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> I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them.

I think its presumed that life extension would also come with improved health. What kills you is decline due to chronic conditions. Target that and stop the declined and you gain both long-life, and healthy life.

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There are a lot of things that can cause chronic pain without threatening your life. We would have to learn how fix all of these non-life-threatening things in addition to what causes death, or everlasting life will lead to everlasting pain with absolute certainty.

You seem to be omitting reversible cryopreservation from the scenario. All you would need to do is freeze yourself until a cure is found for whatever is causing you pain. But this seems like a non-likely thought experiment scenario anyway -- I can't imagine being able to regenerate body parts and prevent aging from being lethal, yet being unable to comprehensively prevent pain.

I think this can be broken down into two problems.

1. Preventing / curing all causes of pain. 2. Changing how the body responds to pain.

I think problem number 2 is easier to solve. The human body is a biological machine and I hink we will find better ways of handling pain than today. An example could be an implant in the brain that simply blocks the impulses.

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