How many people can live on planet Earth?

[Slimebeast]

highwaystar101 said:

Slimebeast said:

dtewi said:

You know what zero population growth is, correct?

A couple having two children on average. The two children replace the two parents. There is a net gain of zero people.

America has accomplished this, along with China (?).

And can you PLEASE get the real statistic of average children per couple instead of pulling it out of a hat?

No it's not if people live longer. And they do.

Medical tech and genetic engineering will allow those who are born today to live 100 years on average. And for each future generation the life expectancy will just keep increasing far beyond that.

You're in the medical industry so I'm sure you know of this guy, but have you ever read or heard of the work of Aubrey De Grey? He's a biologist/geneticist who believes that it is perfectly feasible for people to live forever by tackling seven key areas (Cancer, Mitochondrial mutations, intracellular aggregates, extracellular aggregates, cell loss, cell senescence and extracellular cross links).

It's interesting stuff.

I don't recognize the name but it's probably the same guy I've heard about, yes.

Living forever is crazy talk and not many agrees with him, because the body is too complex for not something to go wrong so the organism dies eventually. By design the internal repair mechanisms arent made to sustain a very long life, and the parts are too small and complex from a 'mechanical' perspective for them all to be able to be fixed externally.

But I understand his points, they're very important and breakthroughs in those areas will increase life expectancy tremendously beyond what we can imagine today. So I get your point, and it's very interesting. We're still living in a very primitive era of humanity.