Most of you probably have heard there is this whole craze going on right now called Twilight. There are a bunch of vampires in this book who live forever. So it made me think… if you could live forever.. would you? Why don’t we live forever? What makes us age in the first place?
So that being said I thought we could do a little digging.
One of the first articles that I came across was this article in Science Daily about how the cleanup of proteins in your brain affect how long you live… wait… proteins? This sounds familiar to me. . . it actually sounds a lot like how most neural degeneration diseases work. Like Alzheimer’s.
Other scientists are claiming that it is telomere shrinking that is causing us to age and that if we can stop the telomere from shrinking we can stop the aging process. All in a handy pill form (Anti-Aging Pill Targets Telomeres at the Ends of Chromosomes). For a price of course.
Of course this isn’t the only idea on how to stop aging, just like the regular world the scientific world is apparently not immune to trends as well. This New York Times article discusses a variety of potential drugs that will hopefully delay the aging process.
Finally I came across an article that discusses what the author believes would be the end to age-related death (A Modest Proposal: How to Stop Aging Entirely). The author contends that we would have to also stop cancer and proposes a mechanism in which we could potentially do both.
Questions (include your sources!)
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
1.Aging to me is basically just getting older physicaly as in your body and your heart and all ur other organs and cells that die out. In the scientific defenition of aging they talk about when “cells undergo autophagy — literally self-eating, — which requires the assembly of specialized vesicles called autophagosomes. My defenition only differs by not being precise and detailed as the scientists are, of course they have more knowledge about these things. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm
2.I personaly dont think so because this is something that happens to EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD, i dont think living forever is possible. Its jusst natural for us to die. Maybe, just maybe we could live just a little longer if the scientist really figure out how to live longer. I also do think wut causes aging but i belive its something we can control, we can hide it, try to look younger, but u age no matter wut u do.
3.One of the negative things of people not dying is the population obiously, more people equals more consuming items therefore we may run out of different kinds of supplies. It would be much more difficult to live when there’s like three times the population. we would be over crouded.
4.I would live forever under sertain surcomstances, I would dfinetly live forever if i could stay at the age of 25, physically. If i can live forever but have to be in a bed my entire life because i am so old, then forget it. And also if i had the choice of dying because i belive we can get bored of life and would just like to be put to rest.
Commenting your #4, that’s true, I mean living forever would have it’s benefits, if certain circumstances were affiliated with living forever, if one is stuck in a bed for 50 years, and having to be nurished with tubes through veins, then that’s not living.
1. To me aging is the slow degradation of physical capability and in some cases mental capability as well. It is a natural process that everyone will go through. My outlook on aging is different then that of scientists because scientists break it down into more specific variables other then the fact that it is just the cycle of life.
2. I do not consider aging a disease; it is an inevitable process that cannot be prevented because it is the natural way of life: we live and then we die, that is just the way it goes. We do not fully understand what causes aging, scientists might have some theories but that’s all they are…theories.
3. The main negative side effect to people being able to not age and therefore live forever, with the exception of getting hit by a bus or something, is overpopulation. The world would become increasingly over crowded which would start a chain reaction of other negative side effects, because we would be messing with the natural ways of things.
4. If I had the choice to live forever I think I would take the opportunity. Being able to see how for technology goes and being able to see the progression of the world is something I would not want to miss.
I think that aging is an inevitable process, but I think that there are steps a person can take to slow down the process, like eating healthy foods and exercising.
I agree with molly, it can’t be prevented but we can slow it down. But i also agree with you, its inevitable
for #4
hmmm… i never thought of that. technology is crazy now in days there is so many things computers can do and people creating things i couldnt even think about wanting them.
I agree that death is the cycle of life, it has to happen and we cant avoid it. These new studies are so far meant to prolong it, not prevent it.
I would have to disagree with living forever just to see technological changes. That to me doesnt seem like a valid reason, personally, for me to want to stick around.
1. I consider aging to be a vague physical attribute. Aging refers to the increase of the amount of time that someone or something has existed. Generally, aging would lead to the eventual degradation of said object. In people, aging is both a process of growth and degradation. As we grow up, our body and minds develop to cope with the world around us. As we grow past our prime, our bodies degenerate and eventually break down. My definition differs from scientific aging in that it is ambiguous; it is hard to define such an open term. The exact definition of aging changes from things to things; it can even change from person to person (not the person’s definition, but the scientific definition that the person fits into).
2. Although it could easily fall under the catagory, I do not consider aging a disease. Aging is a natural process that happens to all of us, regardless of how we live our lives or what we do to our bodies (so far anyway). Very few creatures have been able to escape the process of aging, and even less manage to live forever. From what I could gather from the given articles, scientist don’t really know what causes aging; they can only speculate the causes.
3. Immortality will probably not mix well with most religious groups, especially those where death plays a big role in their beliefs. It would be viewed as an unnatural thing and could very well cause another crusade (or, more unlikely, a mass loss of faith). The roots of religion will be shaken; the social implications are unpredictable, but it will surely affect a majority of the world.
Another big problem is overpopulation. By eliminating such a large cause of death, we will be setting ourselves up for massive overpopulation. The problem is not space, but resources. The world only has and produces so much; if there are too many people, something will have to go, be it humans or resources. We would effectively decrease the amount of time that the earth can support humanity.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/25/overpopulation.overview/index.html
4. I would not live forever if given the choice. I’m bored enough on the average day, I don’t think I would be able to stand an eternity of life. However, I would not mind an extended lifetime- that way I wouldn’t have to decide when I’ve had enough of living forever and kill myself. There are things that I would like to see that are probably beyond the scope of my life.
Your musings on the religious consequences of immorality are intriguing to me. The implications immorality would have and the social backlash to come would surely spark some sort of giant societal movement. It would be interesting to witness.
Imagine if there was a major loss of faith… be kinda crazy. Pretty sure chaos would spread and we couldn’t live on to see an advances in technology.(only a thought)I like your answer for number 4, made me laugh.
I agree with your definition of what again is. I failed to look at it as our minds and bodies having that kind of ; Our bodies degenerate but our mind’s develope.
i disagree with your answer for number 2, you can help your body slow aging down by eating healthy and taking care of your body by not exhausting it too much. Those are natural ways to slow aging down. Not only that, but some of the facts that cause aging are known they just have to be tested to make sure that scientists are approaching it properly.
Even if we slow down aging, it is still happening; the evidence you provided does not contradict my point.
Some facts are known, but overall the science is not clear. Scientist have not pinpointed the cause(s) of aging, they have only made well-thought out theories.
I never really payed attention to the religious consequences immortality could cause. Thats an interesting point you have about the loss of faith that would occur, and possibly other problems. Maybe even a new religion would be formed??
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
+ Aging means you gain more knowledge and your body slowly starts to give up on you…wrinkles and mental problems.. ): Science views aging as damaged proteins and lipids. The skin cells lose their elasticity and aren’t “strong” enough.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
+ I don’t consider it to be a disease. It is just a natural process everyone will go through.
I do not think we fully understand what causes aging but we are getting slowly getting the answers. According to http://www.afar.org/pdfs/AFAR-Guide-to-Theories-of-Aging.pdf “Scientists have been trying to develop a theory or theories of aging for centuries. Today,
there is a growing consensus among experts about how and why we age — questions
that may be answered by just a few complementary hypotheses.”
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
People not dying of age-related causes would mean that the population would be huge and plastic surgeons would not make a lot of money.
Earth would be trashy and there would be a lot of economic problems. For us to even live forever “Being able to live forever, or being unable to die, suggests that our bodies would regenerate in the event of injury. They would be able to fight off diseases and cancers, and flesh wounds would heal themselves.” According to http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/196575/what_if_you_could_live_forever.html.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
+ Yes, if I were not to get a wrinkle. I don’t want to miss out all the cool tech in the future and it would be wonderful to stay next to your friends and family…plus, thinking of death scares me. It would be nice to live forever, but it won’t happen.
On #4 you said “It would be nice to live forever, but it won’t happen”, i guess for right now and our generation you can say that but its possible that many years from now, there will be something that COULD make us live longer and maybe even forever. highly doubtful but never say never.
What she is talking about, is eternal life all together not the ability to live an extremely long time. Immortality is not possible because if a creature cannot die then one of the defining pillars of what we call “alive” would be destroyed. Since there is still a way to die even with the long longevity that is promised by the new advancements, immortality is still an idea for fiction.
“Immortality is not possible because if a creature cannot die then one of the defining pillars of what we call “alive” would be destroyed.”
That sounds like a philosophical reason for why immortality cannot be achieved; it is not solid reasoning from a scientific standpoint as to why immortality is impossible (I do agree with the following sentence though).
The question is ambiguous on what type of “living forever” we’re talking about (that is, divine immortality where death is not possible or just plain longevity where death is still possible). It’s not clear to me which type of “living forever” Jupu93 is talking about; we should let him/her tell us.
My meaning for “living forever” means to just live forever in today’s society and of course with “death”…it would be impossible not do die.Its a level one based opinion.
Thus she means living forever as immortality (the actual definition that most people abide by). So since death must still be possible and from the way scientific advancement is looking, death will still be there and living forever is not plausible.
The point i was making is that based solely on the definition of what has been defined at immortality, its not feasible. For many scientific approaches death is used as a qualifier for something to be alive.
I agree with your statement about living forever. If all those exact things did change than i would want to live forever as well.
1.Aging to me is the gradual decline in a being’s longevity as they grow older, whether due to natural causes or disease. Science seeks to pinpoint exactly what causes aging at the most basic level vs. viewing the process wholly, or in other words as a force that cannot be prevented, as most people view it as. Aging has always traditionally been natural force that people consider to be one of life’s constants, and therefore their view towards it is pretty set in stone, and many don’t see the advantages or are apprehensive at dissecting its causes.
2.I would not consider aging to be a disease. I believe that people and animals age naturally, from day one to day zero, and this is true of every being. Therefore it is more of a characteristic of life, and just like time, has not yet been proven to be able to be stopped. Although science is giving us insights into what specifically is related to aging of our cells, whether through the replication of telomeres or production of special proteins, we in no way fully understand what causes it. This approach to discovering the correlations between aging and specific chemicals/substances is relatively not researched and like I said before, I believe that most people have grown to accept aging as an irreversible or treatable process, which may explain why scientists don’t have as much information on it.
3.Probably the most potent ad frightening of the possible effects of people not dying would be overpopulation. It just makes sense. If you take away life’s most feared and respected process of controlling the population, what is now 6 billion people will skyrocket to unheard of numbers, causing there to be not nearly enough resources for the planet to sustain that many humans. This is a problem that we struggle with already, and only gets worse as the population rises. All other effects of longer longevity would not even come close to leaving as much of an impact as the rising population.
4.Yes. No question about it. How could you pass up such an opportunity? Yeah it might be boring after a while, but it feeds our most human quality, which is curiosity. The ability to see the world progress even after the time where a normal life span would have passed is something that is very daunting.
I’m sorry this is so late… I’ve been trying to fix my internet since 11 tonight, and finally succeeded… my power and internet went out at like 10:55 (I think due to downed power lines… I’m not sure, it was kind of stormy here), giving me a huge headache of a problem trying to fix the internet.
I smell…Cow Poo.MU HAHAHAHA!!!!
Not Cow Poo…
This is why you should be doing this in advance of the night it is due! Lesson to ALL!
Interesting point on number one I hadn’t really thought about why we don’t know to much about the causes of aging or why we age at all, it’s because we don’t really research or look deeper into the problem because it has become a part of life for us.
I totally agree with youon the fact that we probably do not know much about it because it has just been seen as natural, we are born and we die. But think about it if we reached a point where everyone had the opportunity to live forever, would there even be progress, people would become so absorbed in selfish desires because they would no longer have to worry about wasting life and doing it wrong. Then people would stop procreating because part of what drives us to have children is the knowledge that a new generation is needed to proceed the next, but without the dying off of generations, there would be no need. Then we are stuck with the same minds and no new generation to influence knowledge in a new way.
Have you ever heard the expression “curiosity killed the cat”? I understand where you are coming from for number 4 but think of all the harm that would cause. The world is alredy being exhausted by the temporary humans on it and what will happen when those temporary humans become permanent humans and then more and more come along? That sounds like disaster to me…overpopulation and horrible power struggle if there was not a very strong central government in place. On top of that the world would DIE. But i mean…im all for it if there is a cute warewolf i can live forever with
Think about it this way also…if you are alive forever your parents are too, and they can boss you around FOREVER…haha
I would like to add on to a statement you said in your response to question. You stated that aging is a characteristic of life. I see it as a characteristic of everything. Yep, everything you can think of. Your laptop; your TV; your clothes…everything. Time only flows in one direction (so far) and because of this everything gradually ages and goes through the process of degradation. In a few billion years, our sun will “die” due to aging, and trillions of years from now our universe will “die” as well. Nothing can be sustained forever, and as a result everything will succumb to the concept known as “death.” All points aside, aging is a characteristic of the universe, and can never be called a disease or something that is abnormal.
