Top 2 are heart disease and cancer, followed by lower respiratory infections, strokes, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes.
I know it’s not really what most of us think about when considering this, but I think that curing those diseases is likely to help us achieve “actuarial escape velocity”.
That being said, even if we cure everything else, we will still need to find a way to cure or prevent cancer, or it would still kill all of us eventually. Somehow curing cellular aging might lower the odds of getting cancer in any given year, but not eliminate it; younger people do sometimes get cancer.
I would say that finding a cure for cancer would be a necessary part of any biological longevity program.
One possible thing to think about is medical research that targets the diseases that are the most common killers today.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
Top 2 are heart disease and cancer, followed by lower respiratory infections, strokes, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes.
I know it’s not really what most of us think about when considering this, but I think that curing those diseases is likely to help us achieve “actuarial escape velocity”.
I once heard that a magical cancer cure would extend U.S. life expectancy at birth by three years...
Yeah, that’s about right.
That being said, even if we cure everything else, we will still need to find a way to cure or prevent cancer, or it would still kill all of us eventually. Somehow curing cellular aging might lower the odds of getting cancer in any given year, but not eliminate it; younger people do sometimes get cancer.
I would say that finding a cure for cancer would be a necessary part of any biological longevity program.