Someone Actually Got It! I think.

Last Friday night, I went to dinner with some friends, two of whom I know well, the other three of whom I've only met a few times. Of course the subject of my new job came up, and as always, someone said, "I wouldn't want to live that long."

You'll be pleased to know that I refrained from saying, "Then please die now and save us all the irritation."

However, I did engage the person on her statement. "Why wouldn't you want to live that long?" I asked.

I expected to hear the typical, "I wouldn't want to be old that long" answer, which requires communicating to people that we're not talking about extending the time you spend in a nursing home, we're talking about extending youth and health, perhaps indefinitely. That usually takes some work (communicating the concept that is) and an entry on trying to describe the difference between changes in lifestyle and the SENS approach has been brewing in my head for weeks and is about to get written. But this person's issue was not the typical, "I don't want to be sick that long."

She answered, "I just don't think I would want to live past our natural lifespan."

Aha! I knew I had an opening to turn that one around.

"But chances are, you've already lived way past your natural lifespan," said I. "First, you didn't die in childhood of infectious diseases because you were immunized against most of them and any you got, you took antibiotics for and got better."

"Second, you're in your early thirties. Therefore, it's extremely unlikely that at any point in human history before the last fifty years or so you would have survived outside of a convent without getting pregnant and probably having multiple babies. Due to medical advances, you can both prevent pregnancy and most likely avoid dying in childbirth, or due to complications of having a baby every year."

So you've already far outlived your "natural" lifespan... if by natural you mean what you could live without technological advances that have prolonged your lifespan.

Why were those medical advances okay, but it becomes "not okay" to live beyond, say, 90?