vladfloroff;4667023; said:
Actually reversing the aging of cells would help with STD and Spinal cord injuries at the same time avoiding the political mine field of fetal stem cell research.
Poverty and starvation are not fixable. Even in fully socialized countries like the soviet union there was still poverty and starvation. As a bio major the idea of carrying capacity and population growth WRT it would have been hammered home constantly.
No one in the medical field wants to prolong the worst part of life. To suggest this is openly insulting to those of us in the field. Even if we were all just greedy bastards sick people don't get paid and thus will not contribute to our salaries. Now healthy people who live longer and require maintenance and preventive care are a different story.
Spinal cord injuries have nothing to do with aging cells. My primary research for 4 years was spinal cord injury and stem cell therapy. Being able to have cells regenerate themselves would, however, benefit spinal cord injury patients, among numerous others.
I'm not arguing that this kind of research should be squashed, I'm just playing devils advocate.
But to get sustainable populations where there is little to no hunger or poverty (a pipe dream, I know), then you need to decrease the growth rate of the population at BOTH ends of the spectrum. The longer people live (whether in good health or bad), the larger the population will grow.
And if you don't think that those in the medical field don't want to prolong the end of life, then you're in lala land. That is the ENTIRE PURPOSE of the geriatric medicine field, as well as the main focus of almost every medical field there is.
I'm not saying they intentionally want to prolong the most unhealthy and painful parts of life, but until voluntary euthanasia is legalized, isn't that EXACTLY what the medical field is doing?
And while sick people may not work, most elderly sick people are on Medicare, which is tax dollars and guaranteed money in the hospitals (and insurance companies) pockets.
Healthy people don't require nearly the amount of medical care as sick people, and so are worth considerably less in the eyes of the medical field. That's why there is so little emphasis and money spent on preventative care vs. reactive care.
If you don't think the medical field has a vested interest in prolonging life (and even unhealthy life) then you're naive. Individual people may not have that goal, but the medical field as a whole does. It profits way too much from it not to.
