Editing Immortality (section)

== Politics ==
Although some scientists state that radical life extension, delaying and stopping aging are achievable,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.imminst.org/cureaging/|title=Scientists' Open Letter on Aging|access-date=20 April 2015}}</ref> there are no international or national programs focused on stopping aging or on radical life extension. In 2012 in Russia, and then in the United States, Israel and the Netherlands, pro-immortality political parties were launched. They aimed to provide political support to anti-aging and radical life extension research and technologies and at the same time transition to the next step, radical life extension, life without aging, and finally, immortality and aim to make possible access to such technologies to most currently living people.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/07/a-single-issue-political-party-for-longevity-science.php|title=A Single-Issue Political Party for Longevity Science|website=Fight Aging!|date=27 July 2012|access-date=20 April 2015}}</ref>

Some scholars critique the increasing support for immortality projects. Panagiotis Pentaris speculates that defeating ageing as the cause of death comes with a cost: "heightened stratification of humans in society and a wider gap between social classes".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Pentaris |first=Panagiotis |title=Dying in a transhumanist and posthuman society |publisher=Routledge |year=2021 |location=Abingdon / New York |pages=83 |language=English}}</ref> Others suggest that other immortality projects like transhumanist digital immortality, radical life extension and cryonics are part of the capitalist fabric of exploitation and control,<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Hurtado Hurtado |first=Joshua |date=2023-10-09 |title=Exploited in immortality: techno-capitalism and immortality imaginaries in the twenty-first century |journal=Mortality |volume=29 |issue=4 |language=en |pages=903–920 |doi=10.1080/13576275.2023.2266373 |issn=1357-6275|doi-access=free }}</ref> which aims to extend privileged lives of the economic elite.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Huberman |first=Jenny |date=2022 |title=Funding Immortality: Making Futures in the Era of Techno-Philanthropy |url=https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-sur-la-mort-2022-1-page-151.htm |journal=Études sur la mort |volume=157 |issue=1}}</ref> In this sense, immortality could become a political-economic battleground for the twenty-first century between the haves and have-nots.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" />