I have been fortunate to not lose too many people close to me to death (two of my four grandparents died before I was born). An article on Wired talks about preliminary research into drugs that could stop age related diseases. The downside? In the lab animal tests the animal still died around the age they would have. The difference is that there is no cause of death that they can pinpoint it too. The question posed by the author is, how would this change our life knowing that there would be no signs of coming death? I'm somewhat torn on this... on the one hand, it would be nice to not have people suffer. On the other hand, in my limited experience with dealing with the death of loved ones, I would think that having some warning is easier than no warning at all. One commenter brings up another issue... if there are no signs of death, we couldn't allow those past a certain age to do anything dangerous such as driving. What do other Mod-Bloggers think... if available (and side-effects were minimal to none), would you take the drugs? Would you want your loved ones taking the drugs?
Warning: I have not watched the videos with the article. They appear to be clips of movies, but I do not know if they are family friendly or not.
I would think if the diseases of old age we are talking about are things like Alzheimers then it most people would rather have no symptoms and die "suddenly". It is nice getting to say goodbye to someone, but it is easier usually for the person dying if it is sudden.
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