Would you like to live forever? Few things can go on forever. There's the IRS, of course, and reruns of The Big Bang Theory. And Gerber baby food.
For some reason, the folks at Gerber decided about ten years ago that I was still a prime candidate for their marketing program. Since then, I've received an email from Gerber every day, year in and year out. Seeing the title on my email list every morning is like having an old friend who won't quit sending me pictures of their trip to Europe. I’ve tried to block the Gerber ad from my email, but it returns like a debt collector. It appears only death will release me from this.
Or maybe I won’t die. Scientists who study these things found that you can root around in a mouse's DNA and make them live about 4 years instead of 2, which is the average. If you're a mouse, that calls for a "Yippee!" but is that really such an impressive number human-wise? Well, it's a start. The rooting around in the DNA thing involves activities like killing zombie cells, fiddling with something called telomeres, and several other things that I can't remember at the moment.
But if they do follow promising leads in the quest to cure aging, I hope they spend most of their time on the zombie cell problem. Having zombie cells sounds like a bad thing. Let's tackle that before we move on to the other stuff.
Suppose they do find a way to make us live forever, or at least allow us to live long enough to use up that giant jar of peanut butter we bought at Costco two years ago. Won't immortality lead to all kinds of other problems? Of course it will. What about overpopulation? How do you feel about standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles every four years for the rest of eternity? I hope they consider this before they do something we all come to regret.
But there are other consequences too. For instance, men never buy clothes after a certain age. We figure the meager apparel in our closet will see us through our remaining years before it wears out entirely, or our wife sneaks it out of the dryer and drops it directly into the trash. I think all men fervently hope to be buried in their favorite flannel shirt with the grease stain on the front. But if they live forever, men are eventually going to be running around in only that T-shirt they stuck in the bottom drawer because it was getting a little tight around the waist. That is a world I don't want to see.
And what about vacations? Can you really contemplate a life where you have to visit Disney World more than once? I, for one, cannot.
Probably my main concern about living forever is relationships. My wife loves me, but at this point in our marriage, my charm is running on fumes. She is a wonderful, caring woman, but there are limits. And what about all those other relatives? Do you have to watch Jeopardy with your Aunt Norma every Thursday night for the next century?
And science isn't perfect. Somebody comes up with a great new pill that promises to end indigestion, cure cancer, or get rid of the angry rash that’s been attacking your feet for the past six years. The next thing you know, you have a dog's head growing out of your back and nobody will sit next to you on the bus. "Well," the doctor says, "We never claimed there weren't a few side effects”.
What if they do away with death, but one of the side effects is you repeat the horrors of puberty every decade? I would hate a world like that. I didn’t like puberty the first time, and it isn’t going to improve with repetition.
So, bottom line, I'm not sure where I land on the discussion of immortality. If I don't get to live forever, there is some consolation in knowing that when I finally lose my teeth and have to be fed in the nursing home, I have an in with the Gerber folks.