^^^^^ I was talking about your response to question 2^^^^^^^
@ Mrdeanz… I think your addition to my response is absolutely correct. I would also agree that aging is a characteristic of everything, I only put life because we were studying aging in regards to biology. This is true though, and we should keep in mind that some things that may cause aging in materials and inanimable objects may also contribute to the general aging of human beins as well. Like you said, time only flows in one direction, but what if we could stop it? What if we could somehow reverse time… now that would really help stop aging! Thats probably a task left to the physicists though.
AH I DIDNT MEAN TO CLICK THE SUBMIT SORRY!
3. I see more negatives than positives in the living forever business. For one it would waste alot of government money (if looking at today’s world). I also think that it simply messes with the chain of life. There is a reason that we were not made to live forever, and i feel it would be best if we dont play god and tamper with that…
4. I would most definately not want to live forever. Sure, death is a cunfusing and scary concept to me (not tring to create a philosophical debate), but it is natural, and without it, what would the purpose of life be?
What if we can stay a little longer on earth to make god wait?..Maybe convert more people while at it?…isnt that a great idea?
Convert people? i dont believe in that. I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but people belive in the religion they choose to belive in.
I think not enough people considered this pathway of thinking about it. Death is a natural part of life, obviously being the exact opposite. Although it scares many people, some choose to embrace it as a force they cannot prevent or cheat. Maybe it would be unfair to live forever, unfair to those who willingly gave their lives because they realized this simple fact.
Seth, right on. I think a lot of people forget why they need to die. (people need to die. Read my answer to question 2). Death is a natural part of the life cycle. Were born genetically different from our parents, if that gets us ahead, we spread those genes, and future humans become genetically superior to those of the past (maybe…hopefully). But today, with all this science and medicine, unhealthy people are surviving, in fact, living long lives, overcoming their genetic adversities, even as far as spreading those “bad” genes. This slows down our progression to reach genetic perfection (healthy peoples).
You sound like Hitler. Not good.
So are we supposed to get rid of science and medicine? If science and medicine are stagnating the benefits of the evolutionary process (If you can even say that) then why would we have naturally made so much progress in it to begin with? Did we not “naturally” come to those advancements? Are you trying to say that years of science and medical advancements were a waste, and are preventing us from fully living up to the natural “life cycle”? I think yes, science and medicine have kept those “genetically inferior” (if you want to even say that)passing on their genes. But you have to consider the times were living in. We don’t have to worry about catching that deer, so we can eat that day, or surviving the cold weather. Were past all of that. Now our biggest concerns are how are we going to pull out of this recession, and who im going to homecoming with. So who cares about spreading bad genes when its not much of a disadvantage besides maybe your medical bills, or day to day inconvenience. Let them deal with it if they can. Everyone here has the right to, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”(unalienable rights). If the advancements of science and technology foster life, then heck, go for it. Live life.
Are you talking to yourself pauline? lol
Maybe…. <..>
haha,
I just have different takes.
I don’t think the human race or any race in general can ever achieve genetic perfection because even to those who believe in evolution, genes keep changing to adapt to the enviroment. The world keeps changing everyday so I don’t think it’s possible for any living form to obtain flawless genetics in any time span. Maybe different and/or better, but not perfect.
I agree with your statement about how dying is apart of the process of life. Leaving this world gives way for space for others. Being around forever would be unnatural and a waste of time.
1) In my opinion, aging means getting older and wiser. With some people that have had a tough life, you can see on their face physically. Aging also means that you’re body is more venerable and weaker. You also process things slower and start to forget things. But scientists believe scientifically aging is when our body stops making telomeres which eventually kills our body cells and leads us to dying.
2) I don’t believe aging is a disease at all; it’s just the way of life. Scientist has found cures for many diseases, and I’m pretty sure if aging was a disease they would have found a cure for that. But personally I think it’s a unique experience of us humans living life, and something like that shouldn’t last forever.
3)I think the negative effects of living for ever and not ever dying would be the overpopulation in the world and also how bad our economy would be(not that it already isn’t). There would be high rates in crime as well as pregnancy’s, and also a lot more controversy than there already is.
4) I wouldn’t want to live forever, because everything that I only do once is amazing and if I have forever every experience I have wouldn’t be amazing. I would eventually get tired of life and want to die. Life is a wonderful experience but not an experience that I would want to last forever.
Commenting on your number two:
You said that “if aging was a disease they would have found a cure for that.” – Well do you realize the fact that a “cure” could be ANTI-aging treatments, and what about all of those plastic surgeries..I’m only curious on your thoughts, it seems vague & I thought opposiningly of your idea.
anti-aging treatments are not cures, they are treatments. They are no better than patches since they do not cure aging, but rather only treat the effects of aging. You cannot say they have found a cure for diabetes because there is treatment for it.
I love your answer for number one, I do agree that getting older is getting wiser, and it’s the stop of telomeres that makes our bodies to grow weaker.
i agree with your number two i dont see how aging is seen as a disease and your right if it were a disease scientist would have found a cure by now.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
My definition of aging is how our body naturally changes physically and mentally to a certain extent until we die. Eventually we’re going to look old and wrinkly like old PROFESSORS! Scientifically speaking however aging is referred to how proteins breakdown and damaged DNA and all that good stuff about science.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
No i don not consider aging as a disease because it happens to all of us. We can’t scape from it whether we like it or not. If you try then your just a pansy. Anyways, in my opinion i believe that scientists have limited knowledge about aging.There are so many theories over the subject, well, that basically explains itself. Just wait until scientists come up with 25 billion more theories about aging!
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
Well i people didn’t die, the numero uno problem would be overpopulation. Think about it for a sec, we live in a planet with limited of space, different environments (some too extreme for us to live in) and limited resources. If people didn’t die then there would be a limited amount of food for us to live off and limited space. Common sense.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
Personally I would not want to live forever! I would have to see the same people then meet new people everyday? NO! Just kidding but i would like to live a couple extra years to see how society changes. Its going to get to a point were I’m going to get bored and eventually close the curtains. Oh well.
P.S: I was too lazy to post sources. Came home from San Antonio around nine and just started my hw. HA!
BLAISE
1. Getting old is a very obvious meaning to aging, in my mind it is something far more intricate. I believe that we age both physically and mentally and together they make a hybrid of what most of us view as “aging”. Unfortunately, mental aging does not always mean one will gain wisdom, however it does always result in a lot of experience and knowledge from those experiences. Physical aging means wrinkles, pains, osteoporosis, and sometimes diapers… a lot of things I really don’t want to think about. However the scientific definition of again is quite different. “The age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen is considered by most in the geriatrics field to be a normal part of the aging process. As a result in most age-associated diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, damaged proteins accumulate in excessive amounts, which leads to progressive cell death in the brain.” Basically saying that aging is the process in which cells go through leading up to death.
2. It is true that aging fits into the category of being a degenerative disease, but I personally do not see it as one. Without aging the population would be immortal and life as we know it would cease to exist, as science fiction as that sounds, it’s the complete truth. It is something that naturally happens to EVERYONE, where as a disease does not. Although we know what aging does to us, we don’t quite know exactly what causes it. Currently the scientific community is throwing theories out into the open, hoping that one is proven true. There are two major theories, one believing it is dna related, the other relating it to complicated protein build up. the only thing that is sure, is that we are not sure.
i like your look on number two i never looked at it that way.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me, aging is the process in which you begin to get older and weaker. Aging is believed to be the buildup of protiens and also when telomeres begin to shrink so much the body can no longer divide the cells and the body stops making those cells, which leads to aging.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
No aging is not a disease. It is something we must go through. It’s just part of life, which is ironic. I dont think we FULLY understand what causes aging. We only have a few hunches.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
If people did live forever, there would be overpopulation. It sounds kind of bad that we rely on people dying out to have a little extra space. But if we didnt die from old age, we would be too crowded. Plus, i think some people who are in a lot of pain because of a disease, illness or accident, would much rather die eventually then suffer forever.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
I don’t think I would want to live forever. People only do the things they do and live life to the fullest because they KNOW they’ll die one day. It’s no use if you knew you had all the time in the world to do everything you ever wanted. It wouldn’t give you that extra push.
for number 1 don’t you think aging is more than just getting older and weaker? i think there is more to aging than just getting older.
adding to your answer to the last question, I think that if people had forever to live they would try to mess up as less. For example people that are locked up in prison forever would literally be in there forever, so they would think twice before messing up.
But agin does have most all of the characteristics that make it a disease.
Yeah I agree with your last response. If people knew they werent going to die they would probably take it easy there whole life and not strive to do something really cool.
Aging means getting older and the human body changing. The brain also changes as well as the outer appearance. Gravity starts to take its toll and people began to get all saggy and old. There’s some sort of chemical reaction going on in the brain and cells begin to age. The process of becoming older, a process that is genetically determined and environmentally modulated.
I wouldn’t consider aging a disease at all. Its not some virus or something at spreads around from person to person, killing everyone. It a biological process and to say aging is a disease it say that something like breathing or eating is a disease. I think we have a good grasp on what causes aging. We know that the body and the environment are to blame for aging and its processes.
The downside of living forever is the risk of overpopulation and draining the worlds resources because of this. Also, there is a higher risk of developing “arthritis, muscle loss, osteoporosis and dementia — to name a few of our hoarier complaints,” http://www.suddenlysenior.com/liveforever.html.
I should spare you the whole quality over quantity when it comes to living forever or longer, but it does ring a bell. But being around in a pair of Depends and having aches and pains as well as forgetting what is what, doesn’t really sound to appealing to me. The idea of being around ton see my great-great grandchildren would be nice though. Also I would like to see how much the world changes by the people who are in it. With that said I still wouldn’t want to live forever. I want to leave this earth with something to remember me by because its better to burn out then fade away.
I most definately see where you are coming from when you say that living in “depends” and being in constant pain is not the way life should be, and i completely agree. If someone lives a completely miserable life, how is that possibly worth the ability to live longer? Even as you say, “being able to see your grandkids” would be great, the negative effects of having a prolonged life out weigh those few advantages to living a longer life.
1) Aging to me is a natural order of life. Were born, we live, we do something interesting with our lives and reproduce and then we get tired of doing to same thing and we eventually get old and we age. And as you age you learn and see new things, you meet tons of new people, and then as you get older and age you forget all that stuff and whats the use of living when you cant remember where you left your dentures. So you die. Now scientifically aging is the damaging of your cells and tissues and bodily organs and once those are dead you will be to.
2)To me aging is not a disease because everyone ages and ends up dieing, but not everyone gets a disease. Personally we do not know enough about aging, to actually stop it. For one thing we know everything about cancer and viruses, but we still cant stop those two things. So what makes people think were gonna be able to stop something that is fairly new in the scientific world.
3)One negative side of people never dieing is the population will boost up and then that means more mouths to feed more body’s to clothe. China already had its share of large population, as of right now the population is 1,330,044,544 and probably more. With that large of a popultion they have some silly rules like “one child policy”. and I dont think people all over the world would like to only have one child, esspecially if your trying to start a big family.
4) If I could live forever, I would not want to do it. One reason is because I want to keep the natural order of life going. Two because I want to go see my creator in heaven. Third dont get me wrong it would be cool to live forever, but only if you had someone with you.
Amy G.
period 5
You are right, living forever alone is too lonely without someone. I myself prefer to die instead of having an eternity in this world.
yea I agree for the last question.One of the reasons I would like to live forever is the fact that it would mean that my parents would live forever as well. Death is something a lot of people fear especially because it means that one would never have the opportunity of hugging their loved ones once more. So far I dont think I’ve seen people say they would want to live for ever, which brings out the question, then if a great majority dont want to live foreve then why continue research?
Your question at the very end is a very good one. I think the research will continue for the few people (or maye a lot of) in the world that are interested in having immortality or being able to live forever. I think that would be enough to push scientists to continue research on the topic just so that one day they can say they were able to do it.
1) What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
In my own words, aging means getting older every year, and slowly, as those years progress, you body changes from being younger looking to a much older version of yourself. It differs from scientific view of again because the scientific term(s) would be considered neural degeneration according to an experiment done on fruit flies. A lot others say it’s a certain aging gene in our bodies called Telomeres that affect our ways of aging and becoming weaker with age.
2) Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
No, I honestly do not consider aging to be a disease. I just consider It to be a part of life because without aging then how would we have enough room in this world to keep everyone who’s still alive. I believe it just gives balance to our humanity on this Earth. But not all of us understand or see it like I do. We say we understand the concept of aging but really we don’t. Most scientists that study about this issue and do experiments, often have doubts about what exactly causes humans to age. Like for example, in the articles posted by “Science Daily” and that article scientific beliefs and findings, that are even sometimes based on actual experiments done.
3) What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
Some of the potential negative sides about people not dying of age-related causes is the massive population growth that can happen when people live forever. Plus this also affects the nature itself because that means more space we humans will have to take up in order to still amongst others who are still living.
4) And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
Honestly… No. L Reason being is because I know that my good years have past, plus I don’t want to be a bother to anyone else if I choose to live forever. Plus life would get boring and just “expected” to happen every single day you live. I love the thrill of waking up of not knowing what’s going to happen each day because I actually would love to find out, knowing that the next day I may not live any longer. It is a choice I make for myself to have a short life, because you have that tendency to live everyday to fullest without knowing how much time you have left, than actually knowing you’ll end living forever. That’s just my opinion.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me aging means the general process of the body falling apart and becoming frail. It also means becoming more dependent on society and just looking old on the outside. On the other hand for scientists it is the inner processes they are concerned with like the break down of proteins and loss or damage to DNA and cells.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
I would not consider aging to be a disease because you can not catch it, it just naturally occurs in the body as a result of proteins breaking down, the slowing of cell splitting, and changes in DNA. There are multiple things that cause aging which is why scientists do not understand the full extent of why we age but they all have their hypotheses. While some may believe it may be because of a reason it is mostly a combination of things which is why it is hard to understand and combat. Mostly things like breakdown of proteins, free radicals which attack parts of the cell and destroy them and others combine to form the aging process. Because we are also specific than other animals in the way that we age it is also hard for scientists to know.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
Some potential negative sides to everyone living forever are that there would be an influx in population and therefore there would be a strain on the worlds food supply. Considering the worlds population is 6948516963 at this very moment if the 150000 did not die each day then there would be even more mouths to feed and considering the current situation of people starving in Africa, North Korea, and others it would be bad overall.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
To an extent yes. I would like to die eventually because I don’t think I could suffer in a world of repeated malignity’s (made the word up) but I would enjoy the possibility of being able to live a long time but die looking young and staying young.
told u i could do it ms stone!!!
i like your answer for question 4. but don’t you think that if we could live forever that it could possibly mess up the cycle of life?
Commenting on your number two:
According to dictionary.reference.com, a disease is “a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment” … Therefore, it is possible to have a disease without “catch[ing]” one, because it could be a genetic condition that may run in one’s family.
when using such an umbrella definition such as the one you provided, then anything can be considered a disease. Grey hair is a disease, a broken foot is a disease (incorrectly functioning organ/part/structure). But does your umbrella definition also include mental illnesses? learning disabilities?
Idontreallyneedascreenname does have a very good point. and I also agree with you on your definition about disease. Most of the time we only think about disease is when we’re catching it, but in reality it’s encoded in our DNA it’s itself.
I agree with number two that a good reason scientists don’t reaally understand aging is because each human ages differently some with arthritus, some with cancer, and some with only wrinkles. This makes it extremely difficult to pin point were aging comes from and how it will effect each person.
I find it funny that youlook at aging as becoming more dependent on society, making it sound negative but are we not the same when we are babies and toddlers. Dependent on someone else to take care of us and provide for us and that is just fine. I think it shoul dbe seen as a repeated pattern that has been going on for generations, a parent takes care of a child as they are growing and that child in return takes care of the parent as they generate. Sounds like a fair trade off to me.
I defintely agree with overpopulatuon thing because its true. Aging keeps us from becoming overpopulated.
Im not saying its the only thing keeping us from being overpopulated though.
All ageing really means to me is simply an accumulated passage of arbitrarily decided time intervals. The time spent alive does not determine anything, it is what happens in that time that determines who we are as a person. The scientific view of aging is just that, scientific. Simply because someone has lived a long time does not mean they have lived a full life, there are many more philosophical attributes to what people call aging.
Aging cannot be considered a disease because aging is the product of the environment in which the person lived. How people look when they are older is shaped by what happens around them in their environment. The causes of aging on the genetic level are unclear, but that does not mean that it should be written off as a diseas.
We already see the problem of people living for an extended period of time. If medical research is only geared at having people live longer lives but ignoring the problems they may face once they reach past a certain point, then a huge problem emerges. There is little sense in increasing the life span if the last 20 years of your life is going to be chained to a hospital bed or on massive amounts of medicine.
I would not live forever because I want quality in my years not quantity. One life time is enough, we do not need multiple.
To #4:
We wouldn’t get multiple lives if we chose to live forever. We would only one
we have generally quantified a life time to equal roughly the average life span at the moment, hence a life sentence as a punishment. If we are able to live 6x the normal life span, then we would in effect be living 6 life times on the terms of pure numbers. What is the point to living if you cannot die? What is the point to anything if it does not ever end?
I hadn’t thought of looking at this from this perspective. If we were to live forever, we would virtually have..no life span. Which, as you said, wouldn’t have a point because it would not end.
Aging acually could be considered a disease because some people have a disease in which there internal organs grow either faster or slower than there age really is.
But that has nothing to do with the way i define age, that is rather the speed of degradation of those organs based on genetic coding.
Someone who ages is normal. Someone who does not age or ages to fast has genetic syndrome problems. So, aging is not a diease.
*high fives* haha
Where did the quantity come from? If you live forever that means you don’t die…
What do you mean by your #4?
quantity as in, the number of years lived. Some people only live 30 years, but in those 30 years they will experience and live more than most people will in their life time. To have 8 or so decades of memories and life experiences means more than having an eternity to live. In other terms, would you want a handful of faithful and trustworthy friends who will be by your side no matter what or would you rather have legions of flaky friends who are so fleeting there is no real connection?
I don’t neccesarily agree that aging a by product of one’s environment. Sure, I don’t think it’s a disease, but it’s due to the passing of time and genetic degradation rather the the environment one lives in. Though, I do agree that the environment one lives in can have an effect on the aging process, but it is not the sole factor.
By environment, i do not just mean living in Houston all your life or living in the northwestern states. Aging is a product of our environment in the sense that its a testament to our journey through life. Our life experiences (and of course the environment in which you live) contribute to what we call aging.
1.)medterms.com defines aging as “The process of becoming older, a process that is genetically determined and environmentally modulated.” This is almost word for word my definition of aging. It’s easy to surmise that aging is the process of getting older, and the articles given to us describe that aging is due in part to genetic factors (telomeres) and in part to environment issues (calorie intake).
2.)I don’t think of aging as a disease. It is naturally occuring in everything, whether it be a human, an animal, or an inanimate object. Everything gets older. It’s impossible to stop time. Do we know fully understands what causes aging? No. We still don’t know EXACTLY what happens. But I think we can all agree on the cause – time.
3.)The elimination of age-related deaths will clog the Earth’s resources even more than already. We are already experiencing an overpopulation crisis. If we eliminate the cause of 90% of Earth’s deaths a day (using the article-given-to-us’s statistics), think about how much more overpopulation that would cause. The effects would be catastrophic. Just take a look at this essay “Overpopulation: The World’s Problem” (http://www.sixpak.org/vince/overpopulation.html) for examples of just WHY overpopulation is such a problem.
4.)Would I choose to live forever? I would choose a situation like the last article; that is, a situation where I could live as long as I wanted to, then choose to end it whenever I felt necessary. That would allow me to determine when I’ve had a full share of life living. Though, if forced to choose just between normal lifespan and no lifespan, I would go for immortality.
1) Aging to me is the body and mind wearing down, with emphasis on the mind part. This is on par with the scientific view, but science does not view bodies aging as much as the mind. With aging in the body, there are so many factors that are considered. How the person treated their body, drugs, alcohol, physical activities, etc. I guarantee you that a former football player will age much faster in the body than a computer programmer. However, the mind is different. For the most part, aging of the mind happens pretty much the same, give or take 5-10 years with everyone. There isn’t usually a drastic of a difference as there is with bodily aging. Some keep their minds fit longer than others, but results are pretty fair across the board.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aging
2) No to both parts of this question. Aging is not a disease. A disease is a sickness, something that not all people get. Aging happens to everyone! No one can stop it, no matter how many movies come out that make us believe. Aging is a good thing, as many people have heard from your parents and grandparents, “It’s better than the alternative!”
3) Two examples are in this question. If you live forever, eventually you will get a sickness like cancer, and no one wants that. When a person has cancer, they usually cannot go on living as they usually do. This transforms you as a person, and sometimes can transform other people’s perception of you. No one wants to live hooked up to a machine, and if you were to live without dying of age related causes, this would eventually happen.
4) I would not live forever. As glamorous and appealing as it may sound at first, think about the downside. Eventually, you will get cancer or some sickness similar, especially in this world’s pollution issues. Cancer is everywhere. I want to go out on my two feet, not by cancer or especially something like Alzheimer’s. This is a terrible disease that no one deserves. Even cancer patients know what’s happening and who everyone is. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s for quite a while before she passes, and she couldn’t remember that she had 4 sons, even when they came to see her. She would always ask, “Who are you?” It was incredibly saddening. Finally, think about those around you. If you could live forever, could others? Your loved ones age and die, while you stand still. Your kids grow to be older than you, and you have to see them die while you live on and on.
Taylor Fortney
Period 5
Wouldn’t pulling the plug solve the problem? (in part 3) If an “immortal” person were to get diseases and require life support, denying that support would naturally cause death, right? Problem solved.
Dude not all people get cancer its not like its contagous and spreads. Also theres is different ways to avoid Alzheimer’s you could read and do many things to keep your memory fresh and new.
Technically, everyone has a chance of getting cancer; all it takes is a bad mutation that manages to survive. It’s even worse in America, where we have pollution and carcinogenic substances on store shelves.
This is a good point, eventally everyone can get cancer, and die a painful death.
Blog Entry #3 Now Filled with more Spelling Errors!
1. In my opinion, ageing (that’s one correct way of spelling it) is the ongoing process of change in an individual. When one ages, they experience changes in the physical and the mental sense. I also see it as the process of gaining experience and knowledge. In the realm of science, aging is equated to the term “senescence.” According to wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn, senescence is defined as,” the organic process of growing older and showing the effects of increasing age.” This definition solely focuses on the biological aspects of aging and all the other factors that go along with getting older.
2. I personally think that the process of aging is not a disease, seeing as how it is in fact a normal process. The word,” Disease”, as defined by http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/disease is,” any deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of any body part, organ, or system that is manifested by a characteristic set of symptoms and signs and whose etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown.” The key thing to get out of this is that a disease is abnormal; contrary to normal conditions. Aging is far from abnormal, as all organism go through it. How can a universal process be labeled as abnormal, or as a deviation? Thus we can see that aging is not a disease. Of course we don’t really understand the true nature of aging. The fact that there are so many theories and experiments on how to STOP aging is a testament to our lack of understanding.
3. The potential negative side effects of a society that is filled with individuals that potentially live forever are of course the issues of overpopulation and the deeper issue of societal advancement. Overpopulation is already a problem that we face. Countries such as Bangladesh have staggering degrees of overpopulation as we type on our keyboards. Source http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17104873.html . If everyone can live forever, and the birth rate is held constant, we have ourselves a huge problem. Resources will be used up and they will not be replenished fast enough despite a larger workforce. And since nobody dies through natural causes, we would need a way to regulate populations….Mass Genocide anyone? Aside from that no new innovations would be made anytime soon, seeing as how we can all live forever. The incentive to better things for society will be drastically reduced.
4. I would gladly like to live forever. While this may sound selfish to others, I don’t see it as such. Living forever might cause one to go crazy, and it probably will turn me crazy. However I would do this solely because I want to see how the world changes throughout time. Technological advances and such will be quiet entertaining if you ask me. I would be able to do anything in the world and then some. Also with unlimited life comes the prospect of unlimited power. If humanity goes through a low point in history, maybe certain influences can placed on it to steer it on the right track. I just want to be an observer of the world, not a power hungry person. While there are certain costs to living forever, I choose to accept the benefits. Call me crazy but in the words of Cartman, “Whatevah, Whatevah, I do what I want.”
1. Well technically since I’m a vampire I don’t experience the act of aging, in fact I’ve been 17 for a while now. But you know after living for as long as I have (since Ancient Egypt, my real name is Nefertiti) you come to think of aging as getting wiser, and more life experience. Not to mention the wrinkles that come along with it and the saggy body parts, but we’ll get into that some other time. In the scientific perspective “Aging has been defined as the collection of changes that render human beings progressively more likely to die” (Medawar, 1952)
http://www.senescence.info/definitions.html
2. I don’t agree that aging is a disease it is a natural part of the human circle of life. People are born, they mature, have babies, then they die. Even though when you get older it is easier for your body to catch diseases aging is something you can’t catch. A disease by definition is an interruption, cessation, or disorder of a body, system, or organ structure or function. Syn: illness, morbus, sickness. (http://dictionary.webmd.com/terms/disease) I believe we do not know what causes aging and will never fully understand why it happens. There are some things in life that we should try to understand and I feel this is one of them.
