Posted on 01/03/2006 8:37:47 AM PST by Neville72
Aging Baby Boomers Begin To Turn 60
The earliest post World War 2 baby boomers have begun turning 60 years old.
The baby boom, a post World War II population explosion, began 60 years ago today, on Jan. 1, 1946. By the time it ended in 1964, 75.8 million children had been born in the United States. By Dec. 31, about 2.8 million boomers will have turned 60, the leading edge of a demographic shift that will make America, and the world, statistically older than ever before.
I am hopeful that the boomers are far less willing to resign themselves to aging than previous generations and as the fact of their aging sinks in that they will begin to push harder for acceleration of research into rejuvenation therapies. Aubrey de Grey's appearance on the very popular CBS 60 Minutes TV news show just introduced tens of millions of boomers to the idea of Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS). The 60 Minutes show introduced the Methuselah Mouse Prize as a way to incentivize anti-aging research just as the X Prize accelerated the development of technology for space exploration. Those of us who promote the idea of full body rejuvenation as an achievable goal have seen this cause come a long way from the fringe to the mainstream. About 8 or 9 years ago Aubrey was discussing rejuvenation with a small handful of us on the Usenet group sci.life-extension. Gradually he's made it into major print publications and TV with the idea that aging is curable.
The rise in the average age of Western populations increases the economic value of rejuvenation therapies. When only a very small fraction of societies were old the economic return on rejuvenation was much less. But with so many highly skilled people basically wearing out and deterioriating the loss of human capital from aging is immense. Efforts to rejuvenate humans would have an economic return that is analogous to the return from rebuilding worn out capital equipment.
The reason I see rejuvenation as an achievable goal is that aging is just a changing of the arrangement of matter and our ability to rearrange matter is advancing very rapidly. Ray Kurzweil (see The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology) makes this argument with logarithmic charts and graphs showing continuing accelerations of CPU speeds, hard disk capacities, fiber optic bandwidths and other measures. While none of his trends will continue unbroken indefinitely (e.g. we will reach the point where electronic devices can't get any smaller than atoms) the trends will continue along far enough to eventually produce nanotechnological devices that make full body rejuvenation and enhancement very easy to do. Barring the destruction of human civilization (which could happen any of several plausible ways including a massive supernova or other interstellar event reaching Earth) the development of rejuvenation therapies is not a question of if. It is a question of when. Current demographic trends provide a powerful argument for accelerating the development of rejuvenation therapies. Of course, the personal desire to not grow old and decrepit is another powerful argument for reversing the aging process.
By
The Boomer generation is also the Hippie Liberal Generation.
The generation, as a whole, cannot go away fast enough for me.
Well, over 50,000 of them went away over 30 years ago. You can see their names on a wall in DC if you'd like.
I am a part of the boomer generation and have had to endure all these years of the "me" generation crap. The most vocal part of the generation - as usual the libs - are the ones that we always see in the media protesting at some save the whales crap or Bush is bad rally. They are a bunch of sad, tired, old druggies that never grew up. The rest of us, working stiffs have had to put up with these cry babies for too many years. My message to those boomers - Shut-up, eat your tofu and go away!
I was born in '62. I had a flat-top in 1969. Used Lucky Tiger on my hair.
I will not be a "Selfish Senior."
Those people, through their service, exempted themselves from the Hippie Liberal Generation and deserve the highest honor this country can give them, as does everyone who serves honorably.
However, I'm sure you'll agree that the flower-power crew and the "leading lights" of the Boomer generation such as Jane Fonda and Cindy Sheehan continue to create problems and muck up this country all out of proportion to prior generations.
Jane was born in '37, pre-baby boom by 8 years.
I thought the boomers started in 1943, not '46. My source for that is Strauss and Howe, "Generations".
Where does this guy get '46 as the start?
Dude! If my CPU is fast enough, I won't age?? That is righteous!! When my foot's asleep, I usually "rearrange matter" to wake it up. So, like, maybe I'm ahead of the curve on this whole rejuvenation thing, ya know?
AHHH YES, They can live longer on what they have not saved for retirement. Great idea. By the way I was born and 62 and resent being included with this group of collective idiots.
He's right, it started right after the end of WW2.
LOL! Geez, if I'd only had my oldest son in 1964 instead of 1966, we could have both been Baby Boomers.
Not all of us were hippies!
Fonda is too old to be a Boomer.
How about this list?
George W. Bush
Laura Bush
Dan Quayle
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Cagey
Wow! Another Freeper from the past. Hey Boomop1, how's it going? Haven't run across your posts in a while. I'm still in touch with NoDoll. Hope you are well.
Thanks for wishing my life away for me.
feeling a bit creaky myself....don't need the reminder.
Hey millions of us who were a bit freaky in the late 60's early 70's, took a long hard look at who we were and what the world and country needed and voted for Reagan in 80 and 84 and continue on to this day in the conservative and/or libertarian (small L) mold.
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