20th Century."

"The progress of society is nothing but the slow and far remote result of 
steady, laborious, painstaking growth of individuals.  The man who makes the 
most of himself and does his best in his sphere is doing far more for the 
public good than the philanthropist who runs about with a scheme which would 
set the world straight if only everybody would adopt it."  -- William Graham 
Sumner, "Discipline."

"WWXD?
("What would Xena do?")

Affiliations:
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
http://www.alcor.org
American Atheists
http://www.atheists.org
Society for Venturism
http://www.venturist.org

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