More Money To Fight Aging - Road to the Middle Class

THE BIOGERONTOLOGISTS, the scientists of aging, are worried. “Public funding for ageing research is far lower than it should be.” And Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds seems to agree. The problem is that most people believe that “aging is not a disease” when plainly, writes Reynolds, any visit to a nursing facility will show you that it plainly is.

Aging is a disease, a disorder, a killer. We should be doing something about it.

You would think that this is an area where the environmentalists would have a lot to say. Forget about global warming, species extinction, biodiversity, and the precautionary principle. If humans start meddling with the natural human life expectancy, all bets are off. But the enviros seem to have other fish to fry.

The essential keystone in the edifice of sexual reproduction is death. Amoebas, they say, never die. They just go on budding. But birds and bees must die. They must die to clear their habitats for the benefit of the young generation. If a redwing blackbird doesn�t weaken and die then there will never be an opportunity for the up-and-coming redwing blackbirds to get access to the bulrushes that redwing blackbirds use for breeding. The old guy will keep them out.

Many of the advocates for extending life expectancy are vigorous and ambitious over-achievers in their thirties and forties. They experience extended life expectancy as a chance to write more papers and do more research. But most people are not like that. They work hard in their young adulthood not because they want to but because they have to. Once their young are fledged and off the nest they choose to work less and relax more. But they do not vacate the prime human breeding grounds of modern America, the sprawling suburbs of single-family homes. They stay on in their huge suburban nests and expect the young generation to find new breeding habitat elsewhere.

But that is not the worst of it. In our welfare state people acquire a right to support from the rest of society in their sixties and that right extends until they die. The immediate effect of extending life expectancy will be to increase the number of people that expect, by right, to be supported by the rest of society. The cost will be huge. It already is huge.

The process of aging, what Reynolds and the biogerontologists want to call a disease, is nature�s little plan for clearing the decks for the young generation. Every advance in biogerontology is clears away another of nature�s strategems for ensuring that life goes on for the young generation.

The consequence of meddling with the basic proposition of sexual reproduction, that the wages of sex is death, is bound to be huge. Has anyone thought about that in the biogerontology community?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.