3. OVERPOPULATION! I cannot really speak without sounding hypocritical since I am a being who has immortality but if people didn’t die not only would there be no room for everyone and their children ect… ect… and they would drain the social security then we would have no money and it would cause mass havoc on the world and Earth would just implode.
4. I actually would (I’m humoring you by thinking in the terms of “if I were a human”). I would because there is so much out there to learn and to experience and you cannot do all of it in the amount of time you are given because you don’t know how much time that is. I think it would be awesome to see how people in the future would behave and to live through different eras. But I would only want to live forever if I was young, because it wouldn’t be fun living forever if you’re like 83 because if you’re just trying to have a good time people would be like “what’s that old lady doing at a dance club/cyber bar?” and that would just not be fun.
1) Aging to me is how many years a person has been alive, we age as we get older because the number of years we have been alive increases. The older a person is the more wisdom they have, so to speak, because they have experienced more in their lifespan. Scientifically this is not exactly the case, “The age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen is considered by most in the geriatrics field to be a normal part of the aging process.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#) Basically, scientifically aging is the damage caused to our cells that cause people to get sick and die. In another article it is also explained as the effect of telomeres that causes cells to duplicate but in doing so they get shorter each time until they virtually stop replicating. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2)
2) I would not consider aging as a disease…well coming from a medical perspective I probably would in that the older a person gets the more they are susceptible to diseases and the more health problems they experience. All in itself I would refer to aging as a disease. On the other hand, from a religious perspective I don’t consider aging a disease at all, it is a normal process in which you are given one life to do what you were meant to do to and earn a spot for your soul to live eternally in heaven…but again that is MY religious point of view. I do wish to become a doctor though which is where the medical point of view comes in. Currently the causes of aging are not specifically known because some believe telomeres are involved and others believe, “The activation of autophagy facilitates the removal of damaged molecules that accumulate during cellular aging,” which is that the cleaning up of dead cells could help give us longer lives. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#)
3) One of the biggest negative sides is messing with the natural rate of death of humans; overpopulation is beginning to show in countries like China and Romania where there is an abundance of kids that are left on the street. There are not enough resources in the world to support and ultimately never dying population along with an infinite growing population. “Around 150,000 people die each day worldwide—that’s nearly two per second—and of those, about two-thirds die of aging.” (http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=)
If I had the choice to live forever I would probably say no…life is hard and the years I am already given are enough to wear me out. I am afraid of the future as well. War could happen or the end of the world even and I do not want to be a part of that. I do believe in God, meaning that for me to choose to live forever would be me trying to play God…once again these are MY personal thoughts. I do want to live a long happy fulfilling life and I will take care of myself to achieve that but I do also want to rest at some point because God knows sometimes it feels like the world never rests.
1) Aging to me is how many years a person has been alive, we age as we get older because the number of years we have been alive increases. The older a person is the more wisdom they have, so to speak, because they have experienced more in their lifespan. Scientifically this is not exactly the case, “The age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen is considered by most in the geriatrics field to be a normal part of the aging process.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#) Basically, scientifically aging is the damage caused to our cells that cause people to get sick and die. In another article it is also explained as the effect of telomeres that causes cells to duplicate but in doing so they get shorter each time until they virtually stop replicating. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2)
2) I would not consider aging as a disease…well coming from a medical perspective I probably would in that the older a person gets the more they are susceptible to diseases and the more health problems they experience. All in itself I would refer to aging as a disease. On the other hand, from a religious perspective I don’t consider aging a disease at all, it is a normal process in which you are given one life to do what you were meant to do to and earn a spot for your soul to live eternally in heaven…but again that is MY religious point of view. I do wish to become a doctor though which is where the medical point of view comes in. Currently the causes of aging are not specifically known because some believe telomeres are involved and others believe, “The activation of autophagy facilitates the removal of damaged molecules that accumulate during cellular aging,” which is that the cleaning up of dead cells could help give us longer lives. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#)
3) One of the biggest negative sides is messing with the natural rate of death of humans; overpopulation is beginning to show in countries like China and Romania where there is an abundance of kids that are left on the street. There are not enough resources in the world to support and ultimately never dying population along with an infinite growing population. “Around 150,000 people die each day worldwide—that’s nearly two per second—and of those, about two-thirds die of aging.” (http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=)
4) If I had the choice to live forever I would probably say no…life is hard and the years I am already given are enough to wear me out. I am afraid of the future as well. War could happen or the end of the world even and I do not want to be a part of that. I do believe in God meaning that for me to choose to live forever would be me trying to play God…once again this are MY personal thoughts. I do want to live a long happy fulfilling life and I will take care of myself to achieve that but I do also want to rest at some point because God knows sometimes it feels like the world never rests.
You make a good point (#4) by changing the way the world was designed, might be cool in the short term, but may have a disastrous outcome.
omg i agree!
Now that i think about it, it would be
playing God and i forgot about the heaven stuff while I was responding to this. ):
that was selfish. I rather die and be in heaven…where its peaceful.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me aging is our bodies way of showing how much we’ve learned and how much we have lived. We are constantly learning through life, growing is wisdom and knowledge and with each day I believe comes a new experience. And the reason our bodies grow weaker and weaker with time is because there comes a time when people have lived enough, they have had enough time to experience the great things the world has to offer. Now scientifically aging is just the word we use to describe how our organs cells and macromolecules become weaker and damaged and is just one way humans have come up with to better understand one thing we all fear in one way or another, dying. But aging is really our experience and knowledge growing to a point wher it no longer can.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aging
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging? wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn describes aging as “an impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning” and if a disease is abnormal then aging is anything but because it is something all humans do, all humans are born, age and then die, its the natural order of things. Now sure it could be scientifically seen as a disease because it is a degenaration of the body, but death has been occuring since the begginning of time so it must happen for a reason.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence. The main problem of people never dying is overpopulation, even with the amount of people we have today who die at a natural age you hear about the lowering of resources. Our earth only has so much to offer and it wouldnt be able to maintain an entire population that didnt constantly lose a generation to old age.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
No I would never want to live forever, even though I do love vampires. BEAST! Knowing that no matter what we will eventually die is what pushes us to actually do stuff in life, becuase if we had no restrictions on our lifespan we would go around all la ti da and would not worry about the consequences of our actions and just would not take those risks that we need to because fear of regreting it at the end of our life. Aging allows us to see things in many different stages and gives us something to live for.
You bring up a good point on whether or not aging could be considered a disease. I wrote that it could, but the fact that diseases are classified as “abnormal functionings” rules out aging as a disease because every human on earth ages, so there is nothing abnormal about it.
I totally agree about the whole aging not being a disease. A natural step in life which is the exact opposite of a disease. A disease does not effect EVERYONE! Diseases are particular to certain people and situations. I also believe that aging and death have a deeper spiritual meaning that has nothing to do with diseases.
1. Aging for me means dying really slowly and forgetting things. In scientific terms aging means the shortening of telemoners in which they shrink every time our cells divide. We need this division “to protect the chromosome ends from broken pieces of DNA that would otherwise be fixed by cellular repair.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres
2. I really don’t consider aging as a disease, it is more like a natural process in life. If we were to live forever this would would be really crowded and there would just be too may people. Scientist don’t really understand the process of aging some say different things. For. Example, some scientist say its because of the telemoners, others about a radiation theory and several other like discussed in this web site http://www.libertyzone.com/hz-aging.html
3. Some consequences of people not dying would be overpopulation. There would be to many people in this world we would have to make more production of everything, and make more jobs. I don’t think the world would be pretty like this.
4. Mmm well, I would like to live forever, I don’t have a specific reason but I would like to. I guess I would want how the world turns out to be in further time or just for fun.
You would like to live forever but you don’t know why? Think about the pros and cons
1. I think of aging as the number of days a person lives from the moment they are born. The longer the person stays alive, there body begins to starts to slow down. Skin and organs are not the same in an older age than in younger age. The scientific view of aging deals with the cells in our bodies not regenerating any more and with loss cells the body can not function properly.
2. The definition of a disease is some part of the body that is impaired. Cells that can no longer regenerate because the telomere in DNA has been shorten over time is what cause the body to become impaired and no longer function correctly. So aging i believe is a sort of disease. There are many ideas of what causes aging but aging over all is the body growing old. I think that no one really knows what is happening that causes aging but scientist are working to find out.
3. A negative effect of people living longer could be bad for the environment. James Evans who has a Ph.d, says that an over population would hurt the world causing global warming. The big population would use up many resources and there would be fewer and fewer of them for people. To have humans not die also can affect the way of food chain. Just like when there is an increase in rabbits than eagles would increase because there is more food and so on. So a disturbance like humans not dying can have a major affect.
4. Although i said that humans living forever could have a bad affect on the environment i would still want to live forever. The accomplishments i could make having more time for research and studies could really help when i want to have something. Like virtual video games and such.
http://environmentalism.suite101.com/article.cfm/we_are_the_environmental_problem
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
1)What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
Aging means the gradual movement away from youth. It’s the bodies biological deterioration. It’s the visual indication that you are wise. It is your body absorbing time. According to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm aging is when “cells undergo autophagy — literally self-eating, — which requires the assembly of specialized vesicles called autophagosomes. These vesicles surround or engulf damaged cellular proteins or structures and then traffic the “bagged garbage” to a second group of vesicles, which disposes of the trash with the help of digestive enzymes.” How does this differ? Well, my approach on aging is much more poetic and fun. The scientific view is … not.
2)Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
I personally wouldn’t consider aging a disease. That’s not how I see it. Dictionary.com defines a disease as, “a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.” Sounds, just about right to me. The FDA also doesn’t view aging as a disease. We don’t fully understand
what causes aging. Scientist have a good idea though.
3)What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes? Give evidence.
Pshhhh… overpopulation? We count on people dying of age related disease. We count on people dying, period. Think about it. More people would be occupying the world. Possible lack of resources, then we would have a horrific global war. Ironically a biological war. Young bodies infected with flesh eating bacteria vs. peaceful old folks in their warm soft beds? http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely Said it. People die all around the world because of age related diseases. We count on those deaths. Without them, the world would kill itself for resources. Unless, we can refocus our attention on how we can use our current resources more efficiently instead of how we can live longer. Come on guys, lets not be selfish.
4)And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
I guess that if I was able to, I would. I would love to see the changes in peoples way of thinking and values. I suppose what fascinates me is the gradual social changes that would occur, and that I would be able to see.
So you are willing to have an eternity in this world having to see the negative and positive changes that will come knowing that some events will cause you pain? I would not be able to handle this….
D:
Why yes Pedro. For educational purposes. By then I would have learned how to emotionally dissociate myself from the gruesome self destructive behavior of humans.
I only want to observe.
If you emotionally dissociate yourself from humans, how will you find joy in their accomplishments? And since you stated that you want to see the changes in social patterns among humans, aren’t you contradicting yourself even more? I also said that I would like to live forever only for the joy in seeing our species advance. If I separated myself from that, then I would truly have no reason to live. Observing without any joy or feeling will leave you empty.
Who said anything about needing to find joy in their accomplishments? Its not necessary. Does a scientist need to find enjoyment in the accomplishments of what he is observing? No. Does his lack of response to what/who he is absorbing prohibit him from finding joy outside of his observational experiment? No. Becoming too emotionally engaged though, would be overwhelming over the years.
Then what is your true purpose in living forever? You want to live forever just to be an indifferent observer? What I’m trying to say is that if you rid yourself of emotions toward humans, what compels you to live FOREVER, observing humans? When faced with the prospect of infinite life, you need something more binding than just the possibility of observation. What you need is true passion for what you are observing, when you have to do that observing FOREVER.
Yes, precisely! I want to be an indifferent observer. There’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s a difference from having a true passion for what i’m observing and passionately observing. I would be passionately observing, but emotionally detached from all the chaos and drama. I never said I would be emotionless. I just said what would motivate me the most to live forever is to observe emotionally detached, no bias. How I go about this seems to be the conflict.
You can be interested in something without getting involved in all the mess. I think that’s what it will come to anyways. A MESS. As a defense mechanism, I have already come to the conclusion that I will not be emotionally engaged in the wreckage. Of course, it won’t all be wreckage, and I won’t live soley to observe.
Point here is, observing is a motivation for me. Pedro brought the point that that might be very painful, so to spare myself, I plan to emotionally disengage.
