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The Future Of Life Extension

Categories: Vitamins and Other Food Supplements
Sources: How And When To Be Your Own Doctor

I beg the readers indulgence for a bit of futurology about what

things may look like if the life extension movement continues to

develop.



Right now, a full vitamin and vitamin-like substance life extension

program costs between $50 and $100 dollars per month. However,

pharmaceutical researchers occasionally notice that drugs meant to

treat and cure diseases, when tested on lab animals for safety, make
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these animals live quite a bit longer and function better. Though

the FDA doesn't allow any word of this to be printed in official

prescribing data, the word does get around to other researchers, to

gerontologists and eventually to that part of the public that is

eagerly looking for longer life. Today there are numerous people who

routinely take prescription medicines meant to cure a disease they

do not have and plan to take those medicines for the rest of their

long, long life.



These drugs being patented, the tariff gets a lot steeper compared

to taking vitamins. (Since they are naturally-occurring substances,

vitamins can't be patented and therefore, aren't big-profit items.

Perhaps that's one reason the FDA is so covertly opposed to

vitamins.) Right now it would be quite possible to spend many

hundred dollars per month on a life extension program that included

most of these potentially beneficent prescription drugs.



As more of life-extending substances are discovered, the cost of

participating in a maximally effective life extension program will

escalate. However, those who can afford chemically enhanced

functioning will enjoy certain side-benefits. Their productive,

enjoyable life spans may measure well over a century, perhaps

approaching two centuries or more. Some of these substances greatly

improve intelligence so they will become brighter and have faster

reaction times. With more time to accumulate more wisdom and

experience than "short livers" these folks will become wiser, too.

They will have more time to compound their investment assets and

thus will become far more wealthy. They will become an obvious and

recognizable aristocracy. This new upper class will immediately

recognize each other on the street because they will look entirely

different than the short-lived poorer folk and will probably run the

political economic system.



And this new aristocratic society I see coming may be far more

pleasant than the one dominated by the oligarchy we now have

covertly running things. For with greater age and experience does

really come greater wisdom. I have long felt that the biggest

problem with Earth is that we did not live long enough. As George

Bernard Shaw quipped when he was 90 (he lived to 96), "here I am, 90

years old, just getting out of my adolescence and getting some

sense, and my body is falling apart as fast as it can."



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