Creating Very Old People

What if you could life to be 120 years old? What if everybody could?

That's the question being put before attendees at a medical conference in New Jersey titled. "Creating Very Old People: Individual Blessing, or Societal Disaster?"

Dr. Donald Louria is the conference's organizer. Dr. Louria is a medical physician and professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He says medical science will make it possible for human beings to live 110 to 120 years, and beyond by the end of this century. But while scientists race to find out if they can extend life, society should consider what the consequences might be.

"We're balancing where we're going with the science with the potential individual and societal consequences of the scientific achievements," Louria says. "It's not a question of whether it's going to happen, it's a question of when it's going to happen."

Disease prevention will soon help the average person born in America to live to their mid 90s. Beyond that, Louria says, advances in the science of aging will begin to help researchers slow down the aging process. That, Louria says, is when we'll begin to see people living to what he calls "very old age."

And that's something that will require change on society's part.

"If we have people who can live that long," he says, "half their adult lives will be in retirement. Will we have people excited about life, reasonably healthy, having a good quality of life… or will we have lonely, depressed bored, not very healthy, with not a good quality of life? We have no idea. What we want to say to people is … we darn well better be prepared for it.

"Are we going to rejuvenate their bodies, but not their minds, or are we going to keep their minds good, but have their bodies deteriorate? We need to make sure that if we increase the quantity of life, that you increase the quality."