I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone stumbled upon a simple, robust and general method for halting aging using the likes of stem cells. Ordinarily this sort of discovery happens in plain sight— over many years of acedemic research, published papers, animal studies and human studies. But suppose it occurred in a private lab and was kept, basically, secret. I could imagine a government being hesitant to release this info if they thought lay people could implement t the treatment themselves and live multi thousands of years.
But I also suspect that a few rich and powerful people would want to have a go. It would be interesting to see how they conceal the fact— do they fake death multiple times? Even if a government is able to restrict interested billionaires and powerful people from participating, they may feel a need to keep a population of long span humans— as a competitive hedge against other nations’ possible participation. It’s possible that this is happening now, though I know of absolutely no evidence of that.