QUESTION 16 - Science to help people live longer

With the population ageing, there's more pressure on resources like food, housing and care to sustain that population. At the same time, the population is ageing because of advances in medicine and health. Scientists should not help people beat old age so that people can live longer lives (up to 200 years). Do you agree or disagree? Argue your point.

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Scientists should not help people beat old age so that people can live longer lives

by anonymous

With the steady growth in population, there's more pressure on resources such as food, housing and care to sustain that population. This is due to the advances of medicine and health which has led to a big debate on whether scientist should help people beat old age. Scientists should not help people beat old age because there are much more serious problems that scientist need to approach and secondly, living up to 200 years old doesn't give the population beneficial gain.

Scientists should not help people beat old age because there are much more serious problems that scientist need to approach. Before we worry about living longer, we should be focusing on some major problems that are happening in the present. There are homeless people in the street, many people are still poor and there are diseases which scientist still need to research on to find a cure for it.Why are we worrying about advancing our medicine to live to 200 when there are people who are dying due to unknown diseases before they even reach 100 years old? Scientist should be research a cure to help cure those with diseases and help fix the major issues that are happening currently, not helping people beat old age.

Furthermore, living up to the age of 200 will give the population no beneficial gain. At around the age of 70 to 80, many people have retired already. Should we really make a medicine that will help them spend another 100 years in retirement? It has been reported that there is more pressure on resources like food,housing and care to sustain the population already. So if scientist help people beat old age, the outcome will be less beneficial than it may seem. If the whole world population lives up to 200, this means there are more mouths to feed and the resources that we need will decrease dramatically. Scientist should be working on something that will provide a beneficial gain to everyone.

Many may argue that living up to the age of 200 will bring great joy as the older generation will be there to support the younger generation and prevent mistakes that have happened from the past to occur in the future. Yes, this may be true however, living up to the age of 200 has a lot of risks that come with it. This generation is already thriving with the help of the older generation already. A 200 year old person doesn't necessarily offer more wisdom than a 100 year old person. We have survived so far without the need for anyone to grow up to the age of 200, so why start now?

In conclusion, scientists should not help people beat old age so that people can live longer lives because there are more life threatening matters that scientist should focus on rather than living a longer life and secondly, living up to 200 years old isn't something beneficial to the growing population.