Thursday, 27 June 2019

Who Wants To Live Forever?

For the first time in 100 years, Britons are dying earlier. The UK now has the worst health trends in western Europe and doctors and experts believe that the impact of austerity is a major factor
Statisticians first noticed in 2013, just after the austerity cuts were introduced, that rises in life expectancy in the UK had begun to slow down and then gradually, the graph flattened out until a few years ago when it started to decline.
Obviously, as it was the Conservative Government who placed gave us austerity, they claim that 'Life expectancy cannot be expected to increase forever' but the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries said it now expects men aged 65 to die at 86.9 years, down from 87.4 years, while women are likely to die at 89.2 years, down from 89.7 years.
According to a study by New Scientist, one in five adults say, if possible, they would definitely want to live forever and companies are developing the means of merging the human brain with artificial intelligence to achieve so-called 'cybernetic immortality' which involves uploading their thoughts and consciousness into a machine and living forever as a type of computer hologram.
Another possibility of achieving immortality is through advances in genetic studies where the cells linked with the ageing process are effectively switched off.
The moral issue is that even if we could live forever, should we? Overpopulation is the obvious problem which lead to mass food poverty, and rapidly speed up the damaging environmental problems we already face today.
If achieved, it would be the biggest scientific breakthrough in the history of mankind but while nobody wants to die, or at the very least not die before they are due, would you want to live forever it is an intriguing question, despite the Governments best efforts to make sure we don't even reach our allotted time on the Earth at all.

1 comment:

Falling on a bruise said...

Universal Basic Income will be looked at again i guess.