What if we could slow down the aging process, halt it entirely, or even reverse it - What would this mean for our society?

That’s freaking scary and I hope it never happens.

Where there’s life, there has to be death. It’s a balance.
People live long enough these days…our healthcare costs are sky-high.
This would just make things worse and lead to overpopulation…

Wow…I can’t believe people actually would want to live forever…if you ask me, this is just how people are trying to escape what they are afraid. The truth is, we all have to face it.

What we’ve seen in the past few decades is that when you remove the stress of aging from the body, you die from things other than mere old age.

How many forms of cancer only show up in people who are 60+? What about adult-onset diabetes? Multiple sclerosis?

It’s one thing to defeat aging—it’s another thing entirely to cure all diseases and afflictions, and the more progress you make on the former, the more progress you have to make on the latter just to keep up.

Well, folks would have to stop popping out all those young’ins.

It means we’re going to need a bigger sandbox to play in.

We’d have to increase the pension age hugely.

I asked a similar question a while back
http://www.fluther.com/disc/36958/how-would-life-change-if-we-all-could-live-to-be/

We would have to prevent child births by legal mechanisms

Stagnation

we’d all look like Benjamin Button!

It would mean a serious overpopulation problem. We have enough issues in that realm already. I think we should just let nature take it’s course where aging is involved.

the Earth is already rejecting our presence. If you were more over-populated than we are now it would be a terrible thing. You get one life. Live it for as long as it lasts I say.

@LostInParadise – Thanks for the link to the related Fluther question.

@seekingwolf – There’s the so-called transhumanist movement (I’m not part of it but I keep reading about their ideas) and the people belonging to it strongly object to the idea of dying. While it certainly creates a lot of additional problems it could also solve a few existing ones.

@mattbrowne

Solve a few problems? And what are those?
I def think that the cons of “cheating” death outweigh any possible benefits, if any.
More people need to read Tuck Everlasting.

“Don’t fear death Winnie, fear the un-lived life.”

@seekingwolf – Yes, I agree the cons outweigh the benefits, but there are some while other measures seem rather unethical. Human enhancement refers to any attempt to temporarily or permanently overcome the current limitations of the human body through natural or artificial means.

Here’s an example:

Brain implants, often referred to as neural implants, are technological devices that connect directly to a biological subject’s brain – usually placed on the surface of the brain, or attached to the brain’s cortex. A common purpose of modern brain implants and the focus of much current research is establishing a biomedical prosthesis circumventing areas in the brain, which became dysfunctional after a stroke or other head injuries. This includes sensory substitution, e.g. in vision. Other brain implants are used in animal experiments simply to record brain activity for scientific reasons. Some brain implants involve creating interfaces between neural systems and computer chips, which are part of a wider research field called brain-computer interfaces. Brain-computer interface research also includes technology such as EEG arrays that allow interface between mind and machine but do not require direct implantation of a device.

Neural-implants such as deep brain stimulation and Vagus nerve stimulation are increasingly becoming routine for patients with Parkinson’s disease and clinical depression respectively, proving themselves as a boon for people with diseases which were previously regarded as incurable.