logic alert. It would be egocentric to believe that what is good for me is good for society as a whole. To believe what is good for individuals in general is good for society as a whole is the opposite of egocentric. I'm like a tiny speck on the face of humanity and my fate would not affect the general state of "what is good for the individual"

Besides, this is all a moot point guys. We already have answered this question when the first doctor cured a disease. Death is no fun. We have a moral obligation not to allow our fellow members of society to die if we can help it. Life extension in some fashion or another has been around since the first herbal cures.

Now if there is some magic line where suddenly you're ruining the human race by letting people live a year longer -- and we haven't already reached it -- where is it? And if we have reached it, what do you guys propose? Keeping medicine away from old people? Perhaps denying flu vaccines after the age of 80?

There is no right time to die. Society is doing just fine with people living 5x what they did ten thousand years ago. We can go another 5x easy. After that -- we'll figure it out when we get there.

There is a difference in preventing death and eliminating it (or extending life in such a way that the same side effects are achieved). While I certainly don't have all the answers, I can't help but be struck by the rather narcissistic and frankly immature tone that dominates the debate, particularly with those in favour of enhanced exploration.

Perhaps it is because of this attitude, and not the life extension itself that I find myself put off. The human condition is what it is primarily because of death. We can't possibly accept that we can remove death and not significantly alter what it means to be human. While that might not be an issue, and may even be desired, that's not what we discuss; in fact it is often dismissed.

I got the gist of what you were saying, but it doesn't track with me. Of course people don't want to die: that's the whole idea of being alive. Not dying. Sounds silly, but you can't be alive unless you really have an aversion to dying. Else you'd jump off a house roof or something to see what it was like to fly and that would be that.

If you feel some threshold is going to be crossed where we're non-human -- and we're not already there -- then I think it's up to you to define where that is. It would help advance the argument. We could discuss what attributes of humanity we lose when we cross that line. Otherwise all we have is the extreme case -- never dying -- and that's nowhere near being on the table as a realistic possibility.

I'm 43, so that makes me half-way there, more or less. Of course I could kick it tomorrow. Would I like to live to be 250? Well heck, I liked living to 43, and that's a lot more than my great ancestors could have done.

Imagine what somebody from 10,000 BC would think of us: living to 110 sometimes, having major parts like hips replaced with plastic parts. Artificial hearts, animal organ transplants in the near future, medicine that makes you frisky when you're 90. Seems to me we've already passed the point of being non or trans-human. We're already in this world that longevity research opponents describe.

The current state of 'being human' or current society have no inherent right to stay as they are. They change every day with every invention, and if longevity changes them again, so be it. If people opt-out of longevity, so be it. But the changes wont be magic - people will still be alive to guide and choose how society changes, it wont be instant-hell in a handbasket. And if it is, you can find a suicide booth and be in the same state you would have been otherwise.

Death so society can 'progress'? Why not life for as long as you can / as long as you want? Society can progress more slowly if people die more slowly, but what does that matter?