Assignment:
What is the greatest source of frustration about your health?
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Mortality
They say that getting old is better than the alternative. It’s also worse. It depends on whether you consider the alternative as dying or just staying young. Ten years ago, my brother mentioned to me that he’d heard that we were in the last generation that was actually going to die. I pooh-poohed the notion back then. These days, with stem cell research and regenerative medicine research making breakthroughs very often, I’m not so sure he was completely wrong. It might be that it’ll take another generation to get to where most degenerative diseases can be reversed, but there’s a chance it could happen.
It’s not unknown to have virtual immortality in biological species. There’s a kind of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, that’s immortal in the sense that after achieving sexual maturity and reproducing, it changes itself back into a juvenile form and then goes through the maturation process again. In the presence of sufficient food, it doesn’t die.
Of course, in a species like people, you might not want to go through adolescence, and have to attend high school, again unless you were a jock and high school was the best time of your life. If you're like most of us, you'd want to keep your knowledge and experience, something jellyfish don’t have to deal with as far as we know. So I can envision a whole generation of Doogie Howsers once this immortality thing gets going. It’ll be cute.
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