Do you want to live forever?

I am just watching a documentary about Aubrey de Grey. Very interesting stuff. He claims we could live forever.

The Google video that i'm currently watching called Do you want to live forever featuring Aubrey de Grey -

video.google.co.uk...

His website outlining his research -

www.mfoundation.org...

He's a computer scientist turned biologist who claims that given around 30yrs and a billion pounds and a team of the worlds best scientists he could develop methods which could keep a person young indefinitely. Basically beating the aging process and escaping death minus an unfortunate accident of course.

To do this he would research and expand upon these (below) 7 key areas of aging, he has theorized techniques for solving each one of them. Including curing cancer.

1. Cancer-causing nuclear mutations/epimutations:

These are changes to the nuclear DNA (nDNA), the molecule that contains our genetic information, or to proteins which bind to the nDNA. Certain mutations can lead to cancer, and, according to de Grey, non-cancerous mutations and epimutations do not contribute to aging within a normal lifespan, so cancer is the only endpoint of these types of damage that must be addressed.

2. Mitochondrial mutations:

Mitochondria are components in our cells that are important for energy production. They contain their own genetic material, and mutations to their DNA can affect a cell’s ability to function properly. Indirectly, these mutations may accelerate many aspects of aging.

3. Intracellular junk:

Our cells are constantly breaking down proteins and other molecules that are no longer useful or which can be harmful. Those molecules which can’t be digested simply accumulate as junk inside our cells. Atherosclerosis, macular degeneration and all kinds of neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer's disease) are associated with this problem.

4. Extracellular junk:

Harmful junk protein can also accumulate outside of our cells. The amyloid plaque seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients is one example.

5. Cell loss:

Some of the cells in our bodies cannot be replaced, or can only be replaced very slowly - more slowly than they die. This decrease in cell number causes the heart to become weaker with age, and it also causes Parkinson's disease and impairs the immune system.

6. Cell senescence:

This is a phenomenon where the cells are no longer able to divide, but also do not die and let others divide. They may also do other things that they’re not supposed to, like secreting proteins that could be harmful. Immune senescence and type 2 diabetes are caused by this.

7. Extracellular crosslinks:

Cells are held together by special linking proteins. When too many cross-links form between cells in a tissue, the tissue can lose its elasticity and cause problems including arterioscerosis and presbyopia.

Source - en.wikipedia.org...

And this guy isn't a crackpot from either in the very little research i've done he turns out to be completely credible and by his own estimates says he has 50/50 chance of achieving his goal in his lifetime.

According to his website a person could come in for a "maintenance check" if you like every ten years. Effect treatment based on the 7 key problems of aging (above) and by doing this maintain a life span for possibly thousands of years.

The engineering (SENS) strategy is not to interfere with metabolism per se, but to repair or obviate the accumulating damage and thereby indefinitely postpone the age at which it reaches pathogenic levels.

This is practical because it avoids both of the problems with the other approaches: it sidesteps our ignorance of metabolism (because it does not attempt to interfere with metabolic processes and their production of side-effects) but also it pre-empts the chaos of pathology (because it repairs the precursors of pathology, rather than addressing the pathology head-on).

Source - www.mfoundation.org...

His methods for solving these aging problems are all explained quite extensively on his website. I would go into it here but it would take a couple of posts and a big dictionary. So I'll leave doing that for now and see what the response to this post is like.

Its very interesting stuff and not bad for a computer scientist either. So now its looking more and more feasible that just maybe within our lifetime and with enough dosh you could live forever.

Would you want to?

What does everyone think about his research?

I for one would certainly be going for it, give me a 1000 years or so and i'd be more than satisfied that it was money well spent. When your ready to die of course you can just stop taking the treatments and die naturally.

I can't afford to live forever.

What am I supposed to do? Slave away at various jobs for the rest of eternity just to keep shoveling cows and chickens through my intestines? Or let my consciousness float around in some virtual reality for the rest of eternity until I'm bored out of my synthetic mind? No thanks.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by Nohup]

Indeed. I think there is a current population crisis that must first be addressed here. Many children are being born today, and many more are already on the planet, living in less-than-desirable circumstances. Until we can effectively cater to today's living population, there's no need to stretch resources even further by creating immortal consumers.

