> This is probably my fault. You thought this
>through further than I did. I put up the
>question, then answered it with this third
>option. Yet if I developed a life-threatening
>condition reliably treatable, of course I would
>opt for treatment.

So how far do you take it? If next year someone develops a treatment for "old age" that reverses the effects that we commonly attribute to old age (poor eyesight, creaky painful joints, lowered stamina, diminished mental capacity -- none of which, by the way, are really neccessarily symptoms of "old age" since a person could theoretically live to 110 and be a world class gymnast right up until he dropped dead of "old age") and allowed people to live in comfort 20 years longer, would you do it? How about 50 years? Would you delay the "natural" aging process for 100 years? 200? It's interesting to think about when medical treatments stop seeming to "naturally" prolong the lifespan and start seeming to be "artificial". The crux of the issue is that we really don't understand "old age" and why our bodies tend to break down with age. It may seem like just the natural tendencies of the universe, such as your old car getting cranky as it ages and never starting right or stalling at stoplights, but the truth is we're such wonderful self-healing machines we really ought to be able to live longer than we do even now, from what I understand, and that we don't is kind of a mystery. It could be a simple biological control to help reduce overpopulation, but nobody really knows for sure.

Another interesting factor to ponder is that immortality doesn't actually mean "you'll live forever". Forever is a loaded word. Most of us would define it as eternity, an infinite amount of time. But the fact of the matter is, this universe *won't* last forever. If you're a Christian you certainly believe that the day of judgement will come and God is going to actively dismantle this world. If you're an agnostic/atheist who trusts in what science teaches, this universe will come to an end in one of two ways. Either the universe is closed, and gravity will eventually halt the expansion and cause a contraction, in which case the universe will end in a "big crunch", or the universe is open, and gravity will not overcome the expansion, and entropy will eventually win and the universe will end in a "heat death" (I believe current findings show the universe to be most probably open, which means that our fate is most probably in the heat death.) Either way, nothing will survive. Even theoretical beings of "pure energy" will not survive either the big crunch or the heat death. So for those who look to immortality as a way of never having to face their own mortality, they should know that they're only delaying the inevitable. It is not *possible* to live in this universe forever because eventually this universe will either cease to be (big crunch) or will have completely uniform energy distribution (heat death) both of which preclude the existence of any intelligent life we can possibly imagine.

-- Dave