Are Aussies really dubious about living longer?
News.com.au gives us a story called Eternal life ‘not so appealing’. Brad Partridge, a PhD student at the University of Queensland, researched what people thought of anti-aging using focus groups and surveys.
He discovered that when it comes to life, people are more concerned with quality rather than quantity. “Contrary to what many in the scientific community have been saying, people are actually much more concerned about the quality of life rather than the length of it,” Mr Partridge said.
And:
“Of course you’ve got lots of interest in the concept, but people are more measured than you’d expect,” he said.
There were concerns about overpopulation if everyone lived to 150, and many people said they wanted access to euthanasia if they could live longer.
Reason posted on this over at Fight Aging! recently, and made the very important point that how people are asked these questions can make a huge difference to the result.
Given the widespread nature of the Tithonus error - the belief that living longer would mean being ever more frail and diseased - asking someone whether he would want to live to 120, providing no further context, is much the same as asking whether he would like to suffer for decades in increasing pain, frailty and disease. Not many takers there. Healthy life extension medicine will mean a longer healthy life; a postponement of disease and frailty by preventing or repairing the root causes of age-related degeneration.
It reminds me of trying to sell organic food. Show someone two apples side by side and ask them to pick one, and they’ll go for the more perfectly formed specimen. Then tell them that the perfect-looking one is sprayed and what it was sprayed with, and that the other is organic. Their choice will be affected by the greater information.
It’ll be the same with anti-aging. Context and information will affect people’s opinions and choices.
Let’s hope Mr Partridge keeps that in mind as he studies further.
