If you want to die to assist the population-control efforts, be my guest. : )
More seriously, what would happen if the average number of children per family was 3.5, rather than 2.5 [1]? Probably nothing absolutely catastrophic, and that's roughly what would happen in a pessimistic scenario of an ageless society- instead of simply generating a batch of new people that will later reproduce, there's a batch of new people and the original parent. Maybe some outliers will just keep having children constantly (until they just physically give out- that would be an extreme strain), but I'd think most people would allow a decade or two between families.
More more seriously, birth rates are declining drastically in highly developed countries, to the point that many places are worried about population decline. Overpopulation is a problem in developing nations, but realistically, anti-aging won't make a big difference there- they're already typically dying of more preventable things than old age.
[1] Source; that old apocryphal statistic we all know from the 90s or something. Its probably different now, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
relevant documentary: "No Sex Please, We're Japanese" - Link is https://vimeo.com/80542212 (this appears to be the director's account, so I don't think it's a random/pirate upload)
This "anti-ageing drug" is actually just Metformin, an old drug commonly used to not help those suffering from type-2 diabetes. Some people like it, some people hate it.
> Scientists think the best candidate for an anti-ageing drug is metformin, the world’s most widely used diabetes drug which costs just 10p a day. Metformin increases the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell, which appears to boost robustness and longevity.
Metformin actually inhibits cellular respiration by poisoning the mitochondria. The saturated fatty acid palmitate is an antidote for the effects of Metformin [1].
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 18.0 ms ] threadMore seriously, what would happen if the average number of children per family was 3.5, rather than 2.5 [1]? Probably nothing absolutely catastrophic, and that's roughly what would happen in a pessimistic scenario of an ageless society- instead of simply generating a batch of new people that will later reproduce, there's a batch of new people and the original parent. Maybe some outliers will just keep having children constantly (until they just physically give out- that would be an extreme strain), but I'd think most people would allow a decade or two between families.
More more seriously, birth rates are declining drastically in highly developed countries, to the point that many places are worried about population decline. Overpopulation is a problem in developing nations, but realistically, anti-aging won't make a big difference there- they're already typically dying of more preventable things than old age.
[1] Source; that old apocryphal statistic we all know from the 90s or something. Its probably different now, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
> Scientists think the best candidate for an anti-ageing drug is metformin, the world’s most widely used diabetes drug which costs just 10p a day. Metformin increases the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell, which appears to boost robustness and longevity.
Metformin actually inhibits cellular respiration by poisoning the mitochondria. The saturated fatty acid palmitate is an antidote for the effects of Metformin [1].
[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005272812...