Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality

"I think it’s reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely."
-- Aubrey de Grey

Time may indeed be on your side. If you can just last another quarter century.

By then, people will start lives that could last 1,000 years or more. Our human genomes will be modified to include the genetic material of microorganisms that live in the soil, enabling us to break down the junk proteins that our cells amass over time and which they can’t digest on their own. People will have the option of looking and feeling the way they did at 20 for the rest of their lives, or opt for an older look if they get bored. Of course, everyone will be required to go in for age rejuvenation therapy once every decade or so, but that will be a small price to pay for near-immortality.

www.livescience.com...




Really interesting work. What do you guys think about the effect of immortality?

I wonder how much this revolutionary gene therapy will cost? Probably something along the lines of $XXX annual payments for...let's say 500 years.

yeah, i think this will be a big issue if only the rich will be able to live forever and the poor had an average lifespan.

Heres another similar article on new scientist:
www.newscientist.com...

[edit on 11-4-2005 by rufi0o]

So what happens to the population when everybody starts living forever. I mean we'd have to reduce the birth rate, and would we really want a society that has less children being born and adults staying around forever.
Im not againest this, im just looking at the logic here.

YEa but brilliant scientists will have unlimited time to finish thier work.

i think it could become quite the opposite. there could form a worker class of people that live forever that do the work no one else wants 2 (dustbin men, street cleaners etc.)
perhaps if you have an IQ too low you're injected with immortality syrum and condemned to do societies dirty work for all eternity.

specially if G.Bush has his way with NWO lol

This isn't so cut and dry. When you start tampering with things like this, there is going to be a downside. There will be repurcussions in some form or another...

Interesting article

But say it does come out in 25 or so years, how long before it's even
on the commercial market? I think it will be alot longer than he imagines.

We can deal with the repercusions later, i want to live forever
Seriously though it is not going to be a problem we will just be forced into the next frontier which is going to happen anyway. Once we get up there and established, resources and space (excuse the pun) will no longer be an issue.

[edit on 11-4-2005 by ufo3]

Like Thorfinn said, there will be repercussions sooner or later just as there always is. However I like the idea that brilliant scientists are able to stay alive long enough to finish off any projects they might not be able to do in a single lifetime (for example Einstein).

If we can have the ability to expand our lives 1,000 years in 25 years, than just think what we could be able to do in the the next 800 years (in your lifetime). Every human will be able to purchase immortality. Death would be a thing of the past.

I was thinkin about this and here is what I thought...if we were to live for say 1000 years, we would stop advancing technologically as we have done....Think about it, there would be no new perspectives, no new outlooks on life, effectivelyt, giving an extended life span would mearly give us a freeze in time...Plus we will still be able to die from accidents etc..

I know what we could do to offset the population inbalances that this would bring, give everybody swords and tell that there is some prize after only one, oh wait sorry wrong thread. I seriuosly doubt this would get too out of hand, it would be one of the most elitist technology in human history, and the ethical and religious debates that this would bring up will definately not have this out wiht in 25 years especially with growing curent mindset. Besides I think most people would end up getting bump off one way or another, this will be a cure from Natural death but it would probablly not hold off deseases, and accidents and wars will be around, especially if u thought u could live forever how careless would you be. If we could combine this with Enhance Inmunity system and some regenerative abilities.....

oh and I forgot, there was a TV movie a few years ago about a future society where and imortality serum had the side effects of turning a signifcant percent of the people who took it into a for of mutated cave man or something and left the one that survive to only be able to mate with others of a specific genetic match in order to prevent having more people with the genetic disorders of the mutants. Some people also refuse to take the serum for religious/ethical reason and stood out significantly.

Staying healthy and fit you could live for over a thousand years like the article said, but that does'nt mean you will. You can still die, either by accidents, deseases or whatever. I dont think we will stop advancing, if anything we will progress further with the amount of knowledge you can attain in your life span. It all depends where humanity is in 25years. If we're getting off the planet and the world is more stable then i think the impact would not be as great as some people think.

There's probably a reason why humans don't live for hundreds of years, and it's probably not a good idea to try and tamper with evolution. I can see the benefits of it, like enabling scientists to work on things that would take more than their lifetime to accomplish, or sending willing astronaughts to distant planets and solar systems that would take light years to reach.

But on the other hand, the phsycological effects of living that long would probably not be good, and there are people who should never be allowed to live forever. Just imagine if this technology was available to Hitler, Saddam, Osama etc... Yes, you could kill them, but look at how difficult it is to assasinate a world leader today.

Oblivions void, you're right, if immortality became available, it would turn into something only for the elite class of billionaires.

hey I was wondering how exactly will one's memory work after a few centuries, I mean I been a while since my biology course by isn't human memory imprinted on memory cells or something, I pretty sure with some sort of gene theraphy will be keep producing memory cells but after a while wouldn' older memories be completlely whipped out, you way end up been a few hundred years old with little or no memory of your first few decades of life. I'm talking with only my limited knowledge of how memory works but does anybody know wha such a long life time will do on one's memory it would be pretty pathefic to spend 3 or 400 years out of a thousand completely senile, oh wait that might be kinda of funny actually(on somebody else)

We as a human race arent ready for immortality.

I agree with tomcat, we are not ready for an imortal life, or a finite 1000 years for that matter, it would have to a world with out children, that to me is a nightmarish thought. Not until we begin to reach the stars can we grant ourselves imortality, when we have the resources and realestate to cope with the population, that means we need to put our resources into space flight and far flung technologys to get us to the stars and to new planets.

We only have the capacity for a certian amount of memory, we would have to live lives and then store our memorys while discarding memorys we didnt want. Peter F Hamilton's book pandoras star gives us quite a good look at the future if we had imortality through technology and how through cloning and memory saves death is no longer real, and through rejuves you could live forever never having to be cloned. But until we do reach the stars we should not pursue this technology, mother earth simply can not support us all forever.

With all that said the greedy and stupid rich elite will take a completely different view and the fear of death will drive them to milk the new fountain of youth, it may even start wars.

In regards to the treatment or technique for immortality only being available to a select few bourgeoisé, think about this:

One of the stated goals of marxist communism was that the state and the people work towards a common goal of utopia. In a communist state/world, immortality would be evenly available to everyone.

Unfortunately, it is true that:

"...there has yet to be one communist revolution that did not set up a totalitarian dictatorship inflicting murder, torture, and mass supression of the working class..."
- nord.twu.net...

I also agree with the thought of running out of memory cells but if we could really extend are life wouldnt we be able to record memories and delete them like some kind of machine its possible. but like many of the posts said there would be major repurcussions.

[edit on 11-4-2005 by Archmagus12]