Strategies For Engineered Negligible Senescence - Social and Economic Implications

Social and Economic Implications

Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds — 100,000 per day — die of age-related causes. In industrialized nations, the proportion is much higher, reaching 90%.

De Grey and other scientists in the general field have argued that the costs of a rapidly growing aging population will increase to the degree that the costs of an accelerated pace of aging research are easy to justify in terms of future costs avoided. Olshansky et al. 2006 argue, for example, that the total economic cost of Alzheimer's disease in the US alone will increase from $80–100 billion today to more than $1 trillion in 2050. "Consider what is likely to happen if we don't . Take, for instance, the impact of just one age-related disorder, Alzheimer disease (AD). For no other reason than the inevitable shifting demographics, the number of Americans stricken with AD will rise from 4 million today to as many as 16 million by midcentury. This means that more people in the United States will have AD by 2050 than the entire current population of the Netherlands. Globally, AD prevalence is expected to rise to 45 million by 2050, with three of every four patients with AD living in a developing nation. The US economic toll is currently $80–$100 billion, but by 2050 more than $1 trillion will be spent annually on AD and related dementias. The impact of this single disease will be catastrophic, and this is just one example."