Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X-Prize and International Space University, has recently founded a company called "Human Longevity Inc." This company's sole purpose is to extend healthy human life span as long as possible. And he's offering a $10 million prize for technology that gets us closer to that goal. Fortunately, you don't need to be a tech billionaire to take advantage of what these men are pioneering. According to 35- year Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and biotech consultant Michael Robinson, everyone will soon have the chance to live forever. "Every cell in your body has an 'immortality gene'," Robinson says. "When it's switched on, your cells don't age. In fact, they become biologically younger." Robinson continued, "So that's the good news. Here's the bad news. When we're born, we come with this gene 'switched off.'" http://moneymorning.com/ext/article...ng-immortality.php?iris=353191&ad=too-far-sym
Dream on... I don't believe that. The biology of aging is vastly more complicated than the operation of one gene. Theoretically, it might not be impossible though. Each of us, and every living thing along with us, is positioned at the end of a continuous ever-evolving thread of life, extending from ourselves, through our parents and ancestors, back to the distant origin of life. So while individual organisms (I think of them as fruiting-bodies) do have limited lifespans, the underlying tree-of-life doesn't seem to age and may well be immortal, provided the Sun doesn't go nova or anything. Whenever new babies are conceived or eggs are laid, the aging clock seems to be set back to zero. But I'm not convinced that an existing organism's clock can be set back that way, by effectively dialing up conception once again, though. I can imagine these Silicon Valley "billionaires" being treated with some genetically-engineered serum designed to set back and halt their aging clocks, then finding that all of the cells in their bodies have been tricked into believing they are stem-cells or even fertilized eggs, 'developing' out-of-control into hideous teratomas. It's hard to imagine a more grotesque way to die.
Pass thanks. The impossibility of it aside, the world is over populated enough as it is. Peter Diamandis would have done more for humanity if he had set the challenge to cure a disease instead.
Would aging be considered a disease? I do believe that he donates money to charities including those that are trying to find a cure for diseases.
Aging in the course of one's life is not a disease. It's life. We are born, we live and we die. Everything and everyone ages. Even the sun is aging and one day it too shall die. I think it is an unrealistic and ridiculous idea.
But aren't we already prolonging life because we are using artificial hearts, organ transplants and so on for the extension of life that would ordinarily die if those operations were not performed? Isn't this just the next step for we humans to try and achieve? I understand that we all will die one day of something but why growing old?
I don't have any objection to scientists trying to find a cure for aging. I applaud it. I just think that people like this "Silicon Valley venture capitalist and biotech consultant" are talking out of their butts when they say that "everyone will soon have the chance to live forever" and "every cell in your body has an 'immortality gene'". My belief is that remarks like that dramatically underestimate the difficulty and scientific complexity of the problem. I don't foresee a method for sustaining eternal youth and eliminating death from old age coming any time soon. (It might not be impossible in principle, though.) Even if immortality isn't on the near term horizon, cures for some of the more debilitating infirmities and degenerative processes associated with aging might arrive more quickly. That would be a good thing.
I too think the biotech consultant is being over optimistic. Cell immortality is linked to cancer, isn't it?
My understanding of it is that cancerous cells are an immortal line that will keep dividing indefinitely. Of course this is true only in an artificial sense, i.e. in vitro. ed: and here we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality
Great Immortal cancer I wonder how they plan on curing all cancers first? If they can't do that then it's unrealistic, also the brain shrinks with age how do they plan to refurbish their brains so as to reverse lost brain cells and brain damage?
One theory of cellular death is, each time cells divide, the ends of the DNA get somewhat truncated. Eventually, the cells can't replicate properly because the DNA is too short at the ends. If you buy into that theory, then the place you will look for immortality are the neurons. Neurons stop replicating, very early in life. If the truncation theory was correct, since neuron don't replicate, they would be examples of immortal cellular states. However, even though neuron may conserve their DNA ends, all the support cells, neurons need to survive, tend to go first, causing neuron decline. The trick would be to extend this non dividing ability, to other cells, so the entire body stays viable, much longer. In ancient times it was claimed some people could live 1000 years. Maybe the body can do this, naturally, with neurons the last of the ancient cells to have this ability in modern times. The problem may have been if everyone is living so long, progress in cultures will stagnate because the guard does not change often causing stagnation. This will be running in parallel to too many people being born, with slow attrition. Selection would be shorter life, a faster turnaround in culture, until longer life could be stable with nature.
I don't think 'immortality' is the right world. All healthcare discoveries are attempts to thwart the natural processes that lead to death. As each disease is conquered it can be ticked off the list leaving one less to worry about. Assuming all infectious diseases were cured tomorrow, that would leave only lifestye induced diseases (cardiovascular as an example). If those were cured the following day then it would leave diseases of age (ex: muscle wasting). If those were cured the next day that would leave diseases of the aged mind (ex: dementia). Eliminating those would not make humans immortal. More like high-end preventative healthcare. Societies that invested in such preventative healthcare would be able to afford to direct limited resources into other areas of need, such as child and adult education, nicer foods, better technology, and etc.... World overpopulation can occur with or without eliminating death by age related illnesses and may need to be addressed separately. That said, most everyone here has opted for death around 70 - 80. If that's true, and they represent the average person on the street, then there's no problem anyway as most people will want to die by the time they're 70 or so. Of course, I've never met anyone 70 who told me they were happy to die. Most people I've met who are 70 have the same life goals as someone at 40. They want to continue to contribute, continue to do something useful, and don't really think of dying up until that fatal day comes when they're diagnosed with an age related illness (often cancer). Then they still don't seem all that happy about 'naturally' dying off and fight like hell using every resource society has made available to squeeze a couple more months of life out of their body. Even when it's made clear that the resources they're consuming is coming at a vast cost to children's education, public works projects like parks and beaches and forestry - they don't seem to care about these things. It's all about survival. I'm fairly certain this will be the case with everyone here. Chronic pain aside, I've yet to met an exception to the rule regardless of age. No one accepts death as 'natural' when it's their's that's occurring in real-time. I'd like to see the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted each year killing women and children in other countries (as well as in our own) instead invested into medical research - with the end goal being total elimination of all disease states, which implicitly means ending aging. But, until our unelected military Leaders decide this is their goal, that's not going to happen. Don't hold your breath. They're in the business of creating death, not curing us of it.
Medicine cheats natural selection, perpetuating sick people who always need medicine. These people breed and then perpetuate medical conditions in the next generations, which then diversify due to genetic change, so new medicine become necessary. Natural selection nips this in the bud, with nature not needing medicine. I have never seen deer hospital in the woods, ye they all seem healthy. The medical state of the art is better than it ever was, yet medical costs are now more than ever before. Does anyone notice the irony? This is like saying this year's car model is the best it has even been, in terms of technology , however, service costs will be higher than ever before. The best medical state of the art, of all time, should mean costs are get less not more. If you fight a war and take city after city, the size of the army needed should get smaller, not bigger and bigger. One way this may happen, is because the army takes out friendly cities, creating more enemies that it started with. We kill bacteria with antibiotics only to induce super bugs that are worse than ever, and have higher costs to fix. This is an artifact of targeted approaches and casino math jackpots. We target one thing; ED, but fail to understand the body is an integrated phenomena, where any bulls eye ripples outward. We try to fuzzy this out outward ripple, with statistical math, so the product can get to market. The ripples will be tomorrows gravy train. This may be due to the state of the art, or it may be due to this being a clever business model, or both.
