Would extending fertility also extend youth in Human beings?
April 2, 2018 2:34 PM Subscribe
Hypothetical question for science buffs that know stuff.
Prompted by a discussion with a friend We realized that by prolonging life, what we've essentially done is extend the declining phase of our lives, but not the youthful phase. I'm pretty sure if there were a pill that killed you by age 60 but made you look and feel 23 until age 50, it would sell out viagra since most people would rather live 30 years as a 23 year old than live 90 years and have 5 decades of that in slow physical and mental decline and the last 10 or 20 years in potential agony and destitution. It used to be that people's lives mostly consisted of youth and they'd have a smaller period of old age, but as life spans increased it's now a smaller period of youth by comparison to a larger time in the declining phase of life. My friend mentioned that nature makes what's 'attractive' depend on fertility. Like signs of high fertility are why a 30 year old generally looks more attractive to people than a 50 year old. This makes sense to me, so basically the fountain of youth is finding a way to make people remain fertile for longer and this will automatically result in younger appearance for much longer in the lifespan after a couple of generations.
Or maybe we all made that stuff cuz we don't actually know anything about evolutionary biology. But I'm super curious now if the major anti-aging drugs of the future, will essentially be drugs that create longer spans of fertility and how this might affect the human race as it evolves. Women are having babies later too now so maybe puberty will start much later in a couple of generations.
Prompted by a discussion with a friend We realized that by prolonging life, what we've essentially done is extend the declining phase of our lives, but not the youthful phase. I'm pretty sure if there were a pill that killed you by age 60 but made you look and feel 23 until age 50, it would sell out viagra since most people would rather live 30 years as a 23 year old than live 90 years and have 5 decades of that in slow physical and mental decline and the last 10 or 20 years in potential agony and destitution. It used to be that people's lives mostly consisted of youth and they'd have a smaller period of old age, but as life spans increased it's now a smaller period of youth by comparison to a larger time in the declining phase of life. My friend mentioned that nature makes what's 'attractive' depend on fertility. Like signs of high fertility are why a 30 year old generally looks more attractive to people than a 50 year old. This makes sense to me, so basically the fountain of youth is finding a way to make people remain fertile for longer and this will automatically result in younger appearance for much longer in the lifespan after a couple of generations.
Or maybe we all made that stuff cuz we don't actually know anything about evolutionary biology. But I'm super curious now if the major anti-aging drugs of the future, will essentially be drugs that create longer spans of fertility and how this might affect the human race as it evolves. Women are having babies later too now so maybe puberty will start much later in a couple of generations.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, there's an interesting and probably somewhat answerable question lurking in here about what we know about the science of fertility and senescence, but as framed this is kinda all over the place and chatty to the point where it's not really a good fit for Ask. -- cortex
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