TED Video : Are you born to die?

    Historically, there have been many efforts made in searching for the origin of animal instincts. We are quite familiar that many scientists made diverse hypotheses and theories to seek the fundamental key that reveals the enigma of innate properties of animals, including those of humans. However, when we try to scrutinize where these extreme properties come from, our observations focus on how animals or, according to Richard Dawkins, genes struggle themselves to maintain their existence. But in this lecture, the speaker confirmed the existence of the gene that was set to age and eventually, kill animals. I believe the existance of such gene has a great value in the field of medical science and philosophy.
    In the field of medical science, gaining control over the 'aging gene' could be a innovative and laudable method to extend human's life span. As the speaker said, the research team has already made exemplary remarks on testing the chemicals that prevents the 'aging gene' from coming in effect. More and more the idea of longer life span becomes pragmatic, the expectation on the new medical technology The slow progress of aging not only increases the human life span, but also mitigates the severity of age-related diseases such as heart attacks, dementia etc. Of course, increased life span engenders more population. So this leaves the econmists to adequately set the changed labor market's supply-demand equilibrium. Depending on how stabilized the new equilibrium is going to work with the augmented population, it could make a dramtic increase to our social prosperity or it could lead to the all-time losing game of abject poverty.
    The field of philosophy also is anticipated to have a interesting debate toward this heresy. In the book 'Selfish Gene', Dawkins proposed the idea of the 'replicator', the initial molecule which first managed to reproduce itself and thus gained an advantage over other molecules within the primordial soup. Today, Dawkins postulates, the replicators are the genes within organisms, with each organism's body serving the purpose of a 'survival machine' for its genes. But the basic question that an acute person can ask is 'Why does the aging gene exist if human body is designed for the survival of the genes?'. There, I believe, we can come up with two theories. First, the aging gene might actually exist for animal's 'survival'. Second, the aging gene is an exception of the theory 'selfish gene'. This also leads to the debate dealing with the meaning of generations and death. So the existence of aging gene triggers diverse debates in the field of philosophy. (I would post another writing dealing with linked topics)
    To sum up, aging gene gives our society a huge influence not only for the existence itself, but when we try to understand and manipulate the gene for advanced application of medical science. Also, when humans actually achieve the ability of controling the aging gene, there would be negative effects just as many as the positive effect. Whether or not we could overcome the anticipated negative effects in the gene manipulation would eventually make the real-life application possible or not.