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R.I.P. death: Has the first person to live to 1,000 already been born? Credit: iStockphoto 
This essay is an edited extract from How to Live Forever or Die Trying by Bryan Appleyard A$24.95, published by Simon and Schuster Credit: Simon and Schuster We shall not be immortal in the sense that we cannot die; plainly we could still be killed in a car accident or by a cosmic event such as an asteroid striking the Earth. But we could not be killed by disease or age, our bodies would be immune to infection, dysfunction or the ravages of time. We would be medically immortal. Some say this will happen quickly within, perhaps, 30 years with the first clear signs that we are on the right track appearing within the next decade. Others think we are at least a century or two away from attaining medical immortality. Some consider it completely unattainable. But the majority of scientists and thinkers in this area now consider life extension and even medical immortality possible and likely. Not long ago, most would have said it was out of the question, that death at or well before the absolute maximum age of something like 122 was inevitable. Cancelling the debt The basis of this shift from unattainable to feasible is not generally understood. It involves a transformation in our conception of human biology and an expansion of our capacity to intervene in its workings that may yet prove to be at least as momentous as the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Einstein. But Copernicus to Einstein is not the only tradition that is at issue here. There are also the traditions that run from Buddha to Mohammed and from Plato to Wittgenstein, the traditions of religion and philosophy. Our relatively brief lives and our routine proximity to the deaths of ourselves and others are the foundations of everything we have ever thought or believed. Neither religion nor philosophy necessarily promises immortality, but each offers ways of coming to terms with or giving meaning to death and, therefore, life. If death is to be postponed indefinitely, then both religion and philosophy face fundamental crises. Of course, many other traditions of politics, art, commerce and culture are also at stake. In truth, it is difficult to think of any aspect of human life that would not face similar crises. What, for example, would be the meaning of the greatest works of the human imagination to a medical immortal? Shakespeare's sonnets may be said to be about the brevity of life and the painful transience of human love and beauty. But if we lived for 1,000 years or more in a condition of youthful health and vitality the postulated life extension technologies promise to hold us permanently in our late twenties then would we come to see these poems as the curious remnants of an antique world rather than urgent expressions of the deepest truths of our predicament? Would any art of the past survive this revolution with its dignity intact? Would there be any art of the future? Many may think that, as they suffer from no illusions, fantasies or sensitivities, new life extension technologies are nothing but good news, simple additions to the portfolio of benefits delivered by modern technology. But their worlds are also threatened. For example, the language of relationships is the vernacular of our contemporary, secular life. What would our precious relationships look like to medical immortals? Love itself would have to be redefined. Romantic love depends for its very meaning on the promise that it will last forever. But 'forever' now means no more than, say, 50 years, the average span, in other words, of the human life from falling in love to death. If falling in love actually meant a commitment for 1,000 or more years, then 'forever' starts to take on a new meaning. Love is suddenly relativised, its significance thrown into doubt. There remains, of course, love of self and surely in that context life extension must be an unalloyed good. Life extension must mean extension of the self and the cultivation of the self is, alongside relationships, the supreme contemporary preoccupation. But even here there are problems. How much cultivation of the self can we take? There will only ever be so many gadgets to buy, so many days we can spend at the gym or beauty parlour though these may well be unnecessary activities in the new world order so much sex we can have, so many cars we can drive. Perhaps medically immortal selves will seek alternative spiritual or intellectual diversions as the wealthier mortal selves, disillusioned with getting and spending, already do in increasing numbers. Maybe these will see us through the long centuries of life. Or maybe none of these things will matter as we shall not be just one self in the future but many. Readers' comments
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Mprize says we need 1 mill to 1 billion to do this in mice
If you want to develop the bio-technologies and nano-technologies that can take an old person and make them young again then you will simply have to take some of the money we waste every day on the military (bush is spending billions per month on the war in Iraq, the US and Europe and Russia spend Thousands of billions/year on war machines and armies!).
Aubre-de-gray (www.mprize.org, tax deducatble in the US!) has accumulated over 10 milion to fund two different prizes and research programs to solve the 7 problems of aging that will first let us stave off the damage that aging does to our cells, leaving the next more complex step of altering the cells metabolism so as you would then take periodic treatments (every 10 years) to revert your bodies aging back to 20 something...
