Do you remember when you used to look forward to
your birthday?
Happy Birthday?
For a while, Getting older was exciting.
Every year made you smarter,
faster, bigger and stronger.
You could do more in a day,
and as bedtimes became more LAX,
you could do more in a night too.
Is it 4:00 PM already?
What the happened?
Aging. That's what happened. Happy birthday,
grandma.
It's better to be over the hill
and buried under it. Don't like your birthday anymore?
Happy birthday.
No such thing. Tired of feeling tired all the time
and weaker and smaller and slower?
Cheer up. We could fix that for you.
This is what if, and here's what would happen if
we stopped aging.
In the past 200 years,
the average life expectancy on Earth has more than doubled.
Today is by 100, and another it's
birthday. But despite being able to live longer,
we still haven't figured out a way to stop aging.
The very idea of conquering age sounds impossible,
not to mention unnatural. But don't act like you wouldn't
want that sweet,
sweet victory. At 25, you're at your physical best.
At 40, your body starts getting weaker.
Does that sound fair to you?
Don't you wish we could look and feel our best
forever?
Some scientists believe that it might one day be possible,
but is it really what you want?
Based on what aging is,
it seems that it's only a matter of time before
we're able to slow its effects,
if not stop it completely.
After all, aging is simply a biological process.
It's what happens when your body can no longer keep
up with repairing your weakened and damaged cells.
You'll also have free radicals to deal with
and no where. You're not referring to counterculture leftist youths
who aggravate older people.
Free radicals are unstable atoms that your body naturally produces,
and they've been proven to damage cells.
The resulting cell damage can lead to a range of
diseases that are typically linked to old age.
If we get to an age we really like and
then stop our body from making free radicals,
our cellular and molecular structure wouldn't age as much,
and that might just be our ticket to eternal youth.
But while that might sound like good news to you,
ask yourself, is anti aging good for the earth and
all the people on it?
You can imagine how the world would be a much
happier place if we never aged.
Generally speaking, we would have a healthier population.
Fewer people would experience the chronic pain that comes with
old age,
and we'd see an end to age-related diseases like Alzheimer's,
dementia and Parkinson's. Families could expect to pay fewer medical
costs,
providing the healthcare system with some much needed relief.
More people might live on to meet their great,
great grandchildren and even their great,
great, great grandchildren. An ageless world would be a utopia.
You could get so much more out of life crossing
off all the items on your bucket list without feeling
weak or tired or worrying about how much time you
had left. Barring other causes of death,
like accidents or illnesses, you might even be able to
live forever.
But in what kind of world?
We might stop aging, but we wouldn't stop reproducing.
The world would quickly become a claustrophobic place.
Earth's population would boom, and we'd find ourselves increasingly strained
to find enough space for everybody.
And safe and comfortable housing wouldn't be the only problem.
How would we feed everybody?
Our quality of life would become increasingly unaffordable as a
world without aging would mean a world with fewer retirees.
Newcomers to the workforce would struggle to earn a living,
and this would be made worse by job cuts in
medicine and Funeral services,
as well as the cosmetics industry.
To give you an idea of how devastating that would
be,
just consider that the United States funeral industry alone adds
approximately $20 billion
to the national economy every year.
As individuals, food, shelter, and how to pay for them
would be some of our top concerns.
But how about the planet as a whole?
Earth has a threshold for how many lives it can
support,
so if we stopped aging,
we'd quickly use up our world's resources,
making the climate crisis so much worse that we might
soon find ourselves wishing we could grow old just to
speed ourselves out of this nightmare.
The thing to remember is that aging and death,
while unpleasant, are natural processes.
Even if we don't like growing old and phasing out,
humanity as a species needs it.
While we grow old, Earth is constantly rejuvenating itself through
evolution.
Every Organism on the planet must one day leave to
make room for new and healthier organisms.
This is how the world has stayed young and fit
for billions of years.
So while you may not like growing old,
be proud of the fact that growing old and phasing
out is part of the bigger process to keep the
Earth young and healthy
so that it can continue to support generations of humans
who will get to enjoy life as much as you
have.
Of course, it would be nice to stay young for
a little longer,
and there are plenty of scientists who are researching ways
to make it possible.
The SENS Research Foundation, for example,
is working on an anti aging project called Rejuvenation Biotechnology,
which would reverse the effects of aging without halting the
process altogether.
Not good enough. Still feel like living forever?
Well, we can show you what immortality really looks like,
but that's a story for another What if.