Humans Could Live For 1000 Years

Maajid wrote to mention an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education site about a biogerontologist who thinks he can kill death. From the article: "The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent -- or even reverse -- allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely. We'll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos, but aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat. Death, as we know it, will die."

Comments

Dying of old age?

[jkauzlar]

This is great, but I've never known anybody who's died of 'old age,' but always from cancer, heart failure, complications of diabetes, etc.. Wouldn't you have to cure all of these things as well or are they mostly a result of an aged body? In this case, maybe this guy's discovery, if it's actually real (I give it a 0% chance) might slow down or stop the onset of these diseases.

Further more, would we all have to look like Yoda after awhile?

Re:Dying of old age?

[FidelCatsro]

A human right now could potentially live to about 130 , we likely will succumb to another condition about 50 years before that though.

The chance of contracting many of these conditions is greatly increased with age , if we can limit the decay associated with that then chances of contracting these conditions is also limited .
Though the 1000 year target is not taking into account environmental damage , it seems reasonable figure for perfect conditions .
  limiting the cellular ageing will also help us to look a lot more youthful for a great deal longer

Re:Dying of old age?

[Omniscientist]

I always presumed that a lot of causes of death were a result of an aged body, among other things. As far as I know the most common types of death happen to folks who are usually older instead of younger folks, like heart disease. So I think having a young healthy body prevents a lot of diseases from occurring, but as far as I know cancer doesn't depend on your age at all. Judging from what I read from TFA, it appears that he has specific goals to prevent many kinds of diseases with his therapy, like Alzheimers.

As far as cancer goes...since cancer is caused by uncontrolled cell division (and the fact that these cells can invade other tissues) and in my understanding, pretty much sporadic or random if outside environmental issues (smoking, etc) are ignored, it seems like it is only a matter of time before someone gets cancer. If you could actually live to be 1000 until your body just gave out, the likelihood of having cancer in those years would have to be extremely high. However, it appears that curing cancer is one of Aubrey's goals...so that's not a problem either.

Interestingly enough, before he started working with biology, he was trained in computer science.

Re:Dying of old age?

[drgonzo59]

Well, cancer, heart failure, diabetes come with old age. There is no medical "old age" diagnosis. The claimed ability to reverse cell damage will also reverse cancer since it is technically a damaged cell with the celluar replication mechanism gone out of control.

That said, at the expense of burning my karma I will call "bullshit" on this story. Claims for aging cures are made every year by someone, and yet we still "kick the bucket" like everyone before us. Better hygiene and better drugs and procedures is what helps us live slighlty longer than our parents and grandparents, not some kind of magical cure-all aging panacea.

But of course the thought of death is a terrible thing so people buy into all these "finally we found cure for aging". It is like selling penis enhancement pills, it is just a clever play on people's insecurities and fears. If someone does want a good cure for aging, better try Alex Chiu's site . You can just buy yourself two nice little rings and of course live forever (...until you die of stupidity or cancer, of course).

Re:Dying of old age?

[Toccy]

I agree with you. Everyone who has ever died in my life has died of a medical condition. I'm not sure that we would be able to live for >1000 years though. The medical community just wouldn't be able to treat all the extra cases (alot) and call me sick but its not really worth it.

Re:Dying of old age?

[Vellmont]

As far as cancer goes...since cancer is caused by uncontrolled cell division (and the fact that these cells can invade other tissues) and in my understanding, pretty much sporadic or random if outside environmental issues (smoking, etc) are ignored, it seems like it is only a matter of time before someone gets cancer.

Yah, but we all have cancer cells in our body all the time. Our immune system is able to take care of them though before they can overwhelm it. What if a lot of cancer were caused by the immune system breaking down due to the ageing process though? Immune system gets weaker, and can't keep up with the cancer cells like it used to. If you could stop or slow the ageing process, you'd have less people getting cancer.

Re:Dying of old age?

[SteveAyre]

As with most diseases, Cancer is more frequent the older you are, but still occurs in young people.

So not prevents... reduces the risk of, though.

Re:Dying of old age?

[tchdab1]

Many types of cancer arise from the results of cumulative errors introducd in the duplication of your DNA prior to cell division.
      When a cell of yours duplicates the 6 trillion base pairs in your DNA, after the duplication errors result in mistakes (average one in 10,000) and the correction mechanisms clean up as many as they can, there is an average of 1 mistake per cell per dupication. 95% of your DNA is (near as we can tell so far) non-coding; it is not used to build proteins. So every once in a while, in cells that divide often (like skin or surface cells in the gut, not nervous cells) errors accumulate. Toxins (chemicals) and mutagens can introduce still other DNA mistakes.
      Over time, one of those mistakes breaks the code for a protein that the cell needs to fight cancer (or to kill itself, or to stop replication). There could be hundreds of those crucial proteins, and sometimes several of them need to be disabled serially before the function they perform goes haywire. But over time, given enough chances and over enough cells, the normal regulation functions of some small number of cells breaks down due to mutations, the cell does not commit suicide or stop replicating, and you get cancer. While it happens more often over longer periods of time, it can also happen quickly to younger people. Or some people are born with one or more mutations in a sequence and just need a single error to kill a crucial cell function and initiate cancer.
Then there are the teleomeres - the repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes that delete one repetition every time the cell divides. There is enough teleomere sequence in most cells for several dozen (couple hundred?) divisions, then it doesn't divide right any more.
And the genetic problems people are born with - is your code for a crucial protein faulty? Depending on the bad protein and the fault in it, you might get cystic fibrosis, an increased risk for breast cancer, etc. etc.

These things can be detected and, in theory, fixed using techniques known today. Fixing those kinds of problems may be what this dude means when he says we can dispense with the consequences of cellular "disease" and live forever. Maybe, but there's still lots of work to do.

only one problem

[iLogiK]

and it's an issue evan today with our current lifespan: over population...
ofcourse, a lifespan of 1000 years can open doors to interstellar voyages...but still

Re:only one problem

[Ayaress]

Society's already giving an interesting change that should ease overpopulation in developed countries: More and more people, in the US, in Europe, moreso in Japan, aren't having children. There have been projections that these countries could actually see a population decline in the next 50-100 years.

As for developing countries, where overpopulation is a problem and will probably become worse in the next 50-100 years, do you really think they'll live for 1000 years, that this technology will be accessible to countries that can't even maintain their basic infrastructure for their entire population?

For that matter, do you believe you or I will live for 1000 years? If this sort of thing is possible in our lifetime, it will be fantastically expensive. It'll only be an option for people who have a LOT of money, and I can see it being a financed sort of thing that it'll take you most of that thousand years to pay off. This isn't just going to be a free aging shot you get every November at the local supermarket like you get flut shots now.