The thing is, we have dome massive projects in the past, we have researched/built the bomb in 3 years (the manhattan project of ww2), we researched and then built the equipment to go to the moon in under 10 years, we researched/built the technology to sequence the human gneome in under 12 years! Aubre-de-gray says we could probablly reverse aging in mice in under 10 years with 100-million to 1-billion funding, heck, there are over 1200 billionaires in the world, each who could pay for such a program with just a small part of their fortune...If we really made such a program a priority, we could probably do it in 2 to 4 years!!
Honestly, what are people's priorities, a new car costs GM or Ford over 1-billion to develop and manufacture, a B2 bomber costs over 2 billion per copy!!
length of wait
what if they are wrong?
if people spend their lives waiting for life to start, so that they can be free then what... what if it never comes, what if it does, but life is not worthwile living like that, for example hooked to machines for 9 hours a day and sleeping another 10.
what if after waiting they fail to pass? is it worth nearly wasting a life just on the chance that you will have double that time to live after that. will age be a problem. will you be able to drink before you are 50 or drive before you are 40?
I highly reccomend the book 'horsehead soup' for their theory of extended life that, upon dying, your DNA would be retrieved from somewhere and you would be recovered.
also the cartoon 'Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex' for their theory that people just get a computerised implant for extra brain space and prosthetic bodies to fix everything. of course in their world a real organ can be sold on the black market and brains dont need bodies at all. people also die when they like.
what if humans are already as efficient as they can be? between evolution, certain diseases, DNA damaging radiation and many other things damaging us, we seem to survive quite well. the short-ish lifetime and separate life-body entities may be all that is needed to fight the DNA damaging radiation while providing us with enough time to transfer knowledge.
another theory taken up by someone is 'supermemo'... I am sure google has plenty of answers but in essence its a program where you add information and it tells you it once and occasionally asks questions on it. over time it asks less and less, but enough to help you remember. the creator has the theory that, by spending his entire life using the program he will be able to; the day before he dies recall 100% any of approx 1,000,000 pieces of information, including tranlation of some languages, news articles, particualar information and many more. however he believed he had reached the limit of recall ability there, and that took his nearly every waking second of every day.
taking his calculations, when we reach total capacity, I hypothesise that a brain would not be able to recall all that information unless it were powered by something bigger or stronger. but then that takes us to the point of inability for a creature with a more powerful/bigger (not neccesarily bigger but bigger in ratio to body size) brain to be born because of the hip size of the mother. so we need people born with small brains and then grow and transplant big brains into their body. getting a bit crazy there.
only a bit of input
Eliot
Feeble Correction
Feeble is a character in Henry IV, Part 2, not Henry V. It is in Henry IV that he makes the statement about everyone owing God a death.
Immortality a bad idea
Fascinating article. While science may be able to extend life a bit beyond the current maximum, I don't believe it will ever completely hault (or reverse) the aging process. And that's a good thing. As it is, with our 70+ year life expectancy the planet has overshot its carrying capacity -- leading to resource depletion, species extinction and environmental degredation. Unnaturally lengthening human life spans would only exasperate these problems.
Interesting but want more
How many times did this author mention the 'fundamental paradigm shift' and 'new direction' in the science behind these possibilities without making even a token effort to explain what they are? Interesting philosophical and psychological issues, but what wasn't included was frustrating for an article in a science magazine!
If you want to read more:
This is an extract from the book How to Live Forever or Die Trying – find details of the book at the end of the article if you want to read more.
Becoming immortal
I work with eldrly people and not one of them wants to even reach 100 .
100 y/o lady i know catches buses ,rings for taxis ,goes shoping meets friends for lunch ,more active and aware than some one a lot younger.she tells me she's had enough and people live to long these days !!!
so why DO we think we want to live so long?
But..
It is easy for her to say that she has had enough, because basically that is the only option that she has. What if that wasn't the case? This is a question that might get answered down the road.
WELL, IMMORTALITY...
WHAT DO WE MORTALS, KNOW ABOUT IT?
MOST OF US WOULD LIKE TO LIVE LONGER, BUT FOREVER? HMM...???
Death is giving meaning to evolution
Without death evolution is meaningless.If there is no meaning in life,how can man live?All our religion, civilazation,philosophy and science and technology flourished from fear of death. If there is no death no culture and civilazation. Animal have no idea of death so they remain forever animal.
I know live forever is strongest desire of mankind from ancient time but that one is wishfulfilment a illusion.
Long long ago Chekav wrote==Death is terrifying but it would be even more terrifying to find out that there are you going to live forever and never die.