[eslaught]

To me it's interesting that (a) most people die of old age, and (b) the leading cause of death is essentially preventable (heart disease being highly lifestyle related) or else plausibly curable in the future (I certainly hope we'll see progress on cancer in my lifetime).

That was very much not the case historically; you can Google numbers yourself but the percentage of childhood deaths prior to modern medicine was truly shocking.

It also seems to indicate that, with some thought and care, a meaningful impact (both at individual and societal levels) is possible by altering our lifestyles to be healthier.

[bruce511]

>> I certainly hope we'll see progress on cancer in my lifetime).

Good news. You already have :).

Firstly, it's worth pointing out that "cancer" is not really 1 thing. There are lots of different conditions that are cancer, but they are different in many ways. For example lung cancer is pretty bad because your body needs lungs to function. Whereas say a melanoma on your foot is easier for your body to cope with (because your organs are all working.)

Some cancers are easily removed via surgery, some are not.

Likewise chemotherapy is a term covering a lot of different drugs and drug combinations. Advances in this space, matching doses, and drugs, to cancers have progressed enormously over the last couple decades. Some (although very much not all) cancers are now curable.

The most critical part of cancer survival is how early you catch it. But cancers are mostly asymptomatic so unless you "go looking" it's likely they'll be advanced before detection.

The biggest progress with cancer is thus regular screening. Especially for the most common ones. Prostate cancer for example is a simple blood test. How many of us are doing that every 6 months?

Cancer will always be with us. The causes are diverse, and often unexplainable. But we have made huge strides in early detection, as well as treatments. No doubt there will be more strides to come.

So let me be the first to turn your hope into reality :)

[Apes]

I don't think there's a silver bullet coming within our lifetimes.

There's no single points of failure: as you get older, everything just starts wearing out and failing.

If you cure heart disease and cancer, then others will just take their place: strokes, respiratory disease, Alzheimer's disease, falls.

And even if you do extend your lifespan, the reality is quality of life at 90+ is a lot worse than in your 20s or 30s.

[gyomu]

> the reality is quality of life at 90+ is a lot worse than in your 20s or 30s.

All my grandparents lived well into their 90s (mediterranean lifestyle + modern medicine), and all of them would’ve chosen euthanasia had it been an option (they phrased that in various ways - essentially something along the lines of “if God could bring me home now it’d be good”).

It’s been a sobering thing to experience and it leaves me hoping that if I’m ever in their position, that option will be available to me somehow.

[YokoZar]

While it's true that preventing cancer means you're likely to die in a few years of heart disease, and preventing heart disease means you're likely to die in a few years of cancer, solving both will add dramatically more than both effects combined to both life and healthspan.

Those really are the big two - as the graphs in the article show, the next biggest things are much smaller and much less likely to get you, which means you live a lot longer and healthier.

[david38]

Standard engineering. You fix the thing that breaks the system first. Fix that, the next bug appears. Rinse, repeat.

You don’t think we have been doing this already? Car safety improved, general violence, death by food poisoning, etc. Now we have contacts, knee replacement surgery, meniscus surgery, widespread information on fitness for the elderly, etc.

You have many specialized fields slowly improving. The top focus changes as the previous top problems get solutions.