If you are not sure why you should support rejuvenation research, or know people who aren’t, this article explains why rejuvenation would be good for you as an individual.

The reasons why rejuvenation would be good for any given individual should be bleeding obvious. However, you’d be surprised how often people think it all boils down to ‘You’d live forever!’—which by the way is not granted and can be a bit of a controversial concept. The real reasons why rejuvenation would be good for you as an individual are the following.

The elderly of today aren’t exactly famous for their good health, nor for their ability to go about their lives easily and without help in even the simplest tasks. Old people have weaker bodies, weaker immune systems, are prey to a number of horrible diseases and chronic pain, and cannot take care of themselves with the same ease as they did when they were young. Pay attention next time you go downtown. You’ll see elderly people walking slowly and with difficulty, perhaps with the aid of a walker or a cane. They can’t hear well and they can’t see well. Climbing the stairs for them feels like more climbing a mountain. A young person can shake off the flu after a few days of discomfort; an old person may well die of the complications of it, because their weak immune system did not do a very good job. This is, in a nutshell, why young people can take care of themselves and old people end up in hospices or have to be watched over by their families.

Overpopulation is the most common objection people make to developing rejuvenation biotechnology and potentially increasing healthy human lifespan. We take a look at why that is and if the figures support this concern.

Any discussion of rejuvenation biotechnology almost certainly includes the subject of overpopulation and that objection medical advances that directly address the various processes of aging will lead to an overpopulated world. Such dire predictions are a common theme when advances in medicine that could increase human lifespans are concerned.

Overpopulation is a word that gives the simple fact of population growth a negative connotation. It implies that an increase in the number of people will harm our lives in different ways: it might be famine, scarcity of resources, excessive population density, increased risks of infectious diseases, or harm to the environment.

This concern, first raised by the work of 18th century Reverend and scholar Thomas Malthus, has been a constant theme in both popular fiction and early foresights related to population growth. But is it actually well-founded? Let’s take a look at the issues behind these concerns from a scientific point of view.

Can we live to 1,000? It was outrageous when he said it at ideacity in 2008… and again in 2015. Now he’s back to update us on the incredible progress that has been made toward life extension.

Michael Kramer of Zoomer Radio talks with Aubrey de Grey at ideacity 2017. Aubrey de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist, currently the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation. Find out more about ideacity at http://www.ideacity.ca/ideacity-2017/