Viewpoint: Billionaires’ quest for immortality raises prickly questions about pathologizing old age

Welcome to the era of immortalists: scientists, dreamers and – crucially – billionaires, who want us to think of age as a curable disease, and our final end as something that could be indefinitely postponed.

[E]ven if anti-ageing techniques eventually proved successful, what would be the social and cultural consequences of literally pathologising old age? If we lived much longer, would we also be expected to work indefinitely? How would the planet cope with a hugely increased population, and who would be first in the queue?

I think I know some of the answers to the last two questions. They resonate with the negotiations currently going on in Glasgow, and the lifestyles of some of the people gathered there.

As my colleague George Monbiot recently pointed out, keeping the average rise in global temperatures to 1.5C demands that each of us is responsible for no more than two tonnes of CO2 a year, whereas the richest 1% of the world’s population are on track to produce an average of more than 70 tonnes a head. Imagine such people jetting around until they were 140, or 200, or even existing forever.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.