From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Apr 24 2002 - 07:44:07 MDT
> I wrote:
> > It probably matters to the extent of ~150,000 people per day
> > that die from aging associated causes. On an annual basis,
> > that is more people than were killed in WWII (over several years).
On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky responded:
> Point of order: I don't know what percentage of the planetary death rate is
> due to aging, but I sincerely doubt it's 100%. Antiaging research is not
> the same as immortality research.
Point taken. The number I'm most familiar with are 13-18
million deaths a year from hunger and malnutrition [1]. I also
recently saw a number of ~5 million per year from global pandemics,
primarily HIV and malaria. Taken together those numbers would be
somewhere in the range of 33-42% of annual deaths.
However my calculation of annual world deaths was based on U.S.
death rates and we don't for the most part die from hunger or
pandemics (HIV dropped out of the top 10 causes of death several
years ago). So world death rates may be higher. Obviously
dying of the non-aging related causes removes you from the pool
of those who die from aging.
I don't believe there is such a thing as "immortality research" yet.
Until several things are proven, such as protons not decaying,
"immortality" remains a very dubious concept.
Anti-aging research could be placed into 2 categories.
Healthful aging research -- where the aim is to square
the population's longevity curve (everyone dies painlessly
in their sleep on their 85th birthday) and Lifespan Extension
research whose purpose is to push human lifespan beyond
that allowed by the natural genetic program.
As most know, I'm a proponent of radical lifespan extension
research. I tend to lump all causes of death together
(which Eliezer was objecting to) because when we have the
technologies to achieve radical lifespan extension, we
should also have the technologies to eliminate pandemics
as well as hunger and malnutrition.
One could develop a scenario where robust bioengineering
proves very hard, population growth rates outstrip economic
growth rates, and access to space never becomes relatively
affordable -- in which case overpopulation and hunger and
malnutrition may remain a significant cause of death around
the world. I just happen to think that scenario is *very*
unlikely.
Robert
1. "Ending Hunger: An idea whose time has come", The Hunger
Project, Praeger Scientific, New York (1985).
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