Great.

[Morgalyn]

Let the overpopulation commence!

Seriously, human society will never be able to tolerate considerable anti-aging treatments until the general populace is accepting of birth control measures.

Re:Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all relative. The people who can afford to life forever will generally be educated enough not to overpopulate. The uneducated breeders probably won't have access to the anti-aging stuff anyway.

Of course that idea has deeper problems, but whatever... nothing much different than the current situation.

Then again, something like this could bring on the Brave New World.

Re:Great.

[Morgalyn]

You're assuming the limitation of the treatment to those that can afford it wouldn't cause a huge riot... if you examine the health care systems of most industrialized/'civilized' countries, you'll find that most make death-preventing treatment available to all in one way or another. It would be political suicide to limit treatment to the elite, unless the political system wasn't based on voting of the masses...

Re:Great.

[dar]

Soylent green is people!!!!

Re:Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, then it would be time for population culling and sterilisation based on genetic makeup.

How many times...

[Chuckstar]

How many times do you think you'd be able to say "B.S." in 1000 years.

Sure we will...

[Scrameustache]

And we'll be driving our flying cars all the while.

Re:Sure we will...

[A beautiful mind]

This is just brilliant with that sig ;)

Re:Sure we will...

[Omniscientist]

And we'll be driving our flying cars all the while.

People driving flying cars? I believe that would actually result in an inverse of the 1000 years life expectancy.

Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[Marxist Hacker 42]

In 500 years, you've got a 100% chance of being struck by a bus.

Re:Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[Scrameustache]

In 500 years, you've got a 100% chance of being struck by a bus.

Ah, you too have foreseen the murderous roboBus revolt of 2505!
The horror...

Re:Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[N3Bruce]

Though the parent was modded funny, there is a lot of truth in that sage comment. At present time, the average person in the first world has about an annual lifetime risk of dying due to accidental trauma in the range from 1 in 500 to about 1 in 1000. People who work in certain professions/occupations have a higher risk as well. Infantrymen in Iraq might have an annual risk of violent death of about 1 percent, but people who work as commercial fishermen, in construction trades, drive trucks, or work as policemen or firemen also face above average risks as well.

Another factor not to be discounted lightly is the risk of disabling injuries. I saw few if any grey heads working on the roof of my recently constructed house in the crew of about 8 or 9 guys out there. People tend to abandon risky occupations as they get older if they can, either they suffer physically disabling injuries themselves, or see enough of their friends get hurt that they decide to find a safer way to make a living. Even as lifespans have increased by the relatively modest amounts over the last 50 years or so, one of the biggest problems will be finding help to put new roofs on their houses, take down overgrown trees, etc.

If life spans increase 10 fold, the amount of dangerous work will not go down that much, but the pool of people willing to do that kind of work will diminish to nearly the vanishing point. If people live to be 1,000, occupations such as truck drivers, roofers, cops, and many of the construction trades will either be a death sentence, or something that most people will be unable to do for more than a few decades before being disabled or forced to seek safer employment. People may become too risk-averse for society to function.

Re:Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps that invisible hand that people like to argue about will reach in and fix things.

Seriously, this seems like the type of situation where capitalism and economics will actually work. As fewer people want to do it, the price will go up, drawing more people back in until an equilibrium is reached. Of course, that will also encourage new technologies that keep the people safely on the ground, while robotic roofing machines do the work. Either way, I don't think you're going to see many houses with no roofs because of this, although the number of people fixing their own roofs may go down sharply.

Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[garcia]

By these measures, Aubrey de Grey is indeed a prophet. The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer.
You can't determine that someone is a prophet until after the fact. See, right now he might be a "visionary" or a "futurist" or even a "fortune teller" but most likely he's just a "crock" or a "bullshit artist".

I claim that based on scientific technology available right now we will be able to solve all the world's problems in the future! See how easy that is? Now, if only I could get some article written about me and my observations of organs growing in trays (and not exactly explaining how all these endless transplants will work) I too can say we will all live for eternity (and bring with us all the damage populations of that size cause).

This wasn't even worth reading. Thanks for giving this guy more notoriety Slashdot.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[rbarreira]

It's so easy to talk like you did, isn't it?

The fact is that Aubrey de Grey is a respected biologist (despite having a degree in computer science), and participates in many important conferences, according to what I've read. If you find information which contradicts this, please give me a link. In the meantime, perhaps you should check your facts better before posting such things.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[booch]

I'm sure this guy has some valid ideas. But the obvious sign that he can't see the forrest for the trees is that he really thinks such medical technology will be available to everyone on the planet. That's so ridiculous. AIDS is now more or less treatable, and yet millions in Africa are dying of it every year. Everything has a cost, and most of the people in the world can't afford much.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[garcia]

In the meantime, perhaps you should check your facts better before posting such things.

Plenty of respected scientists are full of shit. Perhaps the article, which is the only linked information from the blurb and thus all we have, should have included some more factual evidence that this can all occur rather than just saying that because this guy says so, it is.

Starting off the article that he's a "prophet" and then continuing on with quotes like, "If that sounds a little vague, it is. Mr. de Grey is not saying he knows for certain how to fix these problems, only that these are the problems responsible for the physical breakdowns we experience as we grow older. Lick them, and you've licked aging, or so the thinking goes." Because, afterall, it is really vague and thus I'm skeptical.

Maybe you should have RTFA and let it explain it to you and then maybe you would understand why I think it's all a bunch of shit.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[shawb]

What you just did is nowhere near what this man has done. He identified the major physical reasons behind aging and is working on proposing and coordinating new ideas to fight the causes of aging.

Is he crazy? Probably. Is he wrong? Probably. At least he's got a goal and is formulating a plan to achieve it. If he is wrong, science will probably learn a lot about how the human body works, and other scientific achievements will be made in the process.

By the way... these treatments will only really be available to the extremely wealthy. Considering how difficult it is for many Americans to get basic health insurance as it is, and the fact that most medical treatments are financially out of reach for those who are not covered, this will probably only exaccerbate the situation unless some great social or technological discovery is made which allows anyone who desires it access to this longevity. Is this evil? Not really. Denying something to a priveleged few people simply because the masses (of which I consider myself to be a member) can not achieve it isn't right. Denying this longevity because it causes an undue burden on the rest of society, however, is not morally outrageous.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[Baron_Yam]

I happen to believe de Grey is right - the human body is just a machine. It happens to be an incredibly complicated machine composed of many smaller machine (which, in turn, are supported by even more, even smaller machines) that we barely understand as yet, but overall the body is just a machine.

