Would the world governments tell us if the biggest killer disease could be cured?

[markyb1888]

I am not talking about Cancer here but ageing.

 

I wondered why there is such an effort to find cures etc for cancer but there does not seem to be as much fuss about curing ageing which as far as i am aware is a degenerative disease caused by your body not producing as many cells as are dieing, I understand this may be a simplistic view but i am an amateur who has never studied science after high school apart from on my own time.

 

In terms of curable diseases i would (again possibly a simplistic view) have thought ageing would seem like one of the more easily tackled diseases to try and find a cure for as we understand generally what is happening. I am sure in practice it is not quite as simple as i am stating but surely something that is within the realms of possibility and not in the too distant future.

 

Stories about breakthroughs in relation to cancer treatments and cures catch my eye as i am sure they do many others, and i wonder if general cures for cancer will be found in my lifetime and from what i have read this is not out of the question.

This got me thinking , what if there was a medical breakthrough and a cure was found for ageing? For a split second i think wow wouldn't that be amazing! Not having to get old in the sense we are used to just now, being alive long enough to see the advances mankind is able to make and alive long enough to find answers to some of the greater questions mankind is trying to answer about the universe etc.

 

Then the reality sets in, it would be total chaos and would probably send us back centuries in the space of a few decades and the thoughts about what direction the human race would be headed are dire at best! The current world population is around 7 billion and we have food shortages, housing problems, pollution problems etc already and there are concerns just with natural population increases about how we will cope as a planet. Can you imagine if a cure was developed for ageing and almost overnight everyone was living to 300, 400, 500 years old and beyond until they were killed by other causes not related to ageing? Even if everyone was prudent and only had 1 child as i think China does, if you lived to 300 then your child having a child who has a child who has a child etc, by the time you died there could easily be 15 people alive at once draining the planets resources at once who you brought into the world.

 

In just 30 years the population would probably be hitting 15 billion and in 60 years 30 billion and 90 years 60 billion etc. I really doubt the modern world has anywhere even close to the infrastructure in place to deal with this. What would happen to peoples pensions i mean people couldn't work for 40 years then spend 400 years collecting pensions. There are food shortages now how on earth could the planet cope with ten time the population in just 90 years. There appear to be problems with power grids being near capacity just now and the fossil fuel situation is well known surely this could never cope with 10x the demand in a relatively short timeframe. Would the worlds financial markets completely collapse? Would more wars over territories and resources break out? Anyway you cut it the reality of a cure for ageing would create total and utter global chaos and in a very quick time period too!

 

So this got me thinking....

 

Would and could the worlds governments/medical community afford to tell us if there were suck a breakthrough in finding a cure for ageing?

 

I don't see any way they could tell us without condemning the planet to a dreadful short and long term future unless some very very strict measures for population control and some radical thinking was introduced almost immediately.

[JohnStu]

Aging is a process, not a disease lol. Disease is caused by misfunctions and/or bacterias/viruses etc..

 

To eliminate aging, the process, is not possible since I mean most parts of the bones cannot be reversed or healed. Bones don't grow back once cracked up. And they have limited time span too, so bones aren't permanent. This makes the person not permanent. Except me, of course, I am made up of silicons and metals.

 

 

[markyb1888]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/20/us-ageing-disease-idUSTRE64I6HV20100520

 

Also bones do heal as i am sure many people who have recovered from a broken arm/leg etc can testify to.

[JohnStu]

http://www.reuters.c...E64I6HV20100520

 

Also bones do heal as i am sure many people who have recovered from a broken arm/leg etc can testify to.

 

 

but that's not all the bones.

[John Cuthber]

In many countries, like mine, the government pays for healthcare for the elderly. If it could avoid that very large bill, it would.

So the answer to the question in the title of the thread is "Yes, definitely"

[D H]

Aging is a process, not a disease lol. Disease is caused by misfunctions and/or bacterias/viruses etc.