Nohup brings up an important point, as well. Thus far, I see people addressing 'immediate' problems, without considering the long-term consequences. I've seldom heard any definite plans for our civilization -- indeed, our planet -- within the next 1,000 years. I have heard, however, of such things as "having sex with robots within 50 years:" a concept I don't find useful for our species in the least.

It may be dangerous thing to cross such (hedonistic?) shortsightedness with something as serious as this researcher has proposed. The focus shouldn't be about avoiding death: we should first make life worth living. Then perhaps we can tackle the issue of living it indefinitely.

i'd only do it if i could be a different person with a different life every once in a while. i too would get bored doing the same thing for eternity. i guess if i believe in reincarnation to any degree then that satisfies my initial statement. =)

Hell yes, I'd want it.

And Nohup, if you didn't have to worry about dying, you might be more inclined to find ways to achieve a more fulfilling existence. Often times we might be brought down by the idea that it may take us so long to achieve a truly happy life, that it'll be over by the time we do.

As it is, there's so much I want to do in life that I can't find the time for all of it. Plus there are a lot of emerging technologies, and who knows what the future will bring?

I hope they figure this stuff out before I kick the can.

Originally posted by Kruel
And Nohup, if you didn't have to worry about dying, you might be more inclined to find ways to achieve a more fulfilling existence.

Oh, I'm not at all worried about dying. But that need to make a living, and constantly find things to do to keep my life "fulfilling" (whatever that might mean) seems like everlasting torture.

Of all things, I think the Anne Rice vampire books do a good job of hypothesizing about what immortality might be like. The vampire Lestat generally was able to find things to amuse himself, but that was still for only a few hundred years of existence. Eventually, you will have read everything, traveled everywhere, met everyone. Then what? What do you do for the next 1,000 years?

To all responders of my post:

I guess what the question comes down to in a way, is what a person could imagine doing with that expanded lifespan.

If you see a journey full of pain, anguish, solitude, poverty and loads of other negative aspects then why would you want to live many lifespans.

At the same time though if you can see that lifespan full of expanded knowledge, wealth, advanced communities and lots of positive aspects then you would want to experience that for as long as possible.

It's all pretty logical really.

I want many lifetimes to explore knowledge, the universe, spirituality, evolution i could go on and on and the sacrifice of getting by in the world would be worth that for me but then i am still young, what would i know.

At the moment i would say yes to this concept but to be honest i wouldn't want to live forever just longer than we do now. And i don't see anything wrong with trying to reach this boundary in our evolution.

And i think saying we shouldn't save people when it's in our means to be able to do so but we just decided not to because of over population issues is as bad as the NWO's position on over population.

Originally posted by Argos
I want many lifetimes to explore knowledge, the universe, spirituality, evolution i could go on and on and the sacrifice of getting by in the world would be worth that for me but then i am still young, what would i know.

What do you want to know about the universe? What would be the use of "spirituality" if you were eternally confined to a physical existence? And one of the reasons we die is so that our offspring can evolve, not us as individuals.

I have not even lived one complete lifetime, but I'm already growing tiring of chasing the shadows of fuzzy concepts. If I had an eternity, I would learn everything, accumulate all the gold, view a million beautiful sunsets. But then what? More of the same? It might be all right for a thousand years, but what about the next 10,000 years? Or the million after that? Could I build myself a starship and drift through the universe for a billion years, watching stars being born, galaxies spinning to their deaths, expansion into the cold? To eventually become God?

To what end? Literally.

I think that I would want to have an extended life, merely for one purpose though. I love books. I love reading them, writing them, and I'm a little embarrassed to say I like to smell them. Sometimes I get very depressed because I know I'll never be able to read them all. Ever. Even with an extended lifespan I will never be able to read all the books in the world. There is just too many. You have to take all the old ones, and new ones being made while you read the old ones, ones from alien cultures we eventually make contact with, I would even learn as many languages as possible so I could read them in their true form. I would love to live a long time and read books forever.

reply to post by Nohup


Nohup i didn't say i would want to live forever i made it implicitly clear that i'd like to go for about a thousand or so years.

And in terms of the next generation you have too think of the world in different terms. If you had a 1000 years to have kids families would last much longer and a family might have a new addition every hundred years or so. On those terms it could actually solve over population because there isn't any rush.