His major point (as I understand it) is that we don't necessarily have to know the WHYs of the body, as long as we know the WHATs and can correct them when they change. Watch what changes in the body over time (after full maturity) and then periodically undo those changes when they've gone too far. This is also the point on which most biologists argue with him - they want the WHY before they fiddle with the WHAT.

The only thing I'm still very wary of is perfoming such procedures, should they ever be developed) on the brain. I don't want to be the first.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Horatio Caine, is that you?

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[einTier]

I don't know about that. 15-25 year olds are remarkably healthy. It's when you start hitting 50 or so that age really starts to take its toll. If the cost of rolling someone back to 15 is less than the expected cost of their health care from 50 to 75, you can bet that insurance companies are going to start mandating that their insured undergo this proceedure.

Of course, that doesn't cover anyone without health care or the truly poor, but if this comes in at any kind of reasonable price, you'll see it become a lot more popular than you think. Plus, what's another 50 years worth to you? You can earn a whole bunch of money over that time period, especially if you're in the real 'meat' of your career.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[shawb]

I suppose life insurance companies would be all over this too. Given the choice between investing your money for, let's say an average of 30 years (75 year life span - 18 years)/2 to almost 500 years (1000/2) you'd better bet that they'd like you to have access to this sort of tech.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[Muhammar]

de Grey does not sound as a scientist - not because of his fringe ideas (any radical idea is fringe at the beginning) but because he is not careful and sceptical about what he says. If you want to be a good scientist, you absolutely have to avoid wishful thinking.

de Grey was not trained in experimental work and does not seem to appreciate the way the discovery process works. He has no doubts about what he is saying. But in science progress does do not happen just because you want it to. Ideas that "are a little vague but nobody can prove them wrong" are not the most useful ones. You can make any kind of program and say "in ten years we will be able..." and when you do it you are more like a politician or campainer than a scientist. In fact, there is the place for guys like him: promoting projects and getting private funding into it.

Personaly, I would be very afraid to undergo any aging prevention therapy program designed by Mr. de Grey. Zealots like him end up killing their patients.

For me and mine

[Schezar]

I'm absolutely fascinated by the idea, but it raises several important questions...

Imagine a world where the vast majority of skilled people live effectively forever. What opportunity will there be for the young, if the elders have had a centuries-long head start?

How could we possibly provide the resources necessary to feed an effectively undying yet still growing population? Would famine become the determiner or longevity?

Can the human brain retain the sheer volume of information and experience achievable in a millenia of living? Would we forget the past, or become unable to learn the future?

Not all of the questions are negative, either. Would longer-lived decision makers take longer-term factors into account? Would humanity be more inclined to space travel if time were no longer the limiting factor?

Realistically, we do not have the capability as a civilization to cope with this sort of thing as we stand. Individuals could take advantage of it and live long, and believe me when I say that I'd be the first one in line, but to provide something of this magnitude to the masses would be suicidal.

Ideals aside, I would want this for myself, but not for my neighbors. Selfish, yes, but better some than all or none.

Of course, scientists have said as much before, and little has come of it, so it may be a moot point for centuries yet to come.

Re:For me and mine

[Anonymous Coward]

It seemed to work for the elves.

Re:For me and mine

[vertinox]

Can the human brain retain the sheer volume of information and experience achievable in a millenia of living? Would we forget the past, or become unable to learn the future?

That is what Google is for.

Re:For me and mine

[Ahaldra]

Realistically, we do not have the capability as a civilization to cope with this sort of thing as we stand

Do not worry. The patent secured monopoly granted to the two or three companies who are actualy allowed to sell this product will ensure that this anti-ageing treatment will be far out of reach for all the commoners with less than a few billion dollars to spare.
On the upside, our grand-grand-grandchildren will still know what we were talking about when they unearth our slashdot postings wherein we talk about Bill Gates beeing "teh d3vil" ;-)

Re:For me and mine

[Anonymous Coward]

"Imagine a world where the vast majority of skilled people live effectively forever. What opportunity will there be for the young, if the elders have had a centuries-long head start?"

I would like to argue for the opportunities the older generation lose at the moment. Life seems, to me, to be a repetitive (people are always re-inventing the wheel) closed minded (same arguments/politics/idle conversation again and again?) pit of shit. Birth, work, work, work, breed, work, work, die. Think of all the educational opportunities you could have, get a degree (or better) in every scientific (being on Slashdot here I am tailoring to the audience by putting cool stuff first) topic if you so wished, go onto arts and literature and history and hey even perfect the social graces. I'd even try all the religions to see if they carry any weight.

I'd trade my individualism (nature > nurture) for an opportunity to experience all the universe has to offer, rather than the piss poor subset I could even and only possibly get if i became the most diverse person on the planet. You know, once things started getting boring, maybe after a few millennia, I'd just end myself. A good test for humanity would be keeping ourselves entertained and see how we progress once the whole 'become-a-walking-Google-engine' stage was over.

Re:For me and mine

[Pinefresh]

Well on the plus side, we'll be the elders if he's right.

(I'm sure he's not)

Re:For me and mine

[Frumious Wombat]

IMHO, the real problem is that our societies would stagnate. You may think that you're hip and forward thinking, just as I'm sure Francis Bacon did back in 1584 (though he probably was, "hippe and forwarde thinking"), but how will you be, comparitavely in 2385? Death doesn't just get the physically old out of the way, it also gets the old ideas. Sir Francis lived in a world of absolute monarchs where torturing and killing people over interpretation of the same scriptures was considered acceptable and desirable. Picture a world in which a man who amassed billions using 1970s technology in the 1990s, still had enough money to control computing in 2200. Picture Richard Nixon at 324, still with a secret plan to end the war on Proxima Centauri, the 600 year old Fuggers understanding money only in the sense of little disks of gold, or Benedict the 16th, worried in the 24th century that the church will have surrendered its soul if it accepts the social mores of 1974.

Personally, I'd be much happier if these people would work on a way for people to be healthy and capable (physically and mentally) up until 70 or 80, then still die. The 1000 year life span, besides being a nice round number, is about 10x our maximum current age. What's the point of outliving Methusaleh if the last several centuries are spent in a wheelchair (even if it is Luke Garner's flying one) ogling the cute, young, 300 year olds who sashay by and pat you on the head occasionally?

I cannot find the author, so insert someone suitably cynical, "all wish to live long, but none wishes to grow old". I think we should be working on improving the quality of our life, rather than extending it out of some fear of dying. Let's get cancer and heart-disease first, and deteriorating immune systems first, then worry about outliving Methuselah.

Re:For me and mine

[kenthorvath]

Imagine a world where the vast majority of skilled people live effectively forever. What opportunity will there be for the young, if the elders have had a centuries-long head start?

