We should try to be more like the Galapagos tortoises, which achieve a state of “negligible senescence” and stay there for many decades. This is according to a new book called Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older without Getting Old. From the New York Times (which, just as a reminder, I will never subscribe to until/unless they apologize for lying to me about weapons of mass destruction):

This is, in fact, “what we should aim for,” Steele says: “a risk of death, disability, frailty and illness which doesn’t depend on how long ago you were born.” In precise and sometimes dense detail he lays out the means by which science could effectively eliminate human aging. These approaches fall into four categories: “removing bad things that accumulate,” “renewing things which are broken or lost,” “repairing things which are damaged or out of kilter” and “reprogramming our biology to slow or reverse aging.”

New York Times

Overpopulation and funding pensions might become an issue in such a world. Then again, if we are really losing our ability to reproduce through natural means, we might need to become a living dead species just to be able to stick around for awhile.