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Do You Really Want To Live Forever?

Long-lasting life may not be as enticing as we think

Tom Stevenson
6 min readJul 31, 2020
Photo by Leonardo Yip on Unsplash

Imagine that there was a drug you could take that allowed you to live with some form of immortality.

Diseases such as the flu and cancer would no longer be a concern. Organ failure would be a remote possibility. The only thing that could take your life would be an unfortunate accident.

To take this drug would mean that you’re guaranteed to be healthy for the foreseeable future and beyond. Sounds fantastic right? Who wouldn’t want to take such a drug!?

On the face of it, this does sound great. One of the many worries most of us have is that we will die. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that from the moment we are born, we are on a one-way track to the end of our lives.

For some this comes before their time, others live long and fruitful lives well into old age. Still, the spectre of death hangs over us regardless. To remove it would be a joyous occasion, a cause for celebration surely?

Well, as the old saying goes, you should be careful what you wish for! While it may seem like living forever is appealing, what would the reality look like? Can we contemplate how long forever is? How would society be structured if some of us were here in perpetuity?

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