Speaking from an economics standpoint, there will always be people who need things, they are called consumers. In order for consumers to acquire the things that they need, they must produce things that others need, etc... Perhaps one day there will be a small subset of humanity that can produce enough goods and services to supply the whole, if that were to happen, then it wouldn't matter much if everybody had a job or not. People would just get what they wanted. The worst that would happen in that case is that there would be a dramatic surplus of goods.

The other scenario is that there are not enough producers to supply the world's population, in which case there should be boatloads of opportunity for the young to succeed. They need only learn how and what to do to provide themselves with the goods they desire. In any case, so far this has not been an issue - even as the average life expectancy has more than doubled from what it once was.

How could we possibly provide the resources necessary to feed an effectively undying yet still growing population? Would famine become the determiner or longevity?

Resources would likely determine the maximum stable population size. Any more than the maximum and people would start dying, any less and the population would grow. It stands to reason that at some point, it will become necessary for people to stop having offspring. But then, people produce offspring for a variety of reasons, many of which are unplanned, and some of which are psychologically related to leaving a piece of themselves behind after they have died. Once people stop dying, I expect there to be less of a driving force behind having children. Government subsidized (or incentives for) sterilization are also quite likely.

Can the human brain retain the sheer volume of information and experience achievable in a millennia of living? Would we forget the past, or become unable to learn the future?

I would be happy with a 10-20 year memory span. Phase the old useless info out and the new info in. Personality changes quite a bit over time, and I can't say that I remember much from even 5 years ago - just a few select memories here and there that I have some emotional attachment to, the rest gets filled in from facts and records when I see them. The current research suggests that memories are not stored like data, but rather reconstructed from cues. People have even been quite easily tricked into having false memories by mere suggestion. I would hazard to guess that memory would not be any more of an issue than it is today.

Would longer-lived decision makers take longer-term factors into account? Would humanity be more inclined to space travel if time were no longer the limiting factor?

At some point, I would imagine that people would look to space travel to acquire more resources and allow for more population and culture. The earth is getting pretty crowded with so many people falling under so few governments. I'd expect that as instant communication and cheap and quick transportation become increasingly available, that the notion of nationality and local law will begin to collapse and the world will slowly enter into the control of one or two governing agencies. When that happens, people will look to colonize space to set up their own independent societies.

Re:For me and mine

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so now I need a Google appliance for my head. And gotta make sure it never deletes the cache!

Re:For me and mine

[pclminion]

Imagine a world where the vast majority of skilled people live effectively forever. What opportunity will there be for the young, if the elders have had a centuries-long head start?

This is like saying there's no opportunity for a 5 year old because a 50 year old has a huge head start on experience. The answer, if we're all living to be 1000 years old, is that we'll be going to school for 120 years instead of 12 years. When you've got such an enormous lifespan, what's the rush to enter the workforce at age 20? Wait until you're 120, then you've got a chance of competing with the older folks.

Re:For me and mine

[Gulthek]

Your primary insight is, perhaps inevitably and certainly excusably, tainted with the perspective of the "western" world. A more stable---some would say stagnant---culture would absorb a change of this nature better.

Even in such a culture, overcrowding would be a serious problem; although I'm sure environmental stresses would serve to alter the state of our society until we think that breeding before one is one or two hundred years old is unseemly.

The research the article describes also indicates that cell decay (i.e. aging) would be severely slowed. So, in effect, we would age at a much lessened pace than we would "naturally". So your description of a terrible life with hundreds of years spent in a wheelchair is irrelevant.

Re:For me and mine

[superflippy]

Science fiction authors such as Alistair Reynolds speculate that this problem will be solved by interstellar space travel. Longer-lived people can travel the necessary distances and establish new societies. When you come right down to it, it's an overcrowding problem.

I'd love to see both longer lifespans and interplanetary space travel in my lifetime. Whether I will depends on, I suppose, how long I manage to live.

Great..

[Sunrun]

Just what we need: a way to slow down our own evolution.

One of the nicest things about life is that it doesn't go on forever.

This is to say nothing of the sociopolitical consequences, such as state-mandated birth control, and their sociopolitical consequences.

Re:Great..

[c0bw3b]

Bah, we control our own evolution now. Our technology has taken the place of biological evolution. At least that's what whacko transhumanists would say. Dunno how much of that I buy, but there's some interesting ideas out there.

Re:Great..

[vertinox]

One of the nicest things about life is that it doesn't go on forever.

If Quantum Immortality is true, then you may not have a choice in the matter. It could be quite possible that it maybe impossible for you to die. Even if you do loose your memories and your physicial bodies is destroyed, chances are you will spontaneously exist somewhere else in this universe or another.

Try to think of it like this. You obviously are observing yourself currently existing (while reading this) so therefore your conciousness does exist. By definition, not existing is not observable so seeing that you now exist in present form may spontaneously exist as something else if you cease to exist now.

The question is that the universe took 11 billion years for you to exist now and may not end for quite some time after that point. Then you may also have to take into account that other universes may also exist if Copenhagen theory is correct and you might spontaneously exist in another universe before that time frame (just in case existing in this universe was more improbable).

But all what I just said is speculation... But remember... Chances are that you can't escape life by just dying.

Re:Great..

[TheLink]

I call BS on quantum immortality. I don't see why one should rule out the scenario that due to your (or other) actions, you end up dead or nonexistent in all possible universes.

As for eternal life. Eternity is a very long time. We are all flawed. Flawed creatures living for eternity could be a definition of "Hell".

Re:Great..

[vertinox]

I don't see why one should rule out the scenario that due to your (or other) actions, you end up dead or nonexistent in all possible universes.

Because you cannot nonexist unless you currently do not exist. Since you exist now, you will exist forever as something because you can't observe yourself not existing and it could be infinite time between you now and the next time of you being consciously being able to observe your own existence.

Can you conceptualize infinite time? No... Well neither can I. So that leads up to the problem of knowing what will happen over infinite amount of time.

If I am wrong or right doesn't really make a difference because chances I won't make remember this conversation in 10 billion years regardless of weather I am still alive or dead and not existing.

Secondly...

Flawed creatures living for eternity could be a definition of "Hell".

If mankind decided to make the ultimate punishment... Then do what do you think they will do first?

Re:Great..

[Zone-MR]

I wrote my thoughts on the subject of life after death a while back.

Basically, you are saying that your consciousness might not be linked to the physical body and brain. However, we know that if the human brain is damaged, it irrecovably alters a persons character. If you die in this world, and your consciousness suddenly attached itself to another body/brain in another world/universe, you wouldn't be 'you' anymore. You wouldn't have any of the experience, memories, brain structure, etc which shaped your individual character.