I agree with your answer to the first question. Your take on aging is much more poetic. I like it.
I do want to point out that you completely self contradicted yourself. Your not okay with other peoples desire to live longer lives, however, when given the opportunity yourself to live for eternity, you don’t turn down the offer. -.-
1) To me, aging means just having lived longer as time keeps passing by than any previous time. Of course, like many other people, I see age as a reflection of experience and dealing with changing physical body conditions. The scientific definition refers to aging as the change in human structure due to oxygen’s effect on proteins in lipids within the human body. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm)
2) I wouldn’t consider aging a disease because it is a part of almost every organism’s cycle of life. Maybe as we age too much, our bodies get weaker and more vulnerable to all kinds of conditions, but if humans and other organisms didn’t age at all, we’d all be infants who’d never have the capacity to enlarge our mind in even the simplest way we could think of today. You said yourself in the intro to the questions that scientists have different thoughts of what exactly causes aging such as the cleanup of proteins and telomere shrinking so I don’t think we fully understand aging.
3) I think the most obvious negative side effect of not dying due to old age is overpopulation. If population keeps increasing in the world we know today even with old age being a large portion of the world’s death rate, without old age deaths, we would’ve been overpopulated already. And since someone else already brought it up, I’m not even going to get what that would do to social security. (http://www.overpopulation.org/)
4) Thinking of being able to live forever sounds pretty scary to me. I’d never be able to rest in peace and everyone would have to deal with life’s problems forever, and ever, and ever… non-stop! Plus personally I think one of the coolest things about living a limited life is if you live it right, you can leave a legacy behind so the next generations won’t forget you despite not being alive anymore; like MLK or The Beatles lol.
I agree with your number two, i also think that we don’t fully undestan the process of aging. Do you think we will ever fully understand this?
To reply to laurampaez’s answer, no i don’t think that we will ever fully understand the process of aging, because there really nothing in the world that we FULLY or truly understand, just because it can change and how complex it is. What we can do its keep learning new things about it each day.
I agree that with a limited time you can leave a legacy behind. I also agree with Tony’s view that we can never fully understand anything.
Blog 3
1. To me aging is kind of cool. The whole wrinkly thing is a bit strange and awful but I like the idea of being considered wise just because I have survived many years. Getting old to some people means wearing sweaters and orthopedic shoes. To me getting older means making new friends, creating new family, and new experiences. That sounds kind of lame but its true. The older you get the more you get to see! Anatomy wise your body deteriorates, but I don’t know that really doesn’t scare me. I do plan to stay in shape though and be very active for as long as I can. If I do happen to get to the point where I can no longer be active I will probably sit in a chair and trip on acid. That sounds crazy but it is extremely logical because then I will go on trip without ever getting up and by then no one will have a reason to drug test me so its perfect! Scientifically aging is broken into categories, cell aging, hormonal aging, and metabolic aging. Unfortunately the causes of aging are more of theories but they all consist of one idea, that the human body becomes slower and less efficient as time goes on. Compared to my view of aging this is pretty depressing. I think I would rather just ignore that aspect of it for my own sanity.
2. While aging does fit the criteria of a disease, I personally do not believe it to be. Aging is degenerative, but it affects everyone. To me that would be like saying growing is a disease. Aging happens to everyone and diseases are specific to circumstances and environment. There are many theories on what cause aging, but that’s where the problem is, they are theories not proven facts. One of the newest theories on aging is the damage to DNA. Scientists and doctors believe that the damage to DNA caused by smoking, sunlight, pollution, etc. is what causes age, as well as how the genetic information one inherits deals with the damaging effects. A major influence in this specific theory is an Afghan boy who suffered from premature aging. He lost vision, hearing got hepatitis and eventually died of pneumonia. Scientists discovered that there was a mutation in his XPF gene. The XPF gene is used for DNA repair. The connection between DNA repair and aging is evident, but still more research must be done to discover just exactly what causes aging. More than likely there are thousands of causes.
3. If people do not die from age related complications there will be ridiculous over population. As discussed in the article “A modest Proposal: How to stop aging entirely”, for everyone one person who dies of unnatural causes ten die from old age. If people lived longer and the population was growing at the rate it is then countries like China and Russia would suffer extreme consequences and even more starvation. Russia and China already have limits on the number of children a couple can have, and at some point it was so extreme that nearly every woman in Russia had to get at least one abortion. The resources on Earth are already so limited and the damage to the environment so bad that to support a larger population would be impossible. Over population and even older old age would shut down economies and possibly cause outrageous tyrannies in third world countries. First of all the medical field would be totally overwhelmed and the huge population would cause outrageous unemployment. In places such as North Korea where Kim Il-sung, was the first and only president of the country, the ability of a person to live into their 200’s would be detrimental because one man could essentially rule forever.
4. I would most certainly not live forever. If I lived forever I would have to watch everyone I loved eventually die which would be horrible. Also one of the most exciting aspects of life is that there are so many firsts and so few opportunities to do amazing things which just makes them that much more enjoyable. Living forever would make incredible experiences average, and then what is point of living?
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me, aging means that you are getting older and that your body gets weaker as you grow older. You get more disabilities and you don’t have control of your of your body as much. But as you get older, you gain more knowledge and you have greater responsibilities. According to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#, the scientists refer to aging as the “accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen”.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
I wouldn’t consider aging to be a disease because in order to keep living, people must die. We don’t fully understand what causes aging. We only know the effects of aging such as wrinkling, losing teeth, weaker bones, etc.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
One of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes is that people will have to hold special diets according to http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2. if everyone would live forever, our earth would be over populated and that’s not healthy for the environment. More people will probably push people in front of buses because the term “survival of the fittest” would kick in. The crime rate would go higher, not many jobs would be as avaiable.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
If I could live forever, I would not do it. Sure, there would be more times to experience things but it would get very boring after awhile. You might regret making this decision one day because you’d get so bored with yourself but you would have no choice of dying.
Girl i did not even consider the diet thing in terms of staying alive longer. I agree that would be terrible. What is the point of living a long time if you cannot even enjoy food? I also did not consider the “survival of the fittest” as a result of living forever. I also believe that crime rate would increase because resources would be limited. Maybe we would evolve into a super human species or something cool like that. Either way if people lived forever that would be bad.. forever is a longggggg time.
MADDIE I LOVE FOOD
1. To me, ageing simply means getting older. Age is simply a gauge of how many years a person has lived and how many things they have experienced. The scientific view of ageing, however, looks specifically at a what the years have done to your cells. “The accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen is considered by most in the geriatrics field to be a normal part of the aging process.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm
2. I don’t consider ageing to be a disease. The definition of a disease is “a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons”
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disease).
3. The largest negative effect of never ageing is overpopulation. There is limited land on Earth and if everyone stops dying but keep making babies, space will run out.
4. I would not want to live forever even if I could. Life is full of new experiences, good and bad, but people would not strive to make the best of everything if we had an unlimited amount of chances. Knowing that our lives will end at some point, humans try to make the most of that time and achieve as much as they can. Why work as hard as you can when you have forever to reach perfection?
For the responce of your question number 3…What if people stop having babies than…or a bit and when certain people decieded not wanting to live anymore they can die…than one can have a baby…
Jacked up policy but one to be considered
Okay this is America, not China. I don’t think it’s anyone business to say you can have a baby when this old lady dies. Or saying sorry world, you guys can’t have kids! That’s weird on so many levels. I agree that it is a jacked up policy and it should never be considered.
Right, the government can’t say “NO, you can’t have a baby…” because its just not going to work. it doesn’t seem something that is likely to happen. but what they can do it start increasing prices in hospital or do some kind of taxes on things, or take away WIC. They will get no where saying something and not actually doing something about it, but even then thats pretty jacked up.
1. To me aging means getting older and seeing the physical effects on your body and feeling the mental effects in your mind. According to science aging is the accumulation of damaged proteins and lipids. The accumulation of excessive amounts of these leads to cell death. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/
2007/12/071214144956.htm).
2. I do not think that aging is a disease because everyone does it and it is a natural part of life that everyone goes through. Sure as you get older you are susceptible to more diseases, but that does not necessarily mean that aging causes you to get those diseases. Some scientists disagree though stating that “But every time our cells divide, the telomeres shrink. When they get short enough, our cells no longer divide and our body stops making those cells.” (http://www.scientificamerican.
com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres). I think that everyone has their own opinion about whether or not it is a disease so there is no clear cut yes or no answer.
3. According to one source everyday “about two-thirds die of aging. That’s right: 100,000 people.” (http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=). If those 100,000 received medical treatment that caused them not to die that day and live on then over time there would be a significantly larger amount of people in the world than we already have. Some countries are already dealing with overpopulation and this would only cause more problems for them. Also, resources are already somewhat limited and an extra 100,000 people, that aren’t dying everyday, will help to eat away at these resources at an even quicker rate than they already are. Space is also a problem because there is only a certain amount of land that humans can populate.
4. There are many costs and benefits for being able to live forever, but I think that the costs outweigh the benefits. Sure you could achieve all of your dreams such as traveling, education, wealth, fame, but I think after all of those things are done you would begin to get bored with yourself. Sure there will always be different people around you, but after a while the situations will all be essentially the same. You would also have to see those around you die and move on to the afterlife while you are stuck living…..forever. It would be cool to see all of the technological advances that come about and to see your children and their children grow up, but like I said, it would get dull after a while.
1. In my opinion aging means that a human is getting old and continues to gain experience. I also think that once you start to age the human body is more vulnerable and has to be taken care of. For instance, when one is in their mid 50’s and the you cut yourself the 50 year old must be careful because the cut will take longer to heal than a five year old boy with the same type of cut. That is just what I think of aging, humans gain experience and knowledge yet the body is more vulnerable to sicknesses. On the other hand scientists have a different definition of aging. To begin with the process of aging in the medical field includes genetic material and how the cells work as one continues to get old. http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Aging+research
2. In my opinion I do not consider aging a disease. I think of it more as a natural process in which one just gets older. There are many theories regarding what causes aging, yet there is not one single theory that has been labeled as the only one that truly mentions the real causes of aging. Some scientists as mentioned in the article by Mandy Kendrick think that it’s the telomeres that drive one to age, and then there’s Orgel’s hypothesis which states that errors in the DNA “create an amplifying loop that kills the cells and leads to aging.” http://www.senescence.info/causes.html
3. If people were to live and not die because of age related causes, the environment, economy, and medical field would be affected in every way possible. The environment would be affected because forests would have to be cut down to make way for farming in order to produce food for the population. It comes to be a problem when the demand for food cannot be met by the amount of food supplied. This means that many will have to face hunger.http://biocab.org/Overpopulation.html
4. If I could live forever I would pass. I think that people should live life to the fullest while one can and then die. If no one were to die think of all the problems that may come about because of this….question number 3….
For your number 4 you could also consider how like if we knew we would live forever we would never accomplish our goals. Like we would think that we have a very long life to do everything and we wouldn’t be pressured to accomplish our goals.
1. Aging to me means gaining knowledge along with wrinkles! The more you age, the more you learn and experience, but your body also slows down physically and even mentally. The scientific view of aging is “a process of becoming older”, “that is genetically determined”. (http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13403). This would imply “changes in the structure and function of humans” (http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Aging) caused by the “accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm)
2. I would consider aging to be a disease because it causes death. A disease is defined as a disorder “resulting from the effect of genetic disorders” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disease) or any other cause like infection. 100,000 people die of aging (http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely) each day. Some scientists believe the key to stop aging is in telomeres while others believe it is in autophagy and others believe it is in the amount of calorie intake. All these different views points to the fact that what causes aging is not fully understood. The TA-65 pill’s side affects are not yet known, and telomerase is also known to cause cancer, yet people take these pills in the hope that it will stop aging. The pills have not been studied on humans, and testing them on animals is ineffective because animals age differently from humans. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres), so we won’t know if telomerase is truly a key to aging until humans are tested.
3. A potential negative side to living for ever would be the amount of spending on health care. People would live longer and so their expenses on infectious diseases and cancer would increase because age would no longer be a factor to accelerate these diseases. In short, you would stretch your death. (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/342/19/1409).
4. I would not choose to live forever if I could. What would I do living forever? There is only so much in the world to explore, experience and do. After I would be done with those adventures what would be next? There would be endless possibilities with living forever, but when would I get to really rest?
Christina C.
period 6
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
*Aging to me personally means the process of growing in old, in physique, in thought, and in mental state as time goes on. Although aging is the most apparent in physical state- like white hair, and wrinkly skin. But also growing old one grows “smarter” in theory.
