7/01/2008 PERMALINK
Spys label life extension a "disruptive" technology The National Intelligence Council has included life extension in their report: Disruptive Civil Technologies ~ Six Technologies with Potential Impacts on US Interests out to 2025. Biogerontechnology, says the report, offers the means to accomplish control over and improvement in the human condition, and promises improvements in lifespan. The advancement of the science and technology underlying the biological aging process has the potential to not only extend the average natural lifespan, but also to simultaneously postpone many if not all of the costly and disabling conditions that humans experience in later life, thereby creating a longevity dividend that will be economic, social and medical in nature. The disruptive potential comes in the form of new treatment modalities, shifts in the cost, and resulting allocation and use of health care resources. Nations will be challenged as a result of changing demographic structures, new psychologies, activity patterns of aging yet healthy citizens, and the resulting requirement to formulate new national economic and social policies.