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Comment by dbg31415 | Hacker News Reader

Oh yay, now we can look forward to immortal rich folks. And the abolition of the retirement age.

I know you're making a joke, but a lot of people say this and it always irks me slightly. This narrative that if rich people fund X universally desirable thing, then only rich people will have X. This is literally never the case in the history of technology. Yes, the rich get it first, but it filters down to poor people really really quickly, especially in the modern age where costs fall at an insane pace.

Sorry, didn't mean to respond overly seriously to a lighthearted comment! Just wanted to get that in there.

In technology, sure. In somewhat less easy to define things, not so much. Rich people tend to have better education, better health care, less worries and stress (or at least less existential worries and better coping mechanisms), and better "life opportunities" as far as anything that requires money is concerned. Poor people can't work in industries where unpaid internships are commonplace for example, because they need to earn money for rent and food. Rich people can work for free if they choose to.

Whether a vastly extended lifespan falls under just technology, and thus ends up as something everyone can have, or something else that is actually limited to the rich is something we don't yet know.

For example, if the key to a longer life is technology plus retiring as early as possible to limit stress, poor people aren't going to live longer.

That doesn't really contradict the notion that rich people fund advances which end up enriching everyone's life, it just poorly expresses your envy about rich people having more than you.

Yes, rich people always have better things. Technology and healthcare are no exception.

I'm not saying that the poor will ever equal the rich contemporaneously. They won't. What they will do is equal the rich of say, ten years ago (perpetually moving forward). That is the nature of progress.

I am pretty sure the way it works is that everyone will get the immortality when it is available, but the poor folks get 1,000 years of debt.

I'd take that deal.

Even if we cure aging the median life expectancy might not surpass 1,000 – that is a long time to not get in a car accident, fall off a cliff, be struck by lightning, etc.

But yeah, I'd take it too.

The estimated statistic I've heard is that if you eliminated all causes of death related to aging and age-related degeneration, the average life expectancy would be right around 1000.

Which, more importantly, means 930 or so more years to figure out the next solution after that. See also "longevity escape velocity", for how we can incrementally get to 1000 in the first place.

Only if people respect IP law.

Normal small-molecule drugs are trivial to reverse-engineer, biologics are trickier but the means of manufacturing them is self-replicating, and Shenzhen is good at reverse-engineering other technologies if we're to believe what we read in the media

So much this!

I highly doubt the process will be a single drug. I can't imagine any way any compound could remove DNA damage[1] for all cells in your body. Of course, if it did that would be great.

Most likely treatment would be some sort of specialized therapy where your DNA is painstakingly copied (with some process that is somehow better than the biological one) and then all the cells in your body are periodically repaired.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging

In all seriousness, the price for eternal youth will be the cost of production and shipping.

If it turns out to be a compound for eternal youth, then it can be reverse engineered by labs in China or India (or anywhere). There is no sufficient patent, IP law, moral high ground about R&D expenses. The world will be supplied at the cost of production and shipping.

Just like the cost of all medication is just production and shipping?

My doctors in the US, were hesitant to give me an MRI for my knee because of costs (~$1000 per MRI). Something about the insurance company needing some prerequisites. Fair enough. My knee really wasn't that bad, and I lived my life. 3 months later I was in India for other reasons. I walked into a clinic, spent $96, two days later I had the results of my MRI. I was handed a CD with the raw image files they collected (MRI specific file format). I had "printouts" of those images. I even had a note in english for a layperson like myself to understand. Later, I took those MRI files to my doctors in the US. They confirmed all the findings, and suggested the same things as the doctors in India and I went along my way. Unprovoked the Ortho looking at my knee and the MRI even exclaimed, "thats the best $100 MRI I've ever seen".

In this case, the total costs of production/shipping were higher than they would have been in the US. But that is because I had to ship myself (i.e. ~$2000 round trip). However, I built it into my vacation, so the MRI essentially cost me the ~$100 for "production". I've had single dinners which are more expensive.

Taking pictures of your body is relatively innocent. Medication is a little more tricky. You need to be able to trust the source. However, if layperson B can trust the source of the Heroin they consistently buy on Silk Road, I have no doubts that the trust issues for medication will be solved far before we have compound "eternal youth".

For what its worth, we just happen to have insurance so we tend to think everyone buys drugs legally like we do. Do some research about what people without options actually do. Did you watch the "Dallas Buyers Club"? Where do you think poor diabetics get Insulin, or Metaformin? Even today, Metaformin being an "anti-aging" drug, is even imported from China and sold without prescription.

If you're still not convinced: Think about the risk reward calculation for a second. Importing illegal drugs, risk (aside from eating bad pills): 50 years in prison. Reward: You're now eternally young. Endure a really poor 50 years, then a long long time from now, watch the universe slowly end as you eat at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, fondly looking back at the last bajillion years.

I am supposing that it will be incredibly expensive, something like $1 trillion/person or something along those lines.

Hence, the 1,000 years of debt.

A lot of people will take the deal anyway.

No way.

For example: Is it illegal to buy lab equipment? No. Is it illegal to make medical compounds in your home? No. Is it illegal to violate patent or copyright law with zero intent to distribute and monetize? No.

For a couple 10s or 100s of millions of dollars I could buy the infrastructure to build the compound in my garage. Depending on the legality, potentially use it to feed friends and family as gifts. Sell the infrastructure.

All of a sudden the compound's cost is determined by your ability to buy and sell on craigslist.

Meanwhile, why go through all the trouble? Just go on Yelp, find a reputable seller in Brazil, China, or India (somewhere it is not illegal to buy). Spend $5000 on a vacation, and another couple thousand on the compound. At most (for the poorest people) its a couple years (10 maybe) of debt.

If some anti-aging magic bullet was discovered, the market for it would be insanely huge. Unless the technology is intrinsically complex, capital intensive, or "high-touch," it's going to rapidly decline in price with scale just like any other technology.

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