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Should the United States fund a "War on Aging"?

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1–10 of 29 posts

Re: Should the United States fund a "War on Aging"?

#4
I'm pretty sure that would just worsen our budget problem unless we focus on lengthening the period of time when people can work so that we can raise the retirement age. If we have people retire at 65 and live until 120, they will only have spent 40-45 of those years working. That is unsustainable.

Re: Should the United States fund a "War on Aging"?

#5
post #4

I'm pretty sure that would just worsen our budget problem unless we focus on lengthening the period of time when people can work so that we can raise the retirement age. If we have people retire at 65 and live until 120, they will only have spent 40-45 of those years working. That is unsustainable.

Yes I can't see how that would be sustainable in the current economic state. Perhaps the retirement age would have to increase in line with the years added to the average lifespan.

Obviously the economic/social impact would be enormous and would require many difficult decisions but difficult != impossible. These are challenges that would surely be worth overcoming?

Re: Should the United States fund a "War on Aging"?

#7
post #6
post #2

The US shouldn't fund anymore "wars on" anything. Bad metaphor, bad approach. But a nice targeted NIH funding campaign on ameliorating age-related diseases sounds a great idea.

...if only the United States weren't $15 trillion in debt.

Yeah - I guess it's really unlikely that this will be solved by Government. Perhaps rightfully so this shouldn't be at the top of their agenda.

I think it will be non profits (http://www.sens.org/) or private companies (http://halcyonmolecular.com/) that lead the way.

Re: Should the United States fund a "War on Aging"?

#9
7 billion people on the planet already, and you want us to fund keeping them alive longer? What a fantasically stupid idea. You're given a decent amount of time on this Earth, already make it count and move on.

Not to mention the idiocy of calling it a 'war on' anything. That pretty much guarantees it'll fail, like all of the other 'war on' something efforts.

Re: Should the United States fund a "War on Aging"?

#10
Why isn't this part of the national defense budget? You know, we've sunk >$1.5T over the past decade into preventing our citizens from becoming casualties of "terrorism", which account for ~0% of all fatalities in a given year.

I don't know about you, but I'd feel much better about our leadership if that money would have been spent on something more relevant to the health of the average citizen, such as anti-aging research.

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