The meaning of life is but a breath...what a person does with is up to that individual.

Life's purpose is to try to reach God...everything else is mere fodder for the brain....

that depends on what you believe

humanists: you came from the big bang evoluved from slim and when you die you'll just rot

creationists:GOD created you and your here for a purpose

i choose to believe i'm worth something and GOD has a plan for me

First, let me stray off-topic. I'll come back to the meaning of life in a bit --

Sorry, by what you said, do you mean to make the insurance companies and government richer? Longer life = more taxes and more insurance money paid. >_O Maybe some people think we are the ones who benefit off our insurance policies, but insurance companies are for-profit; they are corporations run by businessmen.

And for the record (and as far as I know), AMA members have to *pay* to be in the AMA (my parents are members). This allows the AMA to provide different services to doctors like medical literature in the mail, medical conferences, the financing of research, etc.

Now, the quality of some of those services is debatable. My dad's recently been thinking of quitting the AMA because America is in the midst of a health care crisis. The AMA is in a position to help fix things, and perhaps they are taking steps. Some people, however, don't think the AMA is doing a good enough job handling the crisis, my dad included...but that's a discussion for another thread.

To be fair to TelephoneMan though, I'm sure the upper echelons of the AMA give themselves nice, fat paychecks. Not to mention that there are probably a few things the AMA does with all that money that people wouldn't approve of. Point is, by and large, the AMA isn't (again, as far as I know) profiteering off life-extension.

As for the "Meaning of Life" - well, I hold that there *is* no inherent meaning to life. Humans make up a lot of **** that isn't actually true or that isn't natural law, so to speak. And so, I hold that it's up to each of us to fabricate or stumble upon our own supposed "Meaning of Life," and go from there. After all, there's nothing wrong with that...unless, of course, your "Meaning of Life" entails killing **** loads of babies 'cause it tickles your fancy or something similarly evil.

Other than that, I can't help but agree, at least to a certain extent, with what TelephoneMan wrote:
We are born. We live for 'x' amount of years. And, we die.

I *believe* (to avoid an untimely and off-topic debate with certain religious people) that Life was a random but inevitable occurrence. We are the children of the stars, what we are is but stardust, plain-cold matter that, with all our distinctions and labels, we have decided to dub "organic" material.

However, I think that if we allow ourselves step back and look at what we really are, where we really came from, what we have in common even with a rock or a piece of meat, and for God's sake with each other, we'd realize that so much of how mankind lives is just...dumb and downright inconceivable.
To step back in this way, I feel the way I look at what's around me change: To pollute our Earth becomes like desecrating my father. To mistreat animals and slaughter them by the billions when we have other sources of food becomes like murdering my baby cousins. To hate, kill, rape, steal, denounce, bomb, and torture our fellow man? Would you do that to your brothers and sisters? Some people are crazies, I know, and do these things, but even us supposed "non-crazies" do these things too...

Problems and disagreements are part of life, as are hardship, and taking what we can while we can. Greed, competition, Capitalism, war, weapons, possessions - all these things are, as far as I can tell, necessary and have useful and sometimes great things about them. You see, I try not to live with my head too far in the clouds, and I try not to deserve the label "idealist." However, I look around me and see a certain deal of respect for who and what is around us seems to be missing; I can't help but want to make a difference, to want to change things (can you tell I'm a college student?? lol).
We all have things to work on - none of us are perfect - so, let's work on this *notquite00 points to the things he's written above*. Times are changing and the stakes grow higher - global warming, terrorism, nuclear proliferation. The post-nuclear holocaust world of the Fallout series is not the sort of future I want for my children!

Whew, well...sorry for the length. Time to go to sleep...thanks for giving me the opportunity to clear my thoughts a bit. ;-)