I suppose I mean &quot;necessary&quot; more as &quot;necessary to the way life works right now.&quot;  Existence with immortality or very-long life expectancy could be completely different in ways we can&#x27;t fathom, so I&#x27;m opposed to the idea of automatically accepting it as more desirable than what we have now.  (Yes, this is a conservative and somewhat closed-minded position. If nothing else I hope people will come up with a detailed vision of what conquering mortality would look like, rather than just assuming it will be better.)<p>On the disease comparison, admittedly I was only thinking of viral and bacterial disease.  Death is much like a genetic disorder we all have.  On the other hand, isn&#x27;t &quot;health&quot; usually defined as how a &quot;normal&quot; person&#x27;s body works?  If death is normal, then it can&#x27;t be a disease.  OK, enough semantic games. ;)  I still see a qualitative difference between keeping a body healthy enough that it doesn&#x27;t die until that universal process wears it down vs. something earlier.<p>I&#x27;m not sure I agree with the idea that society accepts death and rejects accidents.  Is the grief of accidental death really universally distinguishable from that of old age or illness?  On both sides, you&#x27;ll have anger&#x2F;sadness it happened so soon, or reluctant acknowledgement that it was going to happen some day and we can&#x27;t predict it or prepare.<p>(The following is somewhat OT in the context of &quot;uploading the brain&quot;:)  On grievous injury, I don&#x27;t know if commenters have been including vastly improved ability to recover from those in &quot;immortality.&quot;  I wonder though, if fatal injury were the only way to die, would it cause people to lock themselves away in a bubble to live forever, rather than risk dying?  Maybe in the first stages of the science, the body will still get frailer as the years pass, so that sudden accidental death becomes more likely the longer you live.  Would such an eternal sheltered existence, lived in constant fear of losing it one day, be worth having?  If not, why do you want it?  If so, why is it really that different than what you already have?  After 1,000 years are you going to say &quot;I&#x27;ve accomplished enough, experienced enough, that I am now more comfortable with possibly dying than I was when I was 25.&quot;?<p>Presumably the likelihood and number of possible accident scenarios will decrease over time, so maybe most people won&#x27;t worry too much.  Murder could still be a big fear&#x2F;threat though.