From Dr Anders Sandberg.

Sir, In his column "Why immortality would be a dead loss for humanity" (February 28) Richard Tomkins worries that a longer healthy lifespan would leave us in a boring, risk-averse society. Most evidence shows that the people who today reach high age tend to be interested in life and willing to do new things. It is unlikely that will change with better medicine except that more people will be healthy and vigorous. Longer lives might induce us to more long-range planning, but that is hardly a drawback.