Opinion: The Killer Disease that is Aging
Aging is a disease like all others, it’s time we started treating it like one.
By Benjamin Maclaren | 20 May 2018
Our Right to Good Health
A frequent protest against longevity research into ageing prevention is that “death is a natural process”, this is often a statement with no real supporting evidence. The black plague was natural, the Spanish flu, Ebola, AIDS are all diseases or affliction that developed in nature. Yet we strive to cure and fix was kills our people. It is a wise question to ask yourself: what about ageing is really “natural”?
Some make the argument “everything dies eventually”, however that protest isn’t bounded in facts, in nature, there are organisms that can regenerate any organ or limb, that can age forward or backward at will and organisms that never age, a feature dubbed “biological immortality”. Human stem cells and gametes, jellyfish, bacteria and hydras are all example of cells and animals with biological immortality.
Ageing isn’t some mystical or inevitable feature of our lives, it’s the symptom of multiple causes of damage to organs, cells and molecules to a person’s body.[3] it causes susceptibility to more diseases which alongside the damaged and broken body, accumulate and eventually lead to death.
To cure and prevent aging means to fix what is broken, to heal what is hurt, to cure disease and to overall to achieve a good state of health.
Not pursuing a cure for aging means to not treat disease, to throw away antibiotics, vaccines, to stop looking for cures to cancers and to plunge us back into the dark-ages of death and powerlessness.
Curing and preventing ageing is not just a choice, it is a fundamental human right, everyone has the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.[4]
Longer lives mean more time to pursue our own interests, to change careers, spend more time with family and loved ones, maybe learn those extra languages you always wanted to, or save up for that house, after all, what’s 10 years to someone who lives until 300, that’s equivalent to 3 years at our current timescale, with more time for education more people can become experts and pursue cutting-edge research, leading to even better lives.
The Healthcare Argument
Some try to argue that a longer-living population, will put costs onto the next generation through health care.[1][2] This is an overstatement, an older population does not mean a sicker population, part of curing ageing is to cure disease. long-term care costs are concentrated in the last three years of life regardless of age.[1]
Would you let a child with a degenerative bone disease die just because it will cost more to keep them alive? How about your mother or father when they get dementia and need a regular carer? The argument on healthcare disguises the statement that old or sick people are too expensive to keep alive. This straddles the line between a person’s worth to society weighed again there life; This is a debate we should never need to have.
Seniors are healthier, wealthier, more mobile and more educated than in previous generations, with a greater demand for intellectual and educational engagement.[1] Elderly people are shifting from hospitals to residential and nursing homes minimising healthcare costs and moving expenses into the social care sphere becoming more privately funded rather than publicly.[1]
Curing Aging
Ageing is a disease, one with 0% chance of surviving. It kills indiscriminately, filling people with grief and sadness, it takes away culture, languages, knowledge and happiness. The debt of ageing-related death is one that we will never pay off as long as it continues to tear through our society.
It’s time we stood together in support of ageing and longevity research not just in voice but in the wallet after all aging infects all of us.
