On the contrary, aging (which is the accumulation of cellular damage in our tissues) causes 100,000 deaths every single day, many of which occur after tortuous periods of prolonged suffering and indignity. Aging causes Cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, Type II Diabetes, Stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, Arthritis, blindness, muscle wastage, and so on, and so on, and so on…

If you are against these things, you MUST be against aging as well, for they are literally one and the same.

Far from being an exercise in narcissism, the defeat of aging is a moral and humanitarian imperative, and now that success is a real possibility, we are positively obligated to pursue this research to the absolute best of our ability. To not do so would be to condemn thirty six million souls a year to a death that they might otherwise, if given the choice, opt to avoid.

And that’s what this is about in the end: Choice.

You, for example, have the right to choose not to avail yourself to regenerative medicine which would restore youthful function to your tissues and organs, thus preventing the onset of debilitating illness. You are free to make that choice, and to willingly face the inevitable onslaught of disease that will follow it. But others should not be denied that same freedom simply because you, and others like you, have made their decision for them.

Because you are quite right that, in years to come, society will look back in wonder at a time in which the human body was allowed simply to progressively degenerate and collapse at the cellular level, leading to decades of physical and emotional anguish, followed by certain death. But what you fail to realise is that it is the very ideas you have expressed here that will cause the most amazement.

Death doesn’t give life meaning. Life gives life meaning. It’s not cowardice to not want to die. It’s totally appropriate. It’s not self obsession to demand better for our loved ones than the suffering aging offers them. It’s an act of courage and compassion that befits the best in us.

Defeating aging is the most important humanitarian project occurring in the world today. The sooner we succeed the better. And may Heaven take mercy on anyone who would wilfully slow us down.