Is fighting aging controversial?

Google's announcement of Calico was covered by Time with the controversial headline "Can Google Solve Death"?  It was a grandiose title that leads one to think of immortality and whether humans should even be considering the question.  The negative responses normally didn't criticize the science, but were beliefs like "should humanity be working on this" or "we shouldn't live forever."

Really, I think aging research should be viewed like any other medical advance: stents, new drugs, pacemakers.  There's a lot we do which isn't "natural" with the goal of making human welfare better, and I think it's a worthy goal.  I don't know if aging research will pan out, but some mythical sense that it is a taboo isn't a good reason to reject it.   Here are my top reasons why aging research isn't controversial at all.

We'll still going to die
Even if we solve aging completely, we are still going to die.  After all, no amount of aging research is going to prevent me from trying to "hold my wee for a Wii", winning a Darwin Award. or kneeling over while playing Starcraft.

Proponents of anti aging research claim we will reach some sort of "longevity escape velocity" where we will figure out how to extend our lives by 20 years.  Then in those 20 years, we can figure out how to extend our lives by another 20 years.  I think they want to make anti aging research seem even more appealing by offering the holy grail itself - immortality!  I have a hard time getting my head around that. And I worry it turns people off from considering aging research since it violates some well known Hollywood taboos.

For me, I don't need immortality to support the idea of extending lifespan.  I'm happy with any additional years you give me however you give them to me.  But don't get me wrong - I'd love to be proved incorrect that immortality won't happen (and you can have the rest of my infinite lifetime to hold it against me).

Living longer is a historical trend
Life expectancy has gradually increased - probably since the beginning of human history - but certainly in the last 150 years we have data for.   Since 1850, life expectancy at birth has roughly doubled.  Even if you account for just those who have reached the age of 20 (which screens out much child mortality), you find that life expectancy has increased by over 40%.

We view a life expectancy of 70 or 80 as normal because we are used to it: not because it is "natural."  It's the result of decades of research and painstaking trial and error.  It'll be much more natural for us to all die young of any of the myriad of diseases we now have cures for.  If we somehow extend life expectancy to 120 years or so, we'd get pretty used to that too.

It's just another therapy
Sometimes people say things like "But I don't want to live that long." I don't really understand that because if we do have some breakthrough in fighting aging, it'll come like any other therapy. It'll be an optional therapy that people can take or not. No one forces someone to take high blood pressure medication or get a stent, but sure enough people tend to do so since it increases their lifespan.  Not to mention that we know plenty of ways you can reduce your life expectancy if living longer is a problem.

"Newsflash: Medical researchers are conducting medical research"
So all in all, I think anti aging research should be far less controversial than "solving death." It's just like another research task that is likely to be a dead end, but could lead to some good.  It's likely we'll still die (if it even works at all), we'll just live longer (like we have for all of history), and it'll be an optional therapy (that you can take just like other drugs).  And that is why I don't think fighting aging is controversial at all.