What separates death and immortality? Money.

Around the world researchers are working on discovering what causes ageing and what could mitigate it. The name that springs to mind that best represents all this effort is Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and funny looking fellow who ironically looks a lot older than he actually is. In his view what determines the pace of research and the discovery of therapies that could not only prolong life, but vastly improve its quality by eliminating major degenerative diseases, is funding.

As they say, time is money, and when it comes to research time actually contracts when you throw money at it.

The problem Grey and his colleagues face is not directly the lack of money, however. It is the people who control it. Most of them are fairly advanced in years, and so may not be so inclined to invest either their own money or divert state money that might otherwise be used to fulfil election promises and thereby get them elected again.

This is where the youth of today need to do some reckoning. Why vote for old-guard politicians who increase military spending? Where will that get you? Vote for politicians who will divert funding from the military to anti-senescence research. The prize is there, long life, and probably immortality if we want it eventually. Grey believes the first perosn to live to a 1000 is already 60 (he said this about 5 years ago in fact). With the right therapies, we would get old much more slowly and much more healthily, without the more debilitating degenerative diseases, staying one step ahead of death.

Some will be sceptical. But if we must throw our money away, then the youth of the world should opt to throw it at anti-senescence research, not military spending.  The science of anti-senescence is encouraging and progressing yearly, so it makes sense for youth to speed it up so that even perhaps those currently pessimistic may in fact live to see the benefits in the not too distant future.