Eternal life on Earth

Here's an article about a man's organs being removed by an unknown person.

Is it possible to reamin alive by Switching out old organs for new ones? Is there a thread in ATS that that covers eeternal life on Earth? Is it really possible?

Story

I don't see the pic with a so-called eternal life.

But I can see that we have a new psychopat or a blackmarket organs trade.

i think i know what your getting at, what about your brain though that dies slowly fair enough i think its something like a 75 year olds brain mass is still 97% of what it was post teenager, so technically you might be able to live for a few hundred years if they keep changing bits of you but you wont live forever a mortal life unless they stop the levels of carbon dioxide building up in your cells which kills you and makes you wrinkle and age, maybe they could make a lifeform that feeds from carbon dioxide similier to a plant that they inject you with and it feeds of the carbon dioxide in your cells, the problem is this lifeform would have to be able to get into other cells to feed sort of like a virus, but instead of feeding on the cells it feeds on the carbon dioxide in the cells slowing your aging dramitcally....

you'd still be able to die from normal injury though such as getting shot or impailed....

[Edited on 3-3-2003 by The Blade Runner]

My call on the story is that it would be the work of a psychopath and not an "underground trade in organs." Organ transplants are difficult and risky and you have to have a whole chain of history on where they came from and do extensive tissue matching.

So you wouldn't go harvest just ANY body. It has to be a body with a specific match for someone on a list.

29, no, it's not possible to stay alive forever by switching out organs. One thing you may not know (but I know because my boss had a heart transplant) is that transplantees live on a virtual cocktail of drugs. Their meds have to be readjusted every so often, and it's extremely expensive to live on those things.

BladeRunner -- no, tissue buildup of carbon dioxide is not what causes aging. If it was that simple, we'd have known about it already. You may be thinking of "free radicals" (which are not CO2), which can be addressed to some degree by taking antioxidants. Vitamin E is a very good one, though there is no strong evidence on how much it increases your life.

Byrd is right about the free radicals...But Blade Runner is right about the brain. No, organ-legging is *not* the secret to eternal life...All that it does is extend the mortal life, but not into infinity.

The only possible way to extend life forever with the idea of organ-legging would involve cloning the original person & keep the clone(s) unconsious but alive. When the original person's *brain itself* gets old, the clone's brain would have to be transplanted & that's still beyond the current abilities of surgical technique.

Even then, the clone's brain would have to be "uploaded" with the personality, memories & life experiences still contained within the original brain; Again, the technology of "braintaping" is still within the realm of science *fiction*. Transplanting a "blank" brain would probably *not* be acceptable to the original person...They'd wind up having to start out all over again as a mental infant.