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'We will be able to live to 1,000'
Posted: 18 Sep 2010, 23:11
by Lord Beria3
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stm
Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why.
Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today.
I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing.
It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time.
I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.
Posted: 18 Sep 2010, 23:36
by jonny2mad
Ive met him personally very nice fellow and he may well be right, he was at secret garden party festival
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 00:16
by Cran
It's possible to own a private jet, and I imagine that would be cheaper...
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 02:05
by madibe
and that would ahieve what exactly?
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 11:44
by jonny2mad
some very much older people .
Re: 'We will be able to live to 1,000'
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 13:43
by emordnilap
This sounds implausible. I have heard it said that the first person that will live to be 150 is alive today, which still sounds surprising but definitely far more plausible.
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 17:01
by Eternal Sunshine
Well if they're going to do this I hope they do it soon while I'm in the prime of my life.
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 18:08
by RenewableCandy
If they start repairing somebody's damaged cells/DNA and then for some reason stop, will that count as murder like it does today?
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 18:15
by jonny2mad
I attended his talk at secret garden party and I think the idea is that he believes that people alive today will be in time for treatments that will make them live say another 20-30 years longer, by the time those 20-30 years roll around more treatments will be available that will make them live another 20-30 years and so on .
Some people from the first batch will survive till their 1000 he believes .
He thinks a lot of what we think of as aging is pretty negative, the ideal isn't immortality which most likely is impossible, but to have a life where you repair damage to the body so well that you stay in your prime for your entire life .
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 18:19
by PS_RalphW
This is of course silly. Bodies decay in a thousand different ways. We catch viruses which directly mess with the DNA in our cells. Damaged DNA leads progresively to cancer. Cells tend to die after a more or less fixed number of divisions, due to telomeres on the end of chromosomes getting slightly shorter after each division. This puts a practical upper age as about 120.
We haven't even reversed the signs of aging skin yet. Women lose fertility at 40-45.
We are nowhere near the aging 'singularity' . Even if we were, who could afford or deserve such hideously expensive treatment?
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 18:25
by madibe
And perhaps more importantly, who could afford to support such an aging population? We are having difficulties now...
and dont mention working longer...that all presumes eternal growth and an ever expanding job market.
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 18:53
by jonny2mad
ever see she with ursula andress
how could we support a aging population of people who were as fit as 20 year olds but a thousand or 2000 in shes case old .
Mr de grey also thinks such treatments could be cheaper than the amount of time and money we spend on the elderly today .
My grandfather financially supported a inventor before the wright brothers who was working on a flying machine it didn't work, but we did get to fly .
I just read a article that countered mr grey and it was basically people said in the past we were close to stopping aging we were not therefore we arent now, this seems like poor logic.
Posted: 19 Sep 2010, 21:46
by RenewableCandy
jonny2mad wrote: ever see she with ursula andress
how .
Yes when I was about 8. That scene where she steps back into the blue flame and ages...god it gave me the creeps for
years.
Posted: 20 Sep 2010, 09:25
by Cabrone
All well and good talking about living to 1000 but there are huge implications for society if this was to happen and I don't think society is ready for it.
For starters the birth rate would have to drop precipitously else we'd be knee deep in people.
Would childless couples be happy to wait say a couple of hundred years before they could have a child?
We're not wired to think in those timeframes.
Living to 150 sounds a lot more plausible at the moment.
Posted: 20 Sep 2010, 10:10
by jonny2mad
I think de grey thinks we would adapt to having less children, this would happen over a long time frame .