Science is on the verge of solving the question of eternal life. Futurologists claim that very soon people will live not even hundreds, but thousands of years.
Evolutionary Inevitability
Marios Kyriazis, director of the British Longevity Society, argues that immortality is a natural evolutionary stage that humans will reach sooner or later. Even without the help of drugs and technological advances.
Cryonics
Scientists see one possible way to achieve eternal life as freezing humans. Cryonics is popular today. More than 200 people have already been frozen in the world, and the waiting list continues to grow. The cryonization process is simple enough, but still very expensive for many people to use the “service”. The average price of “freezing” is $200,000. In addition, further “defrosting” of the body and the return of vital functions remains a major problem that has not yet been solved. Science has not yet reached the technology of “reanimation”.
Cyborgs
Another possible way of gaining immortality is the gradual “upgrade” of a human by means of transplantation. Boston-based Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology grows synthetic trachea from patients’ stem cells. Doris Taylor, director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute, has even built “bio-artificial” hearts from rat tissue. Importantly, today’s artificial organs are fully functional. Paralympic athletes are already competing with professional athletes today. In the future, we may talk about replacing healthy organs with their cybernetic counterparts to improve athletic performance. But not everything is so obvious. In 2011, the U.S. National Cancer Institute presented a report that proved a direct correlation between cancer and organ transplantation. Patients who underwent a transplant were twice as likely to have cancer as someone who avoided it.
Brain Emulation
Brain emulation is designed to solve the major problem associated with gaining immortality: the problem of information transfer. Transferring the contents of the brain to electronic media will make it possible in the future to make a digital version of the human brain. For all its apparent simplicity, “copying” the human brain is unlikely to be possible in the next few years. With the current advances in technology, a complete emulation of a single human brain would require at least a soccer field full of supercomputers. Copying the human brain is still a long way off, but research that emulates the higher nervous system of rodents is already underway as part of the Blue brain project these days. Scientists are working hard to create a computer model of the mouse neocortex. The idea of brain emulation is attractive because its realization will allow making functional copies of humans. While the “copy” will work and not get tired, the “original” can spend its time as it pleases. If, of course, the concept of time remains. And will there be a need for a human being in principle?
Nanotechnology
Using nanotechnology to obtain immortality is one of the most obvious, but not uncontroversial ways. Because of their extremely small size, nanosubstances can be very dangerous, since they can penetrate the human body even through the skin. Therefore, for large-scale nanoproduction, safety parameters must first be developed. Nevertheless, it is nanotechnology that holds the future. Experiments are under way to use nanorobots in surgery. In the future, they will be used for operations to replace parts of the body and even the genome. The founder of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, believes that nanorobots will be used to “revive” people when they are unfrozen.
Genetic Engineering
A revolution in immortality technology must await genetic engineering. The story of the Japanese woman Sei Shonagon, who began to grow young at the age of 75, married and had a child at the age of 79, is well known. Gerontologists have discovered her gene, which is responsible for the formation of cells that destroy their aging counterparts, Now the task of scientists – to understand what was the stimulant to wake up the gene of youth, and make this system work. However, so far it has not been found out what is the cause of the sudden awakening of the youth gene. The telomerase study, an enzyme that allows the chromosome to copy itself, also holds great promise. It was discovered back in 1984 by three American scientists. In the cell, the role of the division counter is performed by a telomere – a special segment of the chromosome. With each division it should decrease, but with the help of telomerase it is possible to correct the telomere length and thus control the aging process. In most human cells telomerase is blocked. The enzyme is active only in stem and germ cells. Unblocking telomerase in the rest of the cells is seen as a potential “recipe for immortality”.
Will we live forever?
It is unequivocally safe to say that people today live longer than they did a century ago. In the future, life expectancy will only increase. British geneticist and gerontologist Aubrey de Grey (Cambridge) believes that by 2100 the ways of extending human life to 5000 years will be found. The British citizen’s bold prediction is shared by big businessmen investing in the fight against aging, as well as no less than 300 scientists working on the project “Projected Aging Disregard Strategy”. They have already succeeded in increasing the lifespan of laboratory mice to almost five years (the average rodent lives two years). Increased longevity can also be achieved by medication. Already now among those increasing life expectancy are drugs of natural origin.
