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Improvements on medications have increased the average life expectancy of humans. This meant humans can live longer, increasing their time contributing to the society. On the other hand, they will consume more resources through the extended time. Personally, I believe extended life has greater disadvantage than advantage. An increment in life expectancy is advantageous to the society as humans can work longer. For an individual to be a skillful professional in that field, we often say it requires 20 years of working. Assuming the average life expectancy of human is 80 years, 20 years of training is one-quarter of their entire life. Medical professions, for instance, requires an enormous number of trainings and experience to be able to operate others with lower risks. This means some people may face retirement when their skills and knowledge are at its peak. Therefore, by increasing the life expectancy, people can train in their professions for longer period of time and contribute greatly to the society. However, we cannot discount the fact that extended life has drawbacks. It is a known fact that unrecycled products we use throughout our lifetime are buried, damaging the environments. As the life expectancy of humans increase, it is inevitable that we will consume more resources. Hence, not only resources becoming scarce, but some environments will also be damaged to the point it becomes inhabitable for living organisms. This trend has already been observed in the 20th century. The number of endangered species increased astronomically as the average life expectancy increased by 5 years. Thus, the extension of human life will pollute the ecosystems. To conclude, increasing life expectancy is certainly advantageous to human society. However, it can cause negative influences to the planet as we use up more resources. we are all temporary residents of the Earth, and we have rights to protect other species living in the same planet. |