[tirsales]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Strangely enough, no. Do you? I rather enjoy life, and would like to continue to do so for more than just another 40 years or so.

Me too - still I dont think that immortality or "a further extension of the human timespan" is a really good idea.

And note that we're not discussing living forever. Just extending healthy human lifespan from 80 years to (say) 200 years.

I doubt that a further extension of the human lifespan will be possible without achieving (some kind of) immortality. If you could e.g. repair all damage done "through age" (yeah, its inacurate. Sue me) - you would be immortal.
And yes - you would need to be able to do something like this to be able to live 200 years.
Sure, you would have to repeat this treatment every now and then - but you would never have to die (unless you get killed or are fatally ill). Of course this technique does not need to be perfect - still there would be no definite ending to ones live.
How many people are killed by accidents nowadays? Its a very small percentage - and this will continue to decrease with advantages in medicine, safer cars, etc - no. With a near-perfect threatment you would have some "relative immortals" (possible wont live longer then the sun, but still much longer then we can imagine - and thats so near immortal that there is not much of a difference)

And yes, there is a difference between actively killing and letting die. But sometimes not much (consider withdrawal of food and drink from PVS patients).

Now we are getting into a very serious ethic problem - one we can discuss, but shouldnt do here, dont ye think?

Refusing to develop treatments to extend healthy life is passively killing people.

Just one moment - there is a difference between "extending healthy life" and "extending life". Extending the period where one is in fact healthy is a nice idea - but does not neccessarily imply that you will live longer.

Well, no. But then I'd have an option - change jobs or commit suicide. Currently I don't have an option - I'm going to die sometime in the next (being optimistic) 50 years. And again, not forever, just a lot longer than now.

Why not forever? After all in 50 years you would still want to live, dont you think so?
And here we have another ethic problem - where to draw the line? At 120? At 200? At 500? Whenever you run out of money?

Now we're just getting silly.

Then have a look at the momentary climate debate, politicial development, etc - I dont think an apocalyptic earth is a silly prospect.