tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753820.post8638947568963177061..comments2009-11-16T19:11:29.107-05:00Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13003484633933455827george@sentientdevelopments.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753820.post-64861360471003275232009-11-16T19:11:29.107-05:002009-11-16T19:11:29.107-05:00The comments in the article &quot;your next body is growing in a lab right now&quot; reminds me of something significant which I haven&#39;t seen addressed anywhere. Namely, about the idea that clinical immortality will lead to an uncontrollable population explosion. People who think that seem to have forgotten about menopause.<br /><br />Either menopause won&#39;t be cured, in which case a woman will still only have a roughly 25 year breeding period, and thus won&#39;t be spawning babies into perpetuity; or else it will be cured, in which case women will have no pressure to have children young, and career minded ones will not have their first child until they&#39;re 80 or something. And clinical immortality doesn&#39;t necessarily mean &quot;will live forever&quot; - only that old age and degenerative diseases are no longer a factor.<br /><br />Either way, this could still lead to a potential minor boost in population growth rates, if you ignore the fact that healthier, longer-lived people generally have fewer children and most industrialized nations already have a negative population growth rate (at least among the native-born; some still have positive growth rates, but this is usually due directly to immigration and indirectly due to the fact that young immigrants tend to have a lot of children after they arrive)fallinguptheskyhttp://fallingupthesky.livejournal.com/noreply@blogger.com