This differs from the scientific view of aging because, the scientific view of aging is-is the accumulation of changes in organism or object over time.Also the scientific view is more asscocitaed with the chemical changes that take place inside our bodies.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
*I dont consider aging to be a disease, aging is a part of life. Everything ages, (exception of hydra) people, animals, plants etc. Like the New York Times article said, “white hair, and wrinkly skin are not considered to be attributes of disease.
There are many factors that affect aging and the aging process. http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/aging-and-the-aged/4?utm_medium=ask&utm_source=smart&utm_campaign=article&utm_term=Aging&ask_return=Aging#theaginglifestyle
Also the telemeres that continue to grow shorter affect aging , when the telemeres are eventually too short and the person passes away.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres
But, there are also some conditions and syndromes that deal with aging like,Werner syndrome,where one looks way older than they appear or vice-versa one looks way younger than they appear (like the curious case of benjamin button)http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition=wernersyndrome
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
Overpopulation! Imagine if everyone aroungd the world could lib=ve forever, they would live forevever and their kids, and thier kids, kids’ and ah! The economy would either get significantly better because of more expenses and money flowinf in and out, but more than likely it would get worse, because now there are double the people with social security etc. Also we have to think about crime rate double or triple the people double the crime rate, and environmental dangers such as polution with more people and more cars the polution that is already at ahigh, will be increasingly with more people, inhabiting the same planet.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/25/overpopulation.overview/index.html
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
Well, i
I’m not really sure its very contreversial I mean everyone wants to live a long life out of curiousity and the love for the world Like for example all those crazy movies about the near future, like a movie about 5600, like that the world would end, I would want to test out that theory and be there to claim, those are fake or wow, it real. Or like will we ever have flying cars we will know all these things and much more, you’ll get o see your loved ones for the rest of your life, watch your grandchildren become grandparents! And maybe you’ll have enought time- forever duh!- lol to actually have different career choices, travel because we have all the time in the world, so you might not get bored. So yea I would love to live forever, as long as it doesn’t get boring.
I like your number four. I think everyone is curious about the future and they would want to see all of the advancements and whatnot. But I don’t think that i would want to because i wouldn’t want to witness the negative side of everything that will happen, like overpopulation. I don’t want to watch the world slowly die.
1) To me aging just means that your maturing and that you have a bit more knowledge under you belt. This differs from what scientists think aging is because scientists say that sging is an increase of damage to your cells and proteins.
2) I dont consider aging a disease in some cases itsw a blessing and in others it sucks but thats the way life is. Some people like aging and others dont but just because you dont like something that is happening to your body doesnt mean you have to lable it as a disease its natural and its a part of life so just get used to it. Also i dont think we will ever truly fully understand aging because like i said before its different to everyone so every time we think we have it they’re will always be an exception.
3) If people stop dying naturally first off you’re messing with the balance of nature and second people will lose all hope for having a peaceful death. no more dying in your sleep but just being murdered or hit by a bus. More life is lost to suicide than to any other single cause except heart disease and cancer. if you knew that natural causes were no longer a way for you to die and the only way you could die would be in pain would you think that all the years leading up to said pain be worth it??
4) Not in my wildest dreams would i want to live forever if you could live forever all of the once in a life time experiences wouldnt be once in a life time anymore. no more saying i wanna meet oprah before i die or i wanna jump out of a plain before i die. without death there are really no goals cuz you will literally have all the time in the world to do anything.
1. Aging to me, means letting gravity take its course. Your body is now covered in age spots and wrinkles that all add up to the amount of wisdom you’ve also gained. This is nowhere near science daily’s definition that aging is the “accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen.”(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#) It definitely makes aging seem as though it’s another cycle everyone undergoes, making you feel the least bit unique.
2. Aging could be considered a disease. Think of the amount of people that die from it every single day. It’s as if every person were born with the “disease” of “aging.” Yes, people die from cancer and other diseases but aging could also be seen as a leading killer. 100,000 people die from old age every day (http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely). According to, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres, Our cells and telomeres are to blame for old age and death. I don’t believe scientists have fully grasped the reasons for aging given that many other factors also play into it.
3. The negative effects of possibly “living forever” would cause the earth to overpopulate. The amount of people that die from old age is huge. Imagine if those people kept living. Problems such as poverty and hunger would arise as resources would most likely run short.
4. I wouldn’t want to live forever. As much as immortality sounds appealing, I feel as though humans would lose the initiative to live their lives as they were…in reality, dying. The path that each individual takes, being a kid, a teen, a young adult, a middle aged person, and finally an elderly person serves as a wonderful road map. I’d want to live every single minute of it. Wrinkles and all.
For your number 4… you can also think about how valuable life is and if we knew that we would live forever it would loose its value and we would just take life for granted and not appreciate it.
I didn’t really consider the whole losing initiative view but I think it is a valid point. If we had all the time in the world nothing would need to be done at a certain time, just whenever we got around to it.
To me aging means your living and getting old. I think some get wiser but others go on growing old and dumber. To the scientist it means your cells/proteins/organs are damaged or being damaged.
I would not consider aging to be a disease. We do not fully understand what causes aging. Some scientists believe if we can stop telomeres from shortening we can stop the aging process. Others just say its something natural.
The world population would grow even bigger then now. We would not have enough space or food to sustain us.
I would not want to live forever, especially with those twilight vampires. Life is very exhausting and death to me seems like a nice break.
I agree with your 2nd response because we do not fully understand aging we cannot really call it a disease.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me, aging means growing older and being more responsible for your actions, along with getting wrinkles and losing the ability to control your body later on in life. Aging also means knowing more about the world and having more wisdom, as well as having your body slowly deteriorate. This is different from the scientific view of aging which classifies it as the “accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen”, according to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
I would consider aging to be a disease because it is the cause of many deaths. People die of cancer and infectious diseases every day, but many people simply die of old age. According to http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely, 100,000 people die from old age alone each day. This disease of old age is thought by some to be caused by the shortening of the telomeres at the end of chromosomes, according to http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres. Every time our cells divide our telomeres shrink, and after a long time the telomeres are so short that the cells can no longer divide, which leads to aging and death. Although this is thought to be the primary cause of aging, I don’t think that scientists fully understand the causes of aging because there are probably more factors involved than only shrinking telomeres.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
The negative sides of eternal youth are the problems that would arise from an even bigger world population. If everyone lived forever, or at least until they caught an infectious disease or died from something not related to aging, then our world population would boom and we would not have enough resources in the world to feed everyone. As http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely expressed, 100,000 people die from old age alone. If those 100,000 people continued to live, we would quickly run out of resources to feed them and they would all die of starvation instead of old age.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
If I could live without aging, I would totally do it. Who wants to get old and wrinkly and have their cells stop working properly? I wouldn’t want to be immortal, but if I didn’t age then I would be able to live as a young person forever and not have to worry about aging. I would still have the option of dying from being hit by a car or by getting cancer or an infectious disease, but I wouldn’t have to worry about having my cells stop dividing and my telomeres shrinking. I would not, however, want to live forever, without the option of dying, because life would get to boring and who knows what death will bring.
1.) Aging to me means the accumulation of effects a person gains according to how many years they have lived. For example getting older means you gain knowledge and experience, but it also brings us sickness, weakness, and closer to death. To scientists, aging means the increase of damage to the body’s proteins, cells and organs. This damages is what causes our bodies to become weaker and slower as we age.
2.) Disease, meaning- a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment (Ref. to http://www.dictionary.com), could describe aging scientifically speaking, but i personally believe that aging is not a disease. I beleive aging is natural and simply part of life. If it were considered a disease then not everyone would age because diseases can be cured, but we all do indeed age and noone has yet stopped aging. I dont think we fully understand aging. We all have different opinions on what aging is and scientist also have different views of what causes aging. Although we do have a good understanding of the overall subject we still dont understant its complex way.
3.) If people were to live forever, earth would dramatically over populate. Because deaths from aging accounts for about 2/3 of total deaths a day, then only about 1/3 of 150,000 would die each day. It is harsh to say that we need people to die to live in a modest world, but we actually do. We already have problems with people and umemployment, so now if more people were in this world (we know that even though we would be aware that we would live forever, we would still keep on reproducing, adding more people to our world) because there is hardly anyone dying then we would have more serious problems that just unemployment. Point is, there is a need for people to die of aging, we dont want them to but its necessary, to die of age is better to die of a disease, accident or anything else. Age does not bring us pain and suffrage like other diseases (unless you have a really bad life and living hurts you…. IDK).
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely
4.) I would definitly not live forever. I believe that life is a very valuable thing, and if I were to have life forever then I believe its value would go away. Death is a part of life, and if living life’s price is death, then i absolutely accept.
I totally agree with your number 3 even though i would love to live forever, i know that that would be impossible because it would cause more problems on the world than what it already has.
I agree with your 1st response because with age you do gain more knowledge. its not just about growing older, physically.
Questions (include your sources!)
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
Well when the word age comes to mind, I honestly think of maturity, not just some old hag, but an individual with knowledge; an intellectual. Scientific view of aging means the “accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm) Meaning your protein and lipids and many other components of life are being damaged over a period of time. In another in depth analysis by “Telomeres consist of up to 3,300 repeats of the DNA sequence TTAGGG. They protect chromosome ends from being mistaken for broken pieces of DNA that would otherwise be fixed by cellular repair machinery. But every time our cells divide, the telomeres shrink. When they get short enough, our cells no longer divide and our body stops making those cells. Over time, this leads to aging and death.” (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres)
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
Food and drug administeration doesn’t believe againg is not a disease, but I consider aging process as part of a disease. I also think as of right now preventing us from aging is inevitable. It seems like we know what is causes aging, but personally I do not think we know percisley and that we have only seen a glimpse of what aging process really is.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
There will always be a negative side to an abundance of something. In this case it is our ability to stay on this earth longer than expected. Population is increaseing in a rate to which certain governments have passed a law in regarding number of children in the household.(such as china). Feeding the mass population is not the issue since United States produce 3 times more corn than we can consume according to ABC Report. The problem with over population which will occur with living forever is simple no space for all humans. The part where you have a cancer and living forver the medication may make your cancer cell to survive forever also. Study done by Willam andrews http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
If I could live forver I would but only with an exception that if I choose to leave this part of life I may be granted to do so.
I completely agree with you on your number 1. Why should aging seem like something that is a totally horrifying fact of life when the positive side of it means being more intelligent and able to view life through a different point of view. And great analysis of aging process being a disease but if its process is a disease, then wouldn’t it as a whole be one.
Here is why aging a horrifying fact of life. It is in essence, us creeping closer and closer to our death beds. Since you’ve been born, you’ve been getting closer to dying. While simultaneously shortening the amount of time we can apply this intelligence and maturity that we are acquiring through the aging process. Do you see how thats completely backwards? So… as were getting older and wiser, we have less time to actually use it.
My opinion is that we create tiny microchips (Nanotechnology?) with the wisdom and maturity of a 95 year old (insert occupation where wisdom and maturity would be abundant). We should start putting our efforts in that. Were almost there. We could be like a hybrid of computer and animal.
In your response you stated that as one gets older and wiser we have less time to actually use it and it is so true. I still think that aging is not a “horrifying fact of life,” yet i understand where your point of view is coming from.
1. You learn more in life as time goes on. It differs because they make aging sound like it is a bad thing, when you just can’t help getting old.
2. No. Yes and no at the same time. Some scientist believe DNA sequence TTAGGG is behind it and other’s believe it is Drosophila neural tissue as a normal part of aging.
3. There is evidence that TA-65 could keep alive cancer cells that would otherwise die, because telomerase is the same enzyme that allows cancer cells to stop aging or become immortal.
4. No, because I couldn’t handle watching all the people I love die before me. I mean what the point of not growing old. Are we not suppose to grow old with are best friends and husbands.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me physically aging means that your body is not the same as it was when you were younger. It is not able to do some of the things you could before like running a certain distance at a certain time or it isnt as flexible. You also start to develop those unwanted wrinkles. Mentally the older you get the wiser you are. Scientifically aging is when our body stops making telomeres which eventually leads to aging and death.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
I wouldn’t condsider aging to be a disease, everyone has to go through it sooner or later, it’s not something you can catch on the street one day. Scientist have an idea about what might cause the human body to age but we don’t fully understand why this happens.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
If people dont die of age-related causes, then the world would be overpopulated. China is already overpopulated as it is imagine having new births everyday and people continuing to live. I think that it will also cause the government more money in order to take care of all these people who will have social security pensions, medicare and other government assistance.It would be nice to have your great great great great great granfather at the family reunion but it would be difficult because they would be from diffrent generations that may not have the same opinions about what is right and wrong.For example back then a womens role in society was stay at home and take care of the family, now women can work with men and do many other things that were unthinkable. Imagine having to socialize with these persons who will not have the same views. It would be constant arguing all the time.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
I dont think I would want to live forever. I mean I would like to see my kids grow up and have their own kids but after that I wouldn’t want to keep living especially if my body keeps aging and I become more dependent on people to help me.
