As raw fooders, we look forward to enjoying the longer life that is promised to us.  We even may allow ourselves to savor the prospect of living forever that is offered by the immortalists.
        Regrettably, there is not a lot of support for those of us who want to live forever or die trying.  There is a definite body of opinion that we should not be allowed to extend our lives indefinitely:
        About twenty years ago, Richard Lamm, then governor of Colorado, said that older people had a duty to die and get out of the way.
        In 1987, Daniel Callahan, self-described as  “the nation's leading medical ethicist “ wrote a book called Setting Limits in which he advocated cutting off lifesaving medical care after a certain age (late seventies or early eighties, he said) to reduce the nation's health care costs.  (Obviously, Callahan didn’t think through the implications of his proposal.  If people knew ahead of time that they would be on their own for medical care after a certain age, they would have to go all-out to accumulate the money they might need.  Niceties like having children and giving to charity would have to go by the board. 
        Callahan hoped that people would come to accept the idea of an arbitrarily limited lifespan.  I doubt they would, but even if they did, I would be one of the last holdouts.  My life and my wife’s life are better now than they have ever been, and we want to make them last as long as we can.)
        There are those who would deny us life extension by suppressing research. In the early 1980's, Leon Kass, another well-known ethicist, gave a talk entitled  “Whether to Wither “ in which he argued against life extension, based on the inconvenience to society of having us live longer, as well as the supposed spiritual advantages of impending death. (Kass has recently been put in charge of the ethics of the stem-cell program.  I am not at all comfortable with somebody who thinks like that having control of this potentially life-extending research.)
        Betty Friedan, in her book The Fountain of Age, quoted (page 128):  “Dr Nancy Dubler, [a gerontological ethicist] said disapprovingly, 'I'm not sure the banishment of death to its furthest point is ever a good goal.  Perhaps there is an obligation on the part of the old to step aside and die in their time, and turn over their assets to the younger generation.'  Others expostulated, with visible agitation, that it wasn't fair to put that kind of burden on insurance companies, the Social Security system, the federal budget.  Some suggested that such research on extending the life span should not be encouraged, funded -- even permitted. “
        In 1994, Sherwin B. Nuland, in  “How We Die, “ wrote  “The lesson is never learned - there will always be those who persist in seeking the Fountain of Youth, or at least delaying what is irrevocably ordained.  There is a vanity in all of this, and it demeans us.  At the very least, it brings us no honor.  Far from being irreplaceable, we should be replaced.  Fantasies of staying the hand of mortality are incompatible with the best interests of our species and the continuity of humankind’s progress. “
        (Such party-poopers!  Just when the prize is coming in sight, they want to snatch it away!)
        In the May 1993 issue of Longevity magazine (page 51) the article  “The Bucks Stop Here - Why the Government Doesn't Want You to Live Longer “ said,  “'The public ought to know that their government is not trying to cure aging' says Richard Cutler, Ph.D. a gerontologist at the National Institute on Aging.  'The federal granting agencies haven't decided whether it is advisable to intervene in the normal aging process.  They're scared to death about the impact it might have upon the economy of the nation--too many old people around.'  Thomas Johnson, PhD., of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado, agrees.  'If the truth be known, Congress would be horrified to think that we might do something to extend our life span,' he observes.  'What are we going to do about entitlements?  To give people another ten years of Social Security--think of the horror it would create.' “
        (That's the downside of programs like Social Security and Medicare.  Although they do much to improve our lives, they give the government a financial stake in having us die quickly.  As Fanny Dashwood lamented in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility,  “people always live forever when there is any annuity to be paid them. “)
        Indeed, the government is putting a lot of money into research on degenerative diseases, from arthritis to Alzheimer's.  It's not that they love us, it's that they want to minimize the cost of taking care of us while we fade away.  I would certainly hope, though, that progress in dealing with those diseases would increase our expectancy of vigorous life, even if that is not the intent. 
        The most promising life-extension measures available to us at this time, raw foods, regular exercise and the care of an innovative bodyworker, cannot be given to us by the government, but fortunately cannot be taken away.  It's up to us, so let's get busy messing up Social Security's actuarial predictions by living longer than we're supposed to.
        I am shocked and angered, to say the least, that anyone would dare to deny me the longest possible lifespan.  I consider that tantamount to murder. It impels me all the more to redouble my efforts and dedicate my resources to keep my wife and myself alive as long as possible, in the best of health, in defiance of those who wish us dead.