I doubt that cosmetic surgery (unless very extensive) will interfere the least with any reasonable life extension treatment. The reason is that life extension programs have to deal with the underlying causes of aging, and they are definitely not in the dermis and connective tissues, but something more fundamental. Surgery is of course slightly dangerous and somewhat stressful on the body, but that stress seems to be rather minor over the long run (partially offset by improved self esteem?); after all, our bodies heal much worse damage.
As for drugs, then things get trickier. There I think it is best to stay on the cautious side, one should ideally only use the drugs that are really necessary and use mental or bodily techniques to replace the others. But of course, this depends on the drug, many of them are well-tested and the side effects well known.
Michael Love <proclus@iname.com> writes:
> This is something that I've thought about. I'm trying to track the
> effects of my life extension regimen. Therefore, I don't want to cover
> up the short comings of my program. In other words, if I age, I want to
> see it. I don't want my aging to be hidden like a viper in a bush.
A good idea. One shouldn't just use every available option, it is important to see how they fit together. This is of course very hard, but at least some problems can be identified and dealt with by forethought.
> BTW, I hate to be a crank, but I find all this talk of cryonics quite
> boring. Fighting entropy with a nitrogen bath is a little extreme,
> don't you think? Can you really live life in a zero entropy
> environment? What about all of the body processes that are entropy
> driven, like the life sustaining concentration gradients, and some
> important biochemical interactions? The real fact is, without entropy,
> we don't exist. Life gets pretty monotonous in a nitrogen bath. ;-}
I think you miss the point of cryonics. If you are lying in liquid nitrogen, you don't live at all, you are frozen solid. It is intended as a last resort if current medical science cannot keep you alive. As life extension goes, it is currently a shot in the dark.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y