Good Morning America did a segment on a scientist who says he discovered, by accident, a protein that may allow people to live to 150 healthy years of age.  The protein, resveratrol, was found in red wine, though to get enough of it to make a dent would require people to drink 1000 bottles a day.  No word on when human trials to prove this aspect of the theory will get started.

But they have already developed a pill that provides the needed dose of resveratrol and have been conducting experiments with rats, and the experiments have been successful.  The impacted gene in rats is the same in humans, according to the report.

Consider the revolution that this will cause, if the plans to make this pill commercially available to humans in the next few years come to fruition.  On the one hand, people will be able to live long, healthy lives.  On the other, what do we do with them when (a) the money runs out, (b) there are no jobs available for the young, (c) we have a zillion old baby boomers hanging around forever pining politically for the olden days, (d) we get bored.

It certainly gives life in prison a whole new meaning.

Science scares me.  No, not because I don’t know how it’s done, or because I’ve watched “I am Legend” too many times.  I fear that the implications for society are never taken into account, and that these implications can have disastrous social consequences, making life far longer and far more miserable than every before.  Scientists don’t care; this isn’t their thing.  They just make the discoveries.  It’s up to the rest of us to deal with them.

The law of unintended consequences never fails to prove us underwhelming in our ability to consider and address the impact of our actions.  The “common sense” crowd wants nothing to do with the real labor of thinking, and the political crowd cares only about pacifying the masses, leaving the hard issues for someone else to deal with down the road.  While the belief is that someday, somehow, someone will find an answer to our problems that is either too hard to figure out now, or too painful to fix now, and save humanity from itself.  Why bother today when we can leave it for someone else to deal with when things get really, really bad.

But this concept has truly mind-boggling implications, if there’s any merit to it at all.  Consider the second-coming of  Thomas Malthus, or maybe  Soylent Green for the sci-fi fans amongst us.

Even if we are willing to address the social issues that would come from such a monumental change in our lives, there’s one thought that might well defy any potential solution:  Imagine being married for 120 years?  That really puts Paradise by the Dashboard Lights in a different perspective. “Meatloaf again?”



Did I mention how much I love my wife?