Commenting on your #1, I totally agree that aging is more of a physical thing than a mental thing. The phrase “I can’t do this I’m not as young as I was thirty years ago”, comes to mind. Because agin might deteriorate the brain, due to diseases, but its a disease and since aging is not a disease the physical consequences seem more appropriate with aging.
i agree with you #1
i agree with your last response because if we were going to keep aging, it would just be worse for us to live forever. There would just be more pain[say if someone had arthritus or something like that]to have to deal with, and a longer period of time to have to deal with it.
1) to me aging is growing older in the mind and body. In the scientific world aging means the process of body cells dying
2)Well, science seems to believe that aging is a diease but i disagree because in todays society science has come up with a medicine or cure to prevent or alter almost every type of diease but we still have no way to fight aging, we jus have ways to cover up the visibile signs
3)I think it would be really bad if people live forever because some places of the world like china,india,and tokyo are already heavily overpopulated now imagine if none of those people ever died those countries would be busting out of the seams like that one guy that you see at the mall thats trying to squeeze into a size 34 knowing he wears a 40 something
4)No i dont think that i would choose to live forever because part of the aging process is to grow old learn from our mistakes and to pass our knowledge own before we eventually pass ourselves
What aging means to me is someone getting older each and every moment until they have reached the end of their lifespan. I also think of aging as people getting wrinklier. Scientifically speaking it’s when telomeres are short that DNA cannot divide anymore, causing to death eventually. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres
I don’t consider of aging to be a disease, since it’s natural and everyone has it. Usually people will want to find a cure for disease but not many people see it as a bad enough threat to “cure” it. To scientist it could be considered a disease because cells are being deteriorated. I don’t think that we will ever fully understand what causes aging because it’s just seem too complex.
http://www.synchronium.net/2008/11/18/living-forever-is-it-really-worth-it/ This link gives some pretty good reason to not live forever. One thing would be that we would be overpopulated, just imagine years from now there are going to be double the populations. This would mean more people breathing your air, more pollution, and people eating more meat leading to no more animals. Then we might just have to start killing people randomly. Also if people did want to live forever, then they know that the only way to died is painfully, whether it’d be getting shot, running over by a bus or being on fire. There would not be any more scenarios where people died peacefully in there sleep.
If I could live forever I probably would not, because when you see someone that is 100 years old maybe even 80 years old, they seem to walk really slow and have heart problems and just not as active as they would be in there teen years. So I would imagine that adding a couple of hundred years would equal them just sitting on the couch. Unless we are talking about living forever AND still remain the same as if we were in good physical shape and condition (like Edward). But even then living forever just doesn’t sound too great knowing that years from now everyone will just died, maybe not living forever but a couple hundred of more years. I don’t think that we should spend too much time and investment into it, because I see it as something we can’t really mess with or control, like Mother Nature.
1. Aging to me means becoming old and useless. The scientific view of aging is, the age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen is considered by most in the geriatrics field to be a normal part of the aging process.
2. I would not consider aging to be a disease because we all live and die. A disease is, a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.
3. The side effects of people not dying is that we would be over populated. We would probably go into a depression because we wouldn’t have enough supplies to feed all the people , or have enough jobs to keep people employed.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/about.htm
4. I rather live one life then to live the rest of my life in a world filled with hatred and disaster.
On #4, we can’t assume that the world will eventually be filled with hatred and disaster because i think that we have done a lot better then we have in the past hundreds of years ago. Like during all the wars and the racial segregations, etc. We have learned a lot from our mistakes in the past and i’m sure hundred of years from now we will learn and fix our mistakes that we are making now.
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
To me aging means; getting older and becoming more mature and intelligent. The older a person gets the more knowledge he/she has. Also as people grow up, they earn experience in life to not make the same mistakes and be better than what they were. But I also think that with aging and becoming more knowledgeable and all of those things also comes the weakening of the immune system which leads to grown people getting more sick, become physically weaker and finally dying. However to scientists aging is the process of becoming older or mature, accumulating damage to macromolecule, cells, tissues, and organs that with time makes a person elderly. (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aging)
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
In part I do consider aging to be a disease because with aging comes the weakening of a person which makes them more easy to die, and in the other part it is not a disease because it is part of the cycle of life. We can prevent death for a couple of years maybe but we cannot stop death altogether. There is no way of being alive forever like vampires. However according to scientists keeping cells free of damaged molecules is the way to keep neutrons in good conditions because they do not divide or replace themselves since birth. Keeping these proteins healthy can increase how long a person lives. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214144956.htm#) I think scientist and other people understand aging but each one interprets it differently. However scientist don’t fully understand what causes aging, they still are researching theses processes. For example right now scientists are doing test on drugs that would increase the life spam. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2)
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
The negatives of living forever would be that the world is going to become overpopulated and eventually people would be overcrowded as well. Also we would have to face more economic problems because of the overpopulation. Places like China and New York would not have any space for their people because as it is they are overpopulated and with people living forever, no one is going to have any space to breath. About 100,000 people die every day and out of those about 10 people die of aging. (http://discovermagazine.com/2009/new-science-of-health/23-modest-proposal-how-to-stop-aging-entirely) This would mean that everyday 10 people would live instead of dying.
And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
If I could live forever, I would definitively live forever. Although I want to say if I could live forever being a vampire and live with Edward Cullen I would love that. Ok now back on topic, if I could live forever I would definitely live forever because that way I would be able to do accomplished all the things I dream of. I would study all the things that I want and travel around the world at any given time without worrying about death because it is not going to near.
Your facts on how many people die due to aging is pretty interesting. I did not know that approximately 100,000 people die everyday and out of those about 10 die of aging.
1. To me age is wisdom, as humans go through life they learn from the things they experience and this gives them knowledge you do not poses as a teen or young adult. Age also causes the body and its functions to slow down elders do not have as much energy and can not withstand disease as children can. In the scientific world ageing shows the damage on the body’s proteins, cells, and organs. This is what causes the body to become weaker and slower.
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Aging+research
2. I do not believe ageing is a disease because it happens to everyone and does not pass from person to person but is just a part of life. We do not fully understand what causes ageing but the study of how and why the body ages has made tremendous progress in the last 35 years. We now understand that our ageing depends on the experiences we have had in our life. Not mush has happened to six year olds but at the age of 60 people will be at all different stages of health because they have experienced more. http://health.howstuffworks.com/life-stages/aging/aging-causes.htm
3. They negative side of people living forever would be that resources would run out because they would have to support all the new children as well as the elderly that are hundreds of years old. This would cause the earths resources to eventually vanish and the earth would not be able to support inhabitation by humans anymore. Pollution and all the issues that cause harm to the environment would be triple fold because the population would be ridiculously enormous.
4. Of course because I love life and its fun, but only if the people I love and care about could live forever also because I would not want to out live my friends and watch them die while I linger on.
For number 3 what if because we live longer we are able to find better techonology and other advancements that can make resources plentiful,and better our earth. Because on this subject we are getting older meaning just by numbers not phsically.. so you will be 250 and look like 20.
1) Aging to me is just the amount of time you have lived on this earth to learn, live, laugh and play, to feel all the emotions a human can feel, the experiences you have. In a scientific point of veiw, aging is the neural degeneration of the brain and its autophagy when its clean up crew doesnt get rid of proteins accumulated. This causes disruption in instructions the brain sends and causes bodily functions to start to fail.
2) Scientist may think that aging is in fact a disease because of the effects it reaps on humans such as liver and kidney failure, skin degeneration, and so on. But in my personal opinion it is a gift that is in no way such a thing as disease because we value life more if we know for sure that it will end. It is just a way of life that everyone should just deal with. Death is a part of life, just as eating and sleeping are.
3) If people will start to live longer then it will be the WWII baby boom all over again with the exception that the population will continue to reproduce more and more. This will ripple into a result that puts o a strain not just on the planets resources (there is only so much) but on human relations as well. Wars may start and so on.
4) No,no, and definitly not. If we live forever than we start to lose the value in something and its beauty because its no longer temporary. I would never want that to happen to me. Death is the next great adventure and step in our lives. Why would I want to be in a world that no longer holds me in awe?
1. To me aging means getting old. Scientifically it means “Alzheimer’s, damaged proteins accumulate in excessive amounts, which leads to progressive cell death in the brain.”.. The age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aging
2. Well yes and no, because as people get older they start to get all these sickness.but its not contagious I just think aging is part of something we all have to go through life.
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=is+aging+a+disease%3F&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=2&u=http%3A%2F%2Flongevity-science.org%2FAging.html
3. This place would be overpopulated, babies are borns every minute around the world. For those that die its either of a disease, accident, age…….
4. I don’t know !!!! there is too much going on out there that makes me wonder.
Yvonne you never know anything!lol
gabby you would 8D
1. Aging to me is getting older, which means you collect knowledge from your past years. Basically, older people are smarter people. But scientifically, when you age it’s when “damaged proteins accumulate in excessive amounts, which leads to progressive cell death in the brain”.
2. I don’t think aging is considered a disease. Aging is not something your body is infected with or a result of a mess up in your genetics. I don’t think we will ever fully understand why we age because it’s a very complicated process that happens in our bodies. Because there are tons of different factors (psychologically, environmentally, genetics, and some things that we still don’t know) that could help encourage aging.
3. Some negatives results from never dying could be the crazy population growth on earth. This would definitely damage the environment; and this overpopulation could lead to everyone’s death. Even now WITH people dying, there are about 6 billion people in the world, and this has caused massive amounts of damage to Mother Nature.
4. I definitely would not want to live forever. I wouldn’t want to watch everyone around me die, it would be so depressing. PLUS, I can’t wait to get old and do nothing all day! Sit in my wheelchair and make people do stuff for me, what a lifeeee.
I like your answer to number 4
I already worked hard during my younger years and when I grow old I just want to relax and make people do things for me, and when they say no I can just use the “I’m too old to do it myself” trick 
tina you look 10. your not there yet
Yeah that would be depressing seeing all your amigos to die one by one being left alone. They should find a way to m ake people get older since it sounds like your pretty excited about getting older.:D
What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
The meaning of aging for me is that our bodies are just dying slowly. As we grow there are physical, psychological, and social change that we create on our own. However, the biological term of aging is when the body’s normal diploid cells lose the ability to divide which this is call Cellular senescence.
Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
No, I would not consider aging a disease because is just the way of life. We are born, we enjoy life, and we die. That is the cycle to which we are bound to. Moreover, scientists only know the basics of the aging process because I believe there is more that cell unable to divide or our daily diet.
What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
The negative causes about living forever is that the human population will grow enormously and the amount of space that we have in this world is limited. The ozone layer would be destroy since people are just continuously destroying the environment. To be honest we just would have a bunch of problems going on and there will be a time when we would just began to kill people for space. Animals would just vanish due to a high demand of meat.
If you could live forever, would you?
Life would we just so boring in this world if I live forever. Too many problems would be going on in this world and I do not want to experience them. I can’t belive I am saying this but dying is way better than living forever.
Blog #3-If You Could Live Forever…?
1) What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
1. Aging to me means just getting older and being more mature, gaining knowledge along the way, and ultimately dying. The scientific view of aging is “the process of becoming older, a process that is genetically determined and environmentally modulated.” Basically, they are saying that aging is determined by some important key factors, while I’m saying that it is just something that happens. Source: http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13403
2) Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
2. No, I would not consider aging to be a disease, I just believe that it is nature’s way of saying that our time here on earth is up. I think that we have a solid base of understanding aging but I don’t think we know everything yet. But I don’t think that we need to. I think that aging is another thing that does not need to be understood; it just needs to be accepted.
3) What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
3. The negative side of people not dying is that there would probably be too many people living on earth, leading to overpopulation; which happens when there are too many people that exceed the ability of an area to provide for those occupants.
4) And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
4. I wouldn’t want to live forever because I don’t want to see overpopulation if everybody else could live forever. We live longer than a lot of things so why would we need to live even longer? I think that the time we are given to live on earth is a good amount of time to do everything that we would like to do.
1. Aging to me is just of someone getting older and older as the years go by. The scientific view of it all aging is that it is when the human body begins to be more vulnerable to daily wear and there’s a decrease in physical and even mental functioning. It’s believed that aging people are most likely to have the higher percentage of having diseases or problems with the body.
2. I believe that aging is not a disease it’s just a way of life. There are problems that come along the way such as back problems or arthritis but these things are common in many old aging people. The causes they believe that cause aging are things such as toxins in the body, cell nutrition, physical activity, emotional state and much more. I believe these may be some of the causes but whether or not we fully understand them is still in question
3. Negative sides of not dying of age related causes are that if people were to get more of diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis, or Alzheimer’s the rise of health care would increase dramatically and nursing homes would be filled to its maximum not to mention all the suffering that they will experience as well as the family. It would seem more likely that people would much rather die of age related causes than have a disease or sickness.
