Much is being made of efforts to prolong human life. Lots of money is available, it appears, to fund research on allowing those who can afford it, to live until they are 120 and beyond.

I think this is a simply dreadful idea. Already there are too many people on a planet where food and water security is dodgy, to say the least. There is an old-age bulge already in some countries, which people are expected to pay taxes to support. But to fiddle with the biology of man to extend lives is a perilous undertaking, an undertaking, I am convinced, Epicurus would heartily disapprove of.

Think of the unforeseen consequences. If the old person whose life expectancy is extended expects to work, that takes jobs away from younger people. Health costs rise as the population ages Because someone has taken a pill or an injection to let them live on, it doesn’t mean that all sorts of unexpected illnesses won’t occur to them, a burden on the health services.

One could go on, but the fact is that what researchers should be doing is to improve the lives of the young, the poor, the medically ill-served. They should be tackling alzheimers, cancer and all the other major killers, making medicine more effective and more efficient, not keeping alive self-absorbed idiots.