That's a narrow view of disease. Diseases can be caused by pathogens (e.g., the flu), improper nutrition (e.g., beriberi), physiology (e.g., some cancers), and also heredity. Some hereditary diseases such as sickle cell anemia are defenses against other diseases. Aging is apparently another such hereditary disease that is a defense against another disease, in this case, cancer. Human cells can only reproduce a finite number of times thanks to telomere shortening. This finite limit prevents a lot of cancers from running amok, but it has the side effect of death by getting old.

 

 

To answer the original question, "would the world governments tell us if the biggest killer disease could be cured," suppose such a cure was found. How could our governments possibly suppress such a discovery? Someone would tell. There are no big, big secrets anymore, and this would be the biggest of them all.

[CaptainPanic]

Nobody dies of aging.

 

But as you age, other stuff starts to fail more often, and you will get ill more often. You grow weaker, basically. But in the end, some disease, accident or a failure of your body will kill you.

[JohnStu]

Nobody dies of aging.

 

But as you age, other stuff starts to fail more often, and you will get ill more often. You grow weaker, basically. But in the end, some disease, accident or a failure of your body will kill you.

 

 

Oh, so it's weakness that kills me, which is caused by aging. That means mercury doesn't kill me, it's my incapability to adapt to mercury.

[CaptainPanic]

Oh, so it's weakness that kills me, which is caused by aging. That means mercury doesn't kill me, it's my incapability to adapt to mercury.

No.

 

It's weakness that fails to fight a disease. But it is the disease that finally kills you.

 

You can be weak, but if nothing comes along that is lethal to you, you will live.

[Ben Banana]

@JohnStu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing#Theories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension

 

For most, its extremely difficult to use words appropriately when discussing this subject. The original post had lead you to misconception. However, you can read the Wikipedia articles I provided a link to above. Hopefully that helps clearify.

 

@CaptainPanic

You can be weak, but if nothing comes along that is lethal to you, you will live.

Hmm. If you never run a car and keep it stored in "perfect" conditions, it should remain a perfect car. Yet, it never will run, be used or serve its purpose. Without excellent service, repair and eventual whole-replacement, it must be impossible for a well-functioning car to persist with well function.

 

Eventually your organs should kill out, right? I'm far from being a credible biologist, and that may be slightly (or completely) incorrect, but it seems like a geniune assumption. Think about how you mean "weak." Holding a transition of lowered function to ceased function disconnected is unreasonably coward.

 

@Original Post

To fully solve the problem you suspect, begin with the essential realization that (near-)immortality fundamentally changes humanity. Then you shall write a science-fiction novel, with all seriousness. I expect a good one

 

If no one wants to write such a novel, I would gladly write it.

(No one sue. This is a shared concept.)

Edited March 2, 2012 by Ben Bowen

[Joatmon]

Hurry up and get this sorted - I'll be 75 this year!

[JohnStu]

No.

 

It's weakness that fails to fight a disease. But it is the disease that finally kills you.

 

You can be weak, but if nothing comes along that is lethal to you, you will live.

 

 

Well, yes I know what you are thinking in mind. You are thinking of the 1/x^2 graph where as x increases, y never reaches 0. As person ages on, he never becomes weak enough to die (reach 0).

 

But, an organ has default amount of work to do, such as keeping its components in the minimum structure. Once a person's organs become super weak, even without lethal interference, the structure will fall on its own and the person dies.

[ThorHammaraxx]

Would and could the worlds governments/medical community afford to tell us if there were such a breakthrough in finding a cure for ageing?

I don't see any way they could tell us without condemning the planet to a dreadful short and long term future unless some very very strict measures for population control and some radical thinking was introduced almost immediately.

To me, and it's just my opinion, the only reason many think we need to reduce the population is due to the mis management by the governments of the world. If we used and distributed our resources wisely, we could not only extend life but have a healthier planet and room for many, many more.

Look at what the governments of the world waste too much of our resources doing.

So the way it is hints that the governments of the world prefer a much younger 'working' population, dying before they get old and they may even have the assistance of the medical community to help achieve that.

So I'd say "No, they wouldn't."