TV reference

[Vaevictis666]

We'll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos,

Hey, I can spot the 'Dead Like Me' reference in there :)

Re:TV reference

[Quattro Vezina]

"We're not the ones who drop the pianos."

Ah, such an awesome show. Damn shame it got cancelled.

Kill me now

[GetPFunky]

because I can't imagine living for 1,000 years with George W Bush as our President.

I get to live 1000 years?

[Odocoileus]

This is obviously a ploy of the creationists to postpone people from finding out the real truth.

Hurrah

[metamatic]

Death is dead, long live death!

Imagine a 900 year old Strom Thurmond staring cabbage-like into space as our artificially stupid computerized Republican overlords tell him how to vote.

Bill & Walt Rejoice

[Markus Registrada]

If it works, guess who lives forever? Hint: not you.

Wouldn't you just get bored after a while?

[oliana]

Or would you have to give in and die at 1000?

overpopluation

[uberjoe]

I just had a vasectomy, sign me up!

Cthulhu reference

[mindlessreflex]

Death, as we know it, will die.

First a "Dead Like Me" reference, then a Cthulhu reference. "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."

Well, since death will die, I for one, welcome our OLD, many-angled, overlords.

Re:Cthulhu reference

[Davey McDave]

No no no. John Donne. (shakespearean era poet)

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The first thing that came to mind

[Spytap]

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should..."

Kill me

[Piroca]

aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat

I'm pretty sure it will be substituted by suicide.

In case you missed it the first time...

[cei]

(or the second, or the third...)
2004-06-02 (posted by Timothy)
2004-12-03 (posted by Michael)
2005-01-19 (posted by Timothy...again)
2005-03-08 (Timothy, I'm shocked!)
and now this one.

WoW!!!!

[kendoka]

That's enough time to level every class to 60, for both factions! Like, on every server too! I'd be a god! muhahah!

Psychologically infeasable.

[Philip K Dickhead]

They'd all be killing themselves after 200 years, or so. What would a psychology formed in 1000 A.D. - or even 1700 A.D. do in the world of today?

Progress would stagnate too. Read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Also Vonnegut's "Fortitude" and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow".

Life is about death - or hiding from it. "Living Forever" is an escapist fantasy for those who have not faced the essential question of their existence.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[bechthros]

"They'd all be killing themselves after 200 years, or so. What would a psychology formed in 1000 A.D. - or even 1700 A.D. do in the world of today?"

Took the words right out of my mouth. There was a book I read a long time ago, can't remember what it was called, but it dealt with this very issue. There was an elite class of super-rich who could afford an indefinite life span. The problems were many. Firstly, there was overpopulation. This is what happens when fewer people die but the planet stays the same size. Then there was massive boredom among these super-old people because how much is there do do in the world really? At some point you will have done everything there is to do. When the characters in this book reached that point, they responded to their massive boredom with equally massive depravity, and started killing and torturing people because it was literally the only thing they had never tried doing before. What wouldn't humans stoop to with all eternity to kill?

So yeah - bad, bad idea, even if it was probable, which I don't consider it to be.

"The rightest a man could ever be would be to live infinitely long" - L Ron Hubbard. You wanna be on the same side as THAT guy?!

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[wed128]

Fortitude is exactly what i thought of...after a while it's just doctors playing with dead bodies.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[FidelCatsro]

It takes a special kind of mind to endure 1000 years of life..
  I intend on living that long so I can have a pet robot , hover cars , a massive space ship and play Duke Nukem forever( don't tell me you didn't see that coming)

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[Thing 1]

Ok, you feel free to off yourself any time you like.

Please don't slow progress down for those of us who want to seek out new solar systems ... and wrap them with Dyson spheres.

As to your non-sequitor end quote, a line from the bible fits: "even the devil can quote gospel" -- in other words, a liar sometimes tells the truth, you cannot simply state "I don't like this person therefore I disagree with everything they say" and expect to be internally consistent.

And as to the book, there are many authors who make their living scaring the public. It appears this was one of them. Living forever is no way boring; perhaps it might have been 50 years ago, but we're now on the rapid stream of advances leading up to the singularity, and there's no way I'll be bored during that! Beyond the singularity there's so much more to know and learn and do as well; seeking out new universes as an escape measure for when this one suffers its heat death (we know it won't collapse, that was proven a few years ago). And overpopulation won't be a problem either, since we'll be able to create habitats in environments that are current unsuitable for life (deserts, underground, in the ocean, orbiting, in the asteroids, etc).

You should read this book: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" , which contains some of the same elements as the book you read (people killing each other in the future, for pleasure), but does so from the premise that we have backups, so "killing" someone (or even yourself!) does not mean the end of that person's experiences.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Yeah.

A society that can build a Dyson sphere won't need its benefits. Besides, there would be no gravity in a Dyson sphere unless something new comes along, even then, you would need localized gravity sources that don't obey inverse quare because the gravity made by the matter that makes up a sphere is cancelled out inside that sphere.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[Intrigued]

That view is quite narrow.

Psychology isn't an invention to rule the populous, it is only commentary from observation of the populous. The variety of coping abilities among people is virtually infinite. People don't have to constantly look for new things, especially when they don't expect the new things to bring them any kind of satisfaction.

People would continue to live in the same day to day manner that they do now. Suicidal people would tend to not look for longer lives, thrill seekers would get as bored as they are now with their lives, people who look for gratification at the expense of their long term benefit would still try to do the same. Drugs, smoking, overeating, lack of excercise, depression, vices, would have a more profound effect in visibly damaging quality of life.

As cheesy as the movie was, there is some insight to be found in "Groundhog day". Some people will find long term satisfaction in spending time with other people, descendants, doing gardening, research, developing talents, art, new careers.

I personally have way more interests than I have time to ever delve into them. If I could raise my kids and have 2-10 lifetimes after that, I wouldn't have any trouble filling my time and thoroughly enjoying it. If I could spend that time with my wife as well, and enjoy my current health, even more so. People who would turn to the kind of things that were quoted to look for a thrill would quickly find that it didn't satisfy either. Most long lived people would figure it out before ever having to try it.

I would love to see what kind of perspective living a thousand years could give someone. Psychology would have new insight that the paltry 100 years we currently live cannot give.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[bechthros]

OK, for the record, IHBT.

" Ok, you feel free to off yourself any time you like."

I don't think I'll have to, as I consider indefinite longevity to be unattainable during my lifetime. Sure, maybe I'll live to be 120 or 130, tops, but I don't think the average human lifespan is going to even top 200 for many many more decades.

Thanks for the invitation, though. Mighty white of you.

"Please don't slow progress down for those of us who want to seek out new solar systems ... and wrap them with Dyson spheres."

