The human body  

Quality, quantity and choice
I did say that the only end of life should be our own choosing. I didn't mention "quality" of life because it's just so obvious, so presupposed that one would not only try to live a long life but a good life, and one would just end life when it becomes unworth living. Medicine strives for immortality, but choice trumps medical ability.
Hudsonhonu criticizes my premise that the goal of medicine is immortality, but he gives no reasons for his criticism. That's too bad because I'd sincerely like to hear them.
Dcwilson, I love your earlier post about the brain.
Were the body a real design, like an automobile or computer, I think it would be the most ingenious design of all. But we're all here speculating about a better design that would overcome the original flaws. The body is beautiful and makes our machines look like primitive totems. But we will one day make it better and more beautiful.

I don't know that I was being...
I don't know that I was being critical Brent - the extension of the life span has unquestionably been entered into the field of medicine, but if that ever becomes the goal then suffice it to say that medicine will be done, for first and foremost medicine needs to be invested in the goal of health, and health will not be possible if individuals are to "live forever". I'm asking I guess that we give a bit of thought to living better, as you just suggested, rather than longer.

Living better
Yes, that's a distinction I wasn't appreciating. By immortality I meant a healthy and better life as well as a long life, but that's a crucial distinction that has to be made when speaking of immortality. It's especially important now, I suppose, as medicine can improve the body's design by making it exist longer yet defeating the quality of life by doing so. (Consider Terry Schiavo.)

James...
survival of the fittest is a very tricky concept as contemporary evolutionary biology has begun to reveal. It is not a simple notion of the strong survive and the weak perish and fail to reproduce, although it certainly has this dimension.
"Fittest" actually refers to a vast constellation of factors and these factors related to each other dynamically in emergent complexity that is sensitively dependent on intial conditions. As a result, it is very difficult to make defensible assertions or forecasts about what will become of any species. Emergent complexity always eventually involves uncertainty and unintended consequnces and yields outcomes no one could reliably foretell.
Resorting to evolution and natural selection and survival of the fittest to forecast human futures seems always to me to commit the error made by those who used social darwnism to rationalize outcomes.
A social Darwinist was someone who said ethnic group A was inferior and then to prove it went out and started killing ethnic group A. The social Darwninist then concluded that ethnic group A had to be inferior, or he wouldn't have been able to kill so many of them.
Use of evolutionary models to predict outcomes almost always commits the error of social Darwinists, because evolutionary theory assumes alot of emergent complexity and uncertainty in most evolutionary processess. When you start assuming you can predict that complexity you are marginalizing uncertainty and violating the assumptions of the model. Hence, your conclusion is methodologically flawed and you conclusion is not worth the pixels its typed in. Beware survival of the fittest.

dcwilson....
That was so well written and thorough, all I can say is thank you. All my pondering came from a Las Vegas trip we just got back from.