Paper on research on the evolution of aging, mortality

"..We created such a model to look at the evolution of intrinsic mortality, and were surprised to find the counterintuitive result that lifespan self-limitation is favored even in the absence of other conditions that could intuitively make it favorable – for instance, if animals had to stop reproducing at a certain age, or in a rapidly changing world where you needed new mutations always to be coming along to cope with the changing conditions, it would make sense to clear out old individuals and replace them with new ones." The study's key results show that even without such limiting conditions – that is, if an organism could live and keep reproducing indefinitely, and was just as adapted to the world as its offspring – the lineage would ultimately do better if genes encoded a mechanism that brings about death.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-death-spatial-natural-favors-genetically-limited.html#jCp

Thing is if there's an aging program, as some suspect, the possibility of radical life extension becomes more likelier, and it is believed probably would require less drastic interventions.