What does this have to do with longevity exactly? Are you proposing seriously that prolonging the human lifespan is a necessary component of long-range space exploration? Have you given absolutely zero thought to what all those 1000-year old people are going to, say, eat and drink for 1000 years? 1000 years worth of food and water is a lot of food and water, requiring a lot of fuel to get it off the ground. And better make sure it's all non-perishable, because it has to last for 1000 years.

What will make human exploration of deep space possible will be three thing - a) previous exploration of deep space my unmanned probes; b) some kind of suspended animation system, a la "Aliens"; c) A ship large enough to contain agricultural facilities for all of it's inhabitants, and enough inhabitants to form a sustainable gene pool for long enough to reach their destination. Indefinite lifespan is NOT the solution.

Besides, of all the people living on Earth today, very few have any inclination to be space explorers. If a magic wand were waved today and everybody could live to be 1000, your "solution" of everybody being space explorers would seem to require a good chunk of the populace being shipped off to space against their will, to enjoy 1000 years of doing NOTHING but staring at each other while they waited for the ship to arrive. What a swell life that would be. Every single ship would be filled with corpses when it arrived. What a great way to present ourselves to the galaxy. Also, it would seem to require a good chunk of planetary resources being devoted to the manufacture and launch of ships large enough to hold enough food and water to sustain these poor, tortured souls for their long voyage. Except you seem to forget that we'll need all the planetary resources wer can muster for food and water for all the 1000-year old people that we'll have living here. Soylent green, anybody?

On to overpopulation.

"And overpopulation won't be a problem either, since we'll be able to create habitats in environments that are current unsuitable for life (deserts, underground, in the ocean, orbiting, in the asteroids, etc)."

Oh this is rich. Once humanity has indefinite lifespan, there will be no resources available to make these environments habitable. Deserts: There will be no water to irrigate the desert with because all these thousand-year-old people will be drinking it. Udnerground: we have this already. Ocean: too costly even for now, let alone in the resource-starved world of your utopian future brought about by a huge population of uber-geriatrics. Asteroids: this one is fucking hilarious. ASTEROIDS HIT THINGS. All your "solutions" could only take place in a world where money didn't exist. And as long as one thing is more useful to a person than another thing, money will always exist.

"And as to the book, there are many authors who make their living scaring the public. It appears this was one of them."

Oh go soak your head. Scary things exist. It doesn't mean we shouldn't think about them. Does a life-insurance salesman make his living by scaring people? Sure. Does this make him a bad person? No. If nobody sold life insurance the world would be a worse place. Sometimes there are things we need to be scared of.

"Living forever is no way boring"

OK, at the point at which you make this statement, you lose any and all right to claim any

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[bechthros]

"If I could raise my kids and have 2-10 lifetimes after that, I wouldn't have any trouble filling my time"

That's a big assumption. How do you know? You've never lived that long, and never seen anybody else do it either. How old are you now, 20? 30? 40? It's real easy to say you'll never get bored of things when there are still things you haven't tried.

And even if you could fill 2-10 lifetimes meaningfully, which I doubt, surely you must realize that, given an indefinite lifespan, you would eventually be bored with being alive. At some point, the only thing you had yet to experience would be death.

How many video games do you continue playing once you've unlocked all the secrets and beaten the game?

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[IckySplat]

Yes after a while you might get bored and decide
the see if there is an afterlife.

The point is that you get to choose when and how
(Assuming no falling piano's etc...)

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[Philip K Dickhead]

Man - you are hot tonight!

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[Thing 1]

Yes, for the record, YHBT ... by a superior intelligence. I apologize for playing.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[bechthros]

Apology accepted.

A favorite topic of bored journalists

[paladinwannabe2]

This guy is a favorite topic of bored journalists- but that doesn't mean he's wrong. If you look at human life expectancies, they have been increasing for the past 500 years, and the rate at which they are increasing is also increasing. If this continues (which is a pretty big if), then eventually people's life expectancies will be increasing faster than people age. This gives people near-immortality- they can only be killed by random accidents, or 'acts of God'. The effects of this would be incredible, and probably spark a vicious conflict between those who can afford immortality and those who can't. But that is another story...

immortality cool, but what about our brain?

[Maxhrk]

sure we can live forever, but what about our brain? can our brain keep up with aging infinitely?

do we have anything that can rebuild the cell within brain level?

If I get to live 500 years...

[Elkboy]

If I get to live 500 years (with a healthy, youthful mind and body) I promise to kill myself after my 500th birthday for the good of the world, if needed. Hell, I'll do the same at 150 years if 500 is too much.

Deal?

PS. It is a little presumptuous to assume that humanity can't come up with a system to control such problems as overpopulation and stagnation with a 1000-year lifespan. Considering how many children suffer needlessly today, maybe we could give them a better life if they were 10 times fewer.

smac is ever appropriate

[Dolly_Llama]

I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.

Re:smac is ever appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Live forever or die trying.

cancer and the effect on the human mind?

[egomaniac]

I accept that we could, in theory, mitigate the cellular damage that leads to aging, and humans could live much longer than they do now. There are, however, two BIG problems, in addition to the overcrowding that everyone else has mentioned.

First is cancer. Cancer is caused by DNA damage which causes cells to begin dividing uncontrollably. Humans, over our mere 100 year lifespan, face a very high risk of dying from cancer. Over a thousand years, it becomes a virtual certainty that at least a handful of your cells would have a very harmful mutation. Unless we also have the technology to periodically "refresh" all the DNA in your body (hint: unlikely), the simple fact is that after a thousand years you would have developed every kind of cancer known to man. I don't believe any medical technology could keep one of us alive that long -- if and when humans manage to extend our lifespans to the thousand year range, we won't be doing it in our current bodies.

Second is psychology. The human mind did not evolve to last a thousand years, and asking it to operate so far outside of its design parameters is bound to have some surprising (and likely unpleasant) effects. In fact, I am very skeptical that anyone could even hold on to sanity for that length of time. We just aren't built for that kind of time scale. We obviously don't know the effects of a truly long life on the human mind, but I just can't imagine an ordinary human lasting for a thousand years without becoming seriously disturbed.

Re:cancer and the effect on the human mind?

[xilmaril]

I agree with your first point. your second one doesn't seem right, though.

design parameters? if we were designed along any particular parameteres (I'm not touching that arguement), we certainly can all agree that we don't know what those paramaters are. unless you think we were designed to live till 30, as was the style in ancient times, in which case a bit of insanity might not be so bad.

as to the time scale, I think we can adapt. it might take a generation or two, but we'd adapt to it. humans have gotten used to a doubled life expectancy, ridiculous ammounts of new technology, and the elimination of many of the jobs they grew up expecting. and that's all within living memory (my grandparents lifespan).

