Alright, time for me to be the evil guy again.
I think this is good science but a bad idea for the time frame. This is coming from someone with a very old family full of sick and dying seniors.
Right now the world is already dealing with an overpopulation problem, and in the US we have issues with our system under a TON of pressure from the "lost generation" (Generation X), the Baby Boomers not stepping down to leave their jobs open for their successors, and medication and such bringing seniors our of retirement so they can come and compete with the young 'uns for low-end jobs to augement their social security and such.
To an extent I think it's the wrong time for this science, and really we should be letting these people retire/die as bad as it is. Sure helping "my pop" is a nice thing that everyone wants, but overall on a societal level that's a REALLY bad thing.
Now, down the road I think this technology is something we should have. Centuries from now if we unify the globe, manage to expand into space, and other things then expanding human lives and quality of life as far as it can go will be a good thing. Right now however society just can't deal with it.
A lot of old people will say "do you just want to let me to rot and die?" and the short answer to that is a painful "yes" because frankly there are bigger issues for everyone to think about involved.
It's also noteworthy that releasing such technology is liable to cause a period where it will be expensive and only availible to the richest 1% of society. When dealing with things that could expand capabilities and lifetimes this is a problem right now. I could easily see a situation where we achieve a small group of rich immortals (over a period of time, using things besides this) who rule over the people who simply cannot afford to extend their lives like that.
As far as socializing health care and making this stuff availible to everyone, well I'm not sure if it's practical, and the realities of maintaining such a system are likely to require the intentional "gimping" of research and such. Besides, if it works it still causes problems with generational replacement, not to mention an expanding population where nobody dies.
We had an oppertunity to embrace Zero Population Growth after WW II pruned the global population. We did not do so. As such some of the problems with science like this is one of the prices we pay for the "Baby Boom".
God forbid with some of our current issues we have fully capable 80 year olds running around having babies with Viagra and such. That's where this is rapidly going. While unrelated to THIS technology things like the infamous "Octomom" pretty much show the dark side of bio-science and what it can mean from a sociological perspective.
At any rate, one of the reasons why I'm such a war monger is that the reasons don't really matter so much as the fact that we need to reduce the number of people again, and since we can't exactly cull our population like cattle, war is the best way of doing it. Oh sure maybe some huge natural disaster will come along, kill billions, and "save us" despite the tradgedy but I donb't think so. Besides a PROPER war might very well unite the globe which is perhaps the biggest thing humanity needs.
