Pretty sure dying of old age is a fatal condition if untreated. "Near term" being different depending on your age, but if you're 94 and male, you have a 3 year life expectancy, so pretty dang near term.
Nontrivial numbers of people not dying of old age would also present some complications for society in general, without adequate planning. Anyone interested in seeing life extension being brought to market would be well served by addressing those issues.
I don't buy this argument. First of all, the implication is that by increasing lifespan we'll increase some other kind of cost. I actually suspect it would be entirely the opposite - that by increasing lifespan we'll increase healthspan, massively reducing healthcare costs, increasing years where an individual is an economic boon, etc.
Second, there's a huge difference between "we've made everyone immortal" and "we've increase average lifespan by 5 years". If average lifespan goes up 5 years I don't think we will have a ton to worry about in terms of "oh my god there are SO MANY more people!" etc.
So I just don't buy it being this huge thing to plan for.
What's interesting about longevity medicine is because of these ethical considerations there aren't billions sloshing around fully occupying all interested researchers like there would be for something like Alzheimer's research. This makes the field more interesting because there aren't the usual big players funding research and vacuuming up all the talent.