I think it's easy to underestimate just how much we as a species can get used to.

Re:cancer and the effect on the human mind?

[foniksonik]

Psychology in this context is more a matter of environmental impact on the human psyche... stress. If you have to live a life full of bad stress then yeah, you're going to eventually break and go insane or at least chronicallly depressed.

On the other hand if you don't have to worry about money, housing... basically survival - then you would probably be okay for a lot longer. This means no forced work, only work that you enjoy doing on a schedule that is comfortable. This means plentiful healthy food, a very comfortable home, a good social group and some sort of goal oriented daily routine.

With these provisos I think the human mind could cope for that long.

Re:cancer and the effect on the human mind?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first point is erronus as well, having studied biology I can tell you that it isn't anywhere as hard as you might think to mitigate cancer problems, part of the reason cancers crop up so quickly at all age is because in old age your cells are poorly maintained. If you can counter that, then even at much older ages your cancer rate will be vastly lower.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Your life, maybe.

[hackwrench]

To me, death is irrelevant. I do things primarily because they're fun, secondarily because of a complex code which among other things values the feeling of pain over anesthetic. It also values brinksmanship over quick victory. Ever hear the phrase "death or glory spirit"? How about "Give me liberty or give me death"?

Re:Your life, maybe.

[the31337z3r0]

"Give me victory, or give me potatoes." Shouldn't be too hard to change a word in a few textbooks.

Lack of Objective Criticism

[sarlos]

One of the things that intrigues me most about these claims is near the very end. A bounty of $20,000 is being offered to a scientist who can disprove his theories... and no one has tried yet. It's easy to say someone is off their rocker, it's quite another to prove it objectively. Until this happens, I wouldn't necessarily discount this entirely. Even if I could *only* add another 100 years to my life by his theories, I wouldn't have any complaints at all.

Re:Lack of Objective Criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, you prove to me Santa Claus does not exist and I will prove this guy's theories are wrong. I don't know if he's right or not, but even if they are wrong, there's no way to "prove" it.

What a Rosy Future

[ndansmith]

If we eliminate all disease and extend the viability of the human body indefinately, I believe we are left with only a few options for death:
1. Murder
2. Suicide
3. Accident

What a wonderful world it would be!

Re:What a Rosy Future

[An Onerous Coward]

Okay, but exactly which happy-fun-time forms of mortality are we being deprived of by this?

C'mon, name one.

Cancer? No, not fun. Heart disease? Again, not fun. Ebola? Novelty aside, still not fun.

What about that one disease that makes you feel like you're shot full of heroin right before you die? Wait, no such thing.

I don't think people will really be complaining that all the good deaths have been gotten rid of. The biggest effect, I think, will be a sudden onset of safety paranoia. The building codes that once meant buildings were expected to survive anything the next hundred years might throw at them? Better shore them up. Speed limits? Better slow them down. Penalties for murder, drunk driving, and malpractice would all increase by a factor of ten.

I don't think we can legislate or engineer our way to a perfectly safe society, but I imagine that they're going to try.

Personally, I'd be pretty happy if I knew my most probable cause of death was suicide.

Re:What a Rosy Future

[pclminion]

What about that one disease that makes you feel like you're shot full of heroin right before you die? Wait, no such thing.

WTF? I'd say that an actual shot of heroin right before you die of a heroin overdose feels quite a fucking bit like that.

Re:What a Rosy Future

[An Onerous Coward]

But it's not a disease.

It's simple...

[Ibiwan]

I've found a simple solution to rid us of death forever! I can't believe nobody's ever found it! Unfortunately it's a little to long to jot down in this margin, but I'll type up the paper in a couple hours. I've been feeling so streesed late....

HEEEURK! bleaugh...

Re:It's simple...

[ColaMan]

MAYNARD: It reads, [reading] "`I've been feeling so streesed late....HEEEURK! bleaugh...'"
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: [reading] "HEEEURK! bleaugh..."
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while typing it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to type 'bleaugh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what he posted!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up.

Just who is this man?

[Beautyon]

He claims his name is "Aubrey de Grey". This is an anagram.

Can you guess what his real name is?

Re:Just who is this man?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed bury ye?
Aged by rue rye?
Grayed rube ye?
Egad bury eyre?
Regard buy eye?
Bury rage eyed?

Thanks for leading this with the sci-fi logo

[ricky_charlet]

Any conclusion you reach from a seven deep 'if' chain is just plain wrong.

Fight the second law!

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, mechanical engineers know that bearings don't last forever. Neither do knees, or finger joints, or teeth... I suppose eventually you'd have to replace all parts of your body, and you wouldn't really be 'you' anymore..

Re:Start small, cure cancer

[ivan256]

Statins, as a class of drug, are among the best selling drugs in history. An interesting thing about statins, which are prescribed for hyperlipidemia, is that patients might wind up, on average, getting a few more months before they drop dead of CVD anyway

Most likely because treating a symptom or an indicator does little to combat the root of the problem. It's the lifestyle or physiolgical conditions that lead to high cholesterol cause the problem. They haven't invented a pill that gets your fat ass up off the couch puts down the bag of junk food and does some exercise for you yet though.

Exactly

[patiodragon]

Do you guys have an "unlikely" tag for these kinds of articles?

Knock, Knock!

[Proc6]

"...some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer..."

Sounds so familiar, where have I heard that before? Oh that's right, Jehovah's Witnesses.

Re:Start small, cure cancer

[Neurotoxic666]

We can't even cure hunger

Yes we can. Eat.

Seriously, hunger as you refer to it is not a disease but more of a political problem. Food and other resources are controled and dispatched in such a way that some people do not get any. But we're not lacking food and, again, hunger itself is not a disease.

...diseases caused by natural bodily functions. In cases like this, medicine is all too willing to look at simply interrupting one of the chemical reactions in the body

Again, we're facing and finding solutions to symptoms. Often, we do not have to cure anything as if it's a natural reaction, it will go away. It's the people making the choice of being treated or taking this or that pill so as to not endure the pain while it lasts. And what disease are caused by natural bodily functions?

Great....

[crotherm]

That also means that they will be married to their "ball and chain" wives for 970 years. Have in-laws for that long too. And just how long will your slashdot reading, basement dwelling kids stay with you... gads...

But on the bright side, I fully expect to play Duke Nukem Forever....

Question Numba TWO

[mister_llah]

... now that we CAN live for 1,000 years ...

Who would want to?

In what STAGES would aging progress, would it just be slowed?

i.e. would I have to put up with 200 years of hip pain, drinking fiber every morning, etc...?

