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
....boomers were raised listineing to great depression whiners and the "greatest generation" whiners.
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Speak for yourself. IMO, my parents' generation worked hard without whining and taught us a lot about what it means to be a good American. The only thing I can fault them on is segregation. Your comments are as obnoxious as those of the poster you are responding to.
And your statement "...raise in tax rates forced many families into dual income necessities which increased pressures on women to be everything to everyone..." is a crock of clinton.
Leaving aside all this Boomer-Generation X feuding, I also hope that growing Boomer awareness of the possibility of life extension leads to more funding and research to solve the problem of aging. Might not happen in our lifetimes (with my luck, certainly not), but it'll happen.
Aren't you the dreamer? They live for this stuff.
And, I fear, America's descent into financial anarchy will soon begin.
Yep you can count me in I just retired in Sept at the age of 62 and am enjoying it every day.
You are right Vaquero. Boomer's who never trusted anyone over thirty, sure changed their minds when they turned thirty and started families. And my Gen X kids are very conservative-so we did something right.
Sort of like Kayne West, Eminen, and Puff Daddy do for your generation, huh?
Now, now; don't argue with Generation Know-It-All.
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I don't want to generalize like the kid we're arguing against. I am assuming that he is an Xer or a Yer, and it's those guys who are, in large number, protecting our nation today
I think you're right about that.
Bump to all that!
Please give this boomer's thanks to your husband for his service.
I guess you've noticed that WE are able to separate out the malcontents in their generations, but they can't seem to understand that all of us weren't doing dope and marching against the war.
Pretty telling, if you ask me.
You are a boomer if born between 46' -64'
Well, as one who is 58, fought the hippies on campus, and remained a Conservative thourghout my life, you cannot go away fast enough for me!
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The Viet Nam era draft ended in 1973, well before half of the boomers were of military age. From then to throughout the 80s and early 90s our military was significantly larger than it is today, all volunteer and mostly boomer.
After the self-centered lives they've led, many boomers apparently are afraid to die, as they see their biological clock moving toward the "three score years and ten" (70) spoken of by Scripture as a normal lifespan. You can lift your face and your buns until you look ridiculous, but ready or not, everyone will die.
I guess you've noticed that WE are able to separate out the malcontents in their generations, but they can't seem to understand that all of us weren't doing dope and marching against the war.
**
Again, you are doing what the anti-boomer posters here are guilty of -- generalizing. I will not use a handful of whiners as an accurate measure of an entire generation of young people. For example, I have 4 Gen X children, and I can assure you that they do not share the view of our generation that you have described.
A major boomer ditto to that!!!
The "Baby Boom" started the year after WWII ended and all of the service personnel came home to restart their interrupted lives. My Mom and Dad married in 1946 and I popped out one year and 4 days later, in 1947.
Seems, objectively, that Dubya & Rush are much brighter lights than Jane & Cindy.
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