What would you call Progeria?
What about cancer? Transition of a cell into a particularly nasty disease state. (That term, by the way, is one the biologists throw around quite a bit to describe broken or damaged cells that no longer function as intended.)
What if senescence can be slowed or stopped? What then?
Diseases need not be communicable.
> Progeria is an extremely rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder in which symptoms ___resembling___ aspects of aging are manifested at a very early age.
> What about cancer?
Cancer is cancer, aging is aging.
Cells are machines and they function in predictable biomechanical and biochemical manners. Aging related disease state encompasses some population of the space of deleterious state change.
In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. It is the layperson understanding of the word "disease" that does not fit.
The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least theoretically can be cured. Aging does not have that implication. It follows then that if you say "Aging is a Disease", you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable. That's what makes the claim so uncomfortable.
Nowhere does the definition of disease imply that. There are many diseases today that are patently incurable.
Aging, like cancer, is multifaceted. There are many low hanging fruit that we can begin to tackle now.
> you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable.
I'm not saying anything about immortality. But I don't see how a 100, 120 year average lifespan with expanded quality of life isn't achievable.
See also: our inability to synthesise some vitamins, our (more or less) unmovable ears, and how we can no longer asexually reproduce.