4. If I could live forever I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t because living forever doesn’t make life interesting. When you know you’re going to die you want to live life to the fullest and do as much as you can until your time, but if you lived forever of course you would be able to do all these things and more but it would get old and it wouldn’t be special anymore compared to if you were to die and never do it again.
On your number three, Of course nursing homes would be filled. But how would that affect the rest of the world as a whole? including population, environment, earthly resources, etc. And I would agree with the last part of people rather dying of old age causes.
Commenting on your number #4, that’s a good point if u live life to the fullest only in your teen years it’d be more fun, than if one had 40 years of teen years and living life how they want to live. Basically the bottom line is, you have forever to have fun, but that’s not as fun or self satisfying than having a decade of fun filled events that cannot be duplicated.
1.) Aging to me is the start of truly living. When we get old we say “youth is wasted on the young.” Which is probably true. So its not until we’re older that we start to truly appreciate life and aging is just a step through life that helps us get there. The scientific view of aging is way more literal, “aging results in part from a failure of body cells to function normally.” (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Aging+) The scientific view goes in depth about the cells and proteins and how they lead to aging.
2.) Yeah i could consider aging a disease because it has all the characteristics of a disease, “any deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of any body part, organ, or system that is manifested by a characteristic set of symptoms and signs and whose etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown (defintion of disease).” (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/disease) There are symptoms such as wrinkling, less energy, less of everything pretty much. Its also within the body that has some of the causes as listed before. Aging could pretty much fall under the category of being a disease because it has the characteristics of one. Aging is pretty much understood by what causes it because of all the scientific research that scientists have done but there are a few unanswered/not very well answered questions such as why.
3.) I think one major negative side to living forever is boredom. Like the bioethicist, Daniel Callahan, said, ”Longer life means more time for boredom to creep in.” (http://www.livescience.com/health/060524_immortality_psychology.html) What will people do with all the extra time? Seeing everything over and over again would be like being trapped. Plus everyone wouldnt really have a reason to fully appreciate life since they know death can be avoided. Not only that but maturity might be a really difficult point to reach. There are a lot of negative sides to aging no longer being an issue.
4.) Unless i had the best reason to live forever for i would absolutely want to but right now my answer is no. I want to be able to experience and appreciate life fully and not mess with the way life was created.
1. Mentally, aging means you are becoming wiser as you experience things in life, and physically, aging means your body is beginning to slow down as you can no longer do the same things you did when you were younger. Scientifically speaking, aging is a sign of damaged proteins, fats, and brain cells that eventually lead to a person’s death.
2. Aging is not a disease. It’s not contagious since everyone goes through it, and eventually everyone dies. Aging is a part of life and it’s natural, it’s also something people shouldn’t be scared of either. However, if you look at aging scientifically, the deterioration of cells could be classified as a disease. I believe we will never really understand the causes of aging because it is very complex and you can’t permanently prevent it from happening, since all humans will eventually die.
3. If people were dying less because of natural causes then the world would be easily overpopulated, since humans are constantly reproducing. This lack of space could create tension among the huge population, especially in areas that have a very dense population.
4. I would not like to live forever, even though it does sound nice not to have to worry about death and being able to see what the “future” would look like. However, it is such a burden to see those you care about die, while you continue to live on forever. You would eventually have no family left because they would have died. I also would not like to see any of the bad experiences the world would go through, such as wars, genocides, and poverty.
(My post sounds so depressing and negative D:)
I agree with your #4 to a certain extent. You basically just said that the world would be overpopulated in #3, but then said that you wouldn’t want to see your family die. If the world was overpopulated with people and everybody lived forever, how would you see your family die? They would be living forever, too, along with you (if everybody lived forever). And you are also looking at the negative too much. I mean, you can’t know that there are going to be wars, genocide, and poverty in the future. If everybody lived forever then people might change their aspect of life and poverty wouldn’t be an occurence at all because people would live forever and therefore not have to worry about getting food to eat because of their immunity to death. Just saying.
1) aging means to me is the presses of getting older.
2) I don’t consider aging as a disease. We don’t fully understand want cause aging
3) I really don’t the side affect’s of not dieing of old age.
4) Yes I would want to live forever.
why would you wanna live forever?
1. What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
Aging for me is a symbol of wisdom, of growth, and knowledge, sure your body deceases in speed, dexterity, accuracy, flexibility, but it’s a part of being human. However in the scientific community it’s a sign of damaged/ damaging proteins and fats, the body starts to slow down after years of growing and endured many hardships that humans put themselves through within their lifetimes.
2. Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
I believe that aging is not a disease, because it’s not virus, it’s not contagious. Just like everything else we, as human have an expiration date as well. Nevertheless if we look at the aging process in details of the Cells wise and how it’s slowly becoming damage, and malfunction by each day, then yes aging could be consider as a disease. “The study of aging – gerontology – is a relatively new science that has made incredible progress over the last 30 years. In the past, scientists looked for a single theory that explained aging. There are two main groups of aging theories. The first group state that aging is natural and programmed into the body, while the second group of aging theories say that aging is a result of damage, which is accumulated over time. In the end, aging is a complex interaction of genetics, chemistry, physiology and behavior.”
3. What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes, and instead living essentially forever (until they get cancer or hit by a bus or something)? Give evidence.
I think the world would be heavily populated with Human and human wastes. The Ozone layer would be bigger, causing by the massive carbons is released on Earth. Plus the demands for space will also demise the amount of exotic animals on Earth as well.
4. I would have to say yes.
Why would you want to live forever? Any specific reason?
I agree with your answer to number 1. Aging doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as you grow old, you gain wisdom and knowledge, which makes you wiser.
I agree with your number three. I think if everyone got to live forever, the earth would die because it wouldn’t be able to handle all of the people.
I don’t know if this is going to sound stupid or not but since you said yes for waht ever reason for living forever, wouldn’t you contribute to the problem concerning the ozone layer? Yeah a majority of people do that now but since you deciding to live forever, you contribute to the problem even more than the others and that adds up…yeah….
1.To me aging means your getting older, your body is slowly weakening, and we’re slowly getting closer to death. The scientific meaning of aging is about damaged proteins and lipids, that aging is a disease, and brain cells dying which slowly leads to death(www.scientificamerican.com). Honestly, I like my definition of aging better, because every year you get to say to your friends “ Ha your getting older!”, which is better than saying, “ Ha your disease is getting worse!”. To me that doesn’t seem much fun when your trying to “make fun of” someone’s age.
2.I really don’t think aging is a disease, because first of all, isn’t a disease something that only certain people have? So, it would pretty much change the idea of what a disease is, seeing how then everyone would be suffering from the same disease called “aging”. Plus, to me aging is the way of life, not a disease. Do we really understand what causes aging? Honestly, no we really don’t! I mean we all have our own definitions of what aging is, plus there is so many things that deal with aging we’ll probably won’t uncover all of it.
3.In my opinion one of the negative sides about people living forever instead of dying from age-related death is that our world would be overly populated! There would be way too many people, everyone would be extremely squished together and would not have any room to move around. Everyone wouldn’t have their own little “bubble”, “elbow room”, or personal space anymore.
4.If I could live forever I’d would want to, but I probably wouldn’t do it, because I believe aging is the way of life and if that doesn’t happen then the cycle of life would be broken.
WHOOPS didnt mean to hit submit yet.
3. A huge problem with all humans living forever would be retirees or widowers forever getting social security, costing taxpayers millions. This is one of the very problems we see today in our society with the babyboomers geing elderly and using up pretty much all of the social securty funds, so now those of us that are still young will not receive social security even though we pay into it.
4. If I could live forever, I would not want to I don’t think. Honestly, I think life would get incredibly boring. Even if I never got decrepit or sick, what would I possibly do FOREVER? There is honestly only so much in the world to do, and although living forever may work for vampires I don’t think it would work for me.
What if we were able to go to other solar systems and other creatures do exist?..Don’t you wanna be a live and see them?
1. Ageing to me is getting weaker, more sick, and closer to death. According to the scientific community, ageing is the accumulation of damage on macromolecules, cells, tissues and organs.These are basically the same thing, since it is the damage of macromolecules, cells, tissues, and organs that cause humans to become weaker, get more sick, and die.(http://www.squidoo.com/Pure-RezV-Resveratrol)
2. In society, ageing is not considered a disease, however it is a possibility that it should be. Most beleive ageing is caused by the deterioration of the body. New research has revealed that the shrinking of telomeres at the end of chromosomes and sirtuin in the body may also cause aging. Since this happens in all humans inevitably it is not considered a disease, but a disease is defined as a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors, which is technically what aging is. Aging is the body functioning incorrectly becuase of genetic developmental errors(like telmoeres shrinking).(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disease)
Why should aging be considered such a negative thing? Of course those things do occur, but they also happen just as often when we are young. And aging, though it is a deterioration of the body, is a natural part of life that will occur even though we try to fight this fact. Diseases can be fought and defeated. Look at the measels. But dying of old age cannot be defeated even though we take these experimental medication. So I do agree with you to the extent that it deteriorates your body, but after that I oppose.
1. Age to me is just a number that will then lead to our expiration date. When that day comes there is no way of avoiding it or getting around death. The scientific view of aging is “The age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids damaged by chemically aggressive forms of oxygen is considered by most in the geriatrics field to be a normal part of the aging process. As a result in most age-associated diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, damaged proteins accumulate in excessive amounts, which leads to progressive cell death in the brain.” This is basically the same thing as having an expiration date you have a time when your young and healthy and as time passes you will soon get old and expire because once all your cells in your body are dead then you will soon follow.
2. According to science it is because they have medication for it. In my oppinion aging is just a way of life and is the life process. There is no medicine that can prevent death we were not made to last forever so medication could maybe help you live longer than expected but not forever.
3. People living forever would not be that great. Some negatives would be the population would be tremendous. However it defeats the point of living life to the full. If we can live forever, whats the point of spending the first 12 years + of our lives in school, when we could do this any time in our life, if we have forever to learn. But then people would miss out on the special things. Grief makes you a stronger person and is a part of life.
4. I would love to live forever because then I would have a chance to accomplish everything I would like and to like travel all over the world, and have things that were from my past life that i ould take to the futue and not have to worry about death.
I agree with your #3 and #4, you’re right. We would not cherish life as much as if we were given a whole life to learn or do anything else. And it would also be nice to live forever, but it seems like the two would never happen together. I think that life being short does limit us to an extent, and it does, in fact, benefit us in the long run.
1.What does aging mean to you? How does this differ from the scientific view of aging?
Aging, to me, is the amount of years a person has/can live. – This differs from the scientific view of aging, because scientists see aging through different bodily functions. Such as, cells. Cells can “age-out” too, through a vain persuit of an illness and/or your immune system’s helper T cells dying from viruses.
2. Would you consider aging to be a disease? Do we fully understand what causes aging?
We as a people probably do not understand the full content of what causes aging, because there are multiple things. For instance, according to the New York Times, aging can be based on a person’s caloric diet from the foods they eat. Nicholas Wade, writer for New York Times on an anti-aging article, says that if you were to eat one less calorie it could be a pro-affect of how a person ages.
Focusing on the aging topic, yes, it could be viewed as a disease. For instance, at SWHS we have “life skill kids.” These are kids who are AGING OUT (a slow repeatedly age mentally but physically they seem to mentally ill), and cannot function properly due to their condition. Therefore, through the example of the life skilled kids, I find aging to be a disease.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1
3. What are some of the potential negative sides of the idea of people not dying of age-related causes? Give evidence.
One way people die, other than of old age, is by surgeries and drug overdoses. For instance, The King of Pop (Michael Jackson). Although, a wonderful and inspiring singer/song writer/actor, one of the thought to be causes of his death was from surgeries. According to, BBC news, Jackson died from a powerful drug called “propofol.” It is a drug that is to put someone to sleep after a serious operations, says BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8230000/newsid_8237200/8237294.stm
4. And finally, back to the question that started this whole post – If you could live forever, would you?
If it were actually possible to live forever, I would choose not to. I wouldn’t want to live forever because of everything bad as well as good. People should eventually have to die, I mean think about it – Would you truely, honestly want to be stuck on Earth? It’s the slightest of amazing, the people become less welcoming & open-minded on the daily so, what is really all that special about being surrounded by that kind of people? – NOTHING, I’d like to die one day, maybe when I’m in my 80′s!!
For # 2 there is also the young girl who never ages. I just can’t think of her name. She was in Time mag. though. People believe that she has the secret to youth.
Dude i was supposed to do this blog first JERK:)