Live forever? No thanks

If you could halt the ticking of your genetic clock, learn how to screen yourself from the ravages of sunlight, tobacco smoke and oxygen or get your hands on the elixir of youth, then would you really want to use the power?

That was Dr Mark Porter's question this morning and I know my answer. Yes and no.

If I could keep a strong and healthy body while my mind grew wiser, I’d like to carry on a little longer. Maybe, say, 200 years. But no longer. And even then, I’d need a specific mission to merit hanging on that long.

Times writers give their answers below. Let us know what you think too.

Oliver Kamm:

The question was answered by Bernard Williams in a paper with the self-explanatory title "Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality".

From the nature of human happiness and desire, which involve change and striving, immortality would be intolerable. Consider the 342-year-old Elina Makropulos in Janacek's opera, who takes no joy in life because all is the same.

Matthew Parris:

Yes, yes, yes. I want to live forever. I want to live here, continuing the life I lead. I love it. I want to know what's going to happen - to stay part of it all. I'm not afraid of death. I'm not afraid of the end of the summer holidays. But the prospect end of the summer vexes me mightily; and the prospect of the end of my fantastic, lucky life, vexes me mightily too.

Libby Purves:

I think these live-forever types are a load of snivelling, selfish, cowardy custards. 90 is well more then enough ration. Get out of the way! And I refer you to Ben Jonson:

'It is not growing like a tree/In bulk, doth make man better be/A lily of a day/Is fairer far in May/Although it fade and die that night/It was the very child and flower of light'.

Unlike the dismal old self-preservers hoping to gobble up Easter Island and bore us all for centuries.

Chris Ayres:

I would sign up for immortality only if they could ensure the sun won't implode in five billion years time (as it is scheduled to do), thus setting continents on fire, boiling the oceans, and generally ruining my retirement.

Without a planet to live on, immortality could have some serious disadvantages: like floating around in Deep Space for eternity, looking for a bit of moonrock to land on. And they don't have broadband on moonrock, or so I've heard.

That's not to say there wouldn't be some upsides to drinking from the spring of eternal life. I might finally get all the way through Brad Pitt's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for example.