Jemima Lewis: Sorry, Mark Zuckerberg. Your plan to put an end to disease is a sickeningly bad idea · 9
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I agree that the $3B price tag is ridiculously optimistic, but...
- Personally, I would rather have an old-fashioned heart-attack. Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of diseases worth throwing $3bn at. By all means dispense with malaria, ebola, meningitis and multiple sclerosis. Anything that kills people much too young, or much too painfully, can go. But we need the diseases of old age, however much we may rail against them.
I simply cannot understand this thinking. Should we not treat or prevent stroke or heart attack in 90 year olds? Should we draw a line for medical intervention at a certain age, or prevent the implementation of extremely effective preventative medicine?
I wonder when Lewis will be ready for her heart attack.
Whenever I see these fear of the future pieces, I'm always amazed at the author's in ability to think about the future in any kind of practical terms. Like, if we no longer died of old age, it wouldn't just be some switch that got flipped in everyone. It would be a long, drawn out, cost prohibitive change that would take years if not generations to trickle out. In that time, legislation would certainly be passed to deal with major issues, but minor issues would be addressed by shifting cultural norms or individual psychological changes. It's like the people who write these things claim to be imagining a world that's completely different, but it's really exactly the same except this one thing that would change everything. On another note, I really hope Zuck doesn't run for office. The idea of the head (or former head) of facebook being any kind of public official just raises all kinds of privacy flags for me.
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I get the point of the article... we will have to adapt if we eradicate disease... but the ZOMG WE ARE ALL GOING TO FEED ON EACH OTHER IF WE DON'T DIE OF NATURAL CAUSES tone was a bit over the top. Maybe not... that's a complicated question.Should we not treat or prevent stroke or heart attack in 90 year olds?
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There are people who believe this, yes. This belief tends to coexist with strong, fundamentalist Abrahamic religious beliefs.Should we not treat or prevent stroke or heart attack in 90 year olds? Should we draw a line for medical intervention at a certain age, or prevent the implementation of extremely effective preventative medicine?