If i had the choice i might have 3-4 kids in my 1000 year lifespan, where as the conventional method we use today in a thousand years time i might have 100's of kids grand kids so on and so forth.

And at the end of the day as posted before you always have the option not to receive the treatments at the next ten year check up and die naturally if you're fed up or you've seen and experienced everything you want to.

reply to post by Argos


We think alike, I would like to see, learn, about everything in the future.

For those who say you would get bored easily, well the world is changing rapidly, there are new things heppening all the time, and we have infinite imagination! IF you use your imagination it would take thousands of years to get bored.

There are quite a few things I would love if I could live longer, a lot of people get depressed because they feel they dont have time, they feel stressed, and rushed, they feel they have to have a career, family, kids, before its too late etc etc.

A longer life can make people feel more relaxed and happy. And the knowledge we can attain from being alive so long, may create a better future for our planet and humans, also the universe is so huge there are so many things we havent learnt, infinite things! Right now we have computers, thats fun, and really helps with bordom compared to a hundred years ago, imagine what fun we could have in another 100 years.

I really hope life goes on after dying too.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by _Phoenix_]

IMO, it's not the concept of a thousand years, or even ten thousand, that is wrong. It is the concept of "not now, I have plenty of time". It's not the numbered years, but what we do with them. Time has no meaning to actions of the heart, and the heart has no meaning to time.

As a side note: I'm a member of a lesser known religious concept; "I will forever be, but I have no desire to be as I am forever." The wheel of life turns. I speak here of concepts, and not to proselytize, for my ways are not your ways, nor are your ways my own.

I still have a question that nobody has answered, or yet.

By living forever, would it help Earth's population control at all?

Originally posted by Argos

If you see a journey full of pain, anguish, solitude, poverty and loads of other negative aspects then why would you want to live many lifespans.

To fully experience pain.
To absorb suffering. To
truly feel it.
To be alone for decades.
To finally feel alone.
To feel the pain of loss, so
that I know that I am alive.

At the same time though if you can see that lifespan full of expanded knowledge, wealth, advanced communities and lots of positive aspects then you would want to experience that for as long as possible.

Knowledge...I crave it.
Wealth, I have.
I'd love to see what man-kind
evolves in to.

To be a fly on the wall, as our
race either condemns us all,
or carries us to the stars.

I'd love to be there.

Regards,
Lex

PS:
Great thread.

Edit for speeling.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by Lexion]

Originally posted by TheoOne
I still have a question that nobody has answered, or yet.

By living forever, would it help Earth's population control at all?

I believe i have already made at least a small remark about population control that would have far reaching consequences on population control.

Originally posted by Argos

And in terms of the next generation you have too think of the world in different terms. If you had a 1000 years to have kids families would last much longer and a family might have a new addition every hundred years or so. On those terms it could actually solve over population because there isn't any rush.

If i had the choice i might have 3-4 kids in my 1000 year lifespan, where as the conventional method we use today in a thousand years time i might have 100's of kids grand kids so on and so forth.

Originally posted by NGC2736
IMO, it's not the concept of a thousand years, or even ten thousand, that is wrong. It is the concept of "not now, I have plenty of time". It's not the numbered years, but what we do with them. Time has no meaning to actions of the heart, and the heart has no meaning to time.

I agree with you in a way but naturally evolving into this sort of ageless existence would eventually create a life span expectancy.

You know a million years in the future (if were still around) of this existence people would know how many years it takes to get fed up and bored with life etc so a natural lifespan would evolve and fluctuate like now.

I dont think as a society we will ever have the possibility of living forever and thats down to free will, it is true! Who wants to live for eternity. I certainly wouldn't but as said before a 1000 years would be nice.

reply to post by _Phoenix_


Couldnt of put it any better myself

reply to post by Lexion


Very nice Lex thanks for sharing, poetry can say so much more and with style and grace.

No, I don't think I can take much more than 70-90 years in this body. Why would you want to?

reply to post by Karlhungis


Well the point is to stay young and avoid the aging process if you could do this then why would the body be an issue. It wont be long before cosmetic surgery can make anyone slim, beautiful with few side affects i mean were getting closer to that being a possibility every day.

So i cant see why the body would limit this process in anyway.

I would HATE to live forever. That is a curse worse that a painful slow death. I cant see why people are bothering to prolong life, when instead they should be concentrating on improving the time we already have.