The questions! Oh! The QUESTIONS!

exactly so

[Quadraginta]

OK, hot from the CDC we learn the following average death rates (in persons per 100,000 population per year) from causes that have nothing to do with old age:

• accidents: 30.4
• infectious disease: 28.0
• murder: 8.5

Grand total, 66.9 per 100,000 per year. From which it follows that the average person has a 0.0669% chance of dying each year from some reason other than old age. The rough estimate of your life expectancy is then reasonably close to the inverse of this number, i.e. 1500 years.

Nice enough, but hardly forever. More troubling, however, is that these rates are for a population that is quite young. Suppose instead we use the results for old people, 85 and over, who are unfortunately far more susceptible to accidents and disease:

• accidents: 276.2
• infectious disease: 1183.6
• murder: 3.

Grand total of 1462.8, which means your average 85-year-old has a 1.46% chance of dying each year from causes unrelated to chronic "old-age" diseases like heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. The inverse of this is 68 years, for a grand total lifespan of 153 years. Lots shorter. And wet get intermediate results if we use the results for other older age groups, but not the oldest.

Which is to say, you can only get a 1000-year lifespan if you not only defeat the usual diseases of old age (cancer, atherosclerosis, etc.) but also stop the clock on practically every consequence of aging from fading vision to slowing reflexes to slower healing to more brittle bones. A very tall order indeed.

Re:exactly so

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Thank you for the research, I didn't have time today, and my original was from an article similar to yours in an old 1970s Analog.

Re:exactly so

[Quadraginta]

Gotta love the Internet. Elapsed time, Google to PDF data file, about 90 seconds. Cheers.

war!

[clragon]

i honestly hope that this wouldn't happen. if everyone (or the majority of us) lived for a 1000 years or more, then Earth will be too crowded to be lived on. more people means more arguements, which would mostly likely lead to war. and the value of life would decrease since there are so many people (just look at china right now, imediate death penalty for drug dealers and smugglers) I wouldn't want to live in a world like that.

Re:war!

[ZeroEpoch]

Thats pretty much what I was thinking when I read this.

Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[BerntB]

I will call "bullshit" on this story.

Put up, then.

If it is garbage (and YOU aren't full of it yourself!) what are the errors in the arguments??

Just that something hasn't been done is not a serious answer; there has been literally hundreds of "firsts" the last 150 years.

Some of the proposed solutions aren't exactly trivial -- e.g. "simply" moving genes from the mitochondria and then move back finished proteins would be a large change! (Sure, some proteins are made in the cell kernel and moved to the mitochondrias already, but to get the right levels of manufacturing, etc, etc. Not easy.)

To do that modification in living bodies seem ... well, a factor of ten harder still!

But is should be doable theoretically. And probably practically. I haven't read that much biochemistry, but I can't say that any of the points strike me as theoretically impossible.

So what is wrong?? Is the list of needed fixes incomplete?

A serious answer would be appreciated. I'm curious and you seem to be certain in your opinion. You should know, yes?

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[beeplet]

So what is wrong?? Is the list of needed fixes incomplete?

My guess is yes, it is. One theory of aging is that we are carrying around many genes which are harmful, but have a serious effect later in life. Such genes were never selected against when expected lifetimes were 35 years or less. Now that we have cured many things that prevented people from getting to 30 or 40, we are seeing new problems that prevent people from getting to 100 or 150. But who's to say that there are not even more aging effects that will only become apparent after 150 or 200 years? It seems shortsighted to assume that the aging processes that are a problem now are the only things we need to overcome in order to live thousands of years.

I also think that a lot of the items on his list amount to replacement of body parts, whether whole organs or DNA. That isn't really reversing aging... That's just repair work which is likely to be needed more and more frequently as the person gets older. It also doesn't address the non-replaceable parts like the brain. Neurons continually die off during a person's adult life, and you don't grow new ones... that's going to be significant after a few hundred years.

If ageing is really to be solved, I think it will be done from the inside, by understanding and altering the functions of harmful genes. That's a long ways in the future, though.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[Raumkraut]

Neurons continually die off during a person's adult life, and you don't grow new ones...

  Weren't rat neurons grown in the lab a while back?
  Something about rat-brain-controlled stealth fighters...

  Stay vigilant, fellow humans.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[beeplet]

That sounds like they were growing neurons from stem cells in a lab. When it comes to humans, my understanding is that some parts of the brain can grow new neurons from stem cells (the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb) but the outer part (the cortex) cannot. Individual neurons can grow and change their connectivity with other neurons, but I don't know of any evidence that new cells can appear.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[drgonzo59]

Let's see, a couple of things:

-> The author claims to be able to fix aging, but doesn't go into much detail how to do it. Theoretically it might be possible to to create wormholes and perhaps do time travel, that doesn't mean that it will ever work. One could probably move genes back into mitochondria, but will that mean living forever? Which brings me to the next point.

-> It is implied in the article that aging = cell damage and toxicity. The reader is expected to assume that as truth just like the author does. But is that what it means to be old? When do you call someone old, do you look at their cells and say "you sir are old, 1% of your cells are damaged". So old age is not an exact clinical diagnosis, it more of a subjective state that includes cultural, social, medical and psychological aspects. In my country someone that is 50 years old is considered "old" and here in US someone who is 50 can still be in their prime. Anyway, without a clear, objective definition of aging, there can be no talks about finding "cures" for it.

-> Another reason to call "bullshit" on this article is that it treads on the so often abused territory of "immortality for $29.99, get it now, not sold in stores". Which in turn uses the common and universal fear of death to get people to follow/invest/buy/believe into ideology/products/methods/research.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[slughead]

But who's to say that there are not even more aging effects that will only become apparent after 150 or 200 years?

And I'm sure they'll bitch about those problems and how medicine's too expensive when those problems emerge.

You want medicine as cheap as it used to be? Stop going to the doctor after age 70, that'll fix that problem right up. I swear I read just a couple days ago about some 90 year old woman getting treated for breast cancer.. WHY?!?! We all gotta die sometime, just let it go or quit bitching about the cost.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[drgonzo59]

What about memories that are encoded in the neurons. The problem of long-term memories that seem to persist despite changes in the individual neurons is still not completely solved. So growing new neurons might work but will you be able to keep that individual's memory, thoughts, habits and other things that are considered as a part of someone's personality.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes it is all theoretically possible. It is also theoretically possible that I will get hit by a meteorite. But for any practical purpose, it ain't gonna happen, not anytime in the remotely foreseeable future. Others in this thread have talked about how human lifespan has been getting longer, but that is NOT true. No one ever has lived longer than about 120 years. Average life expectancy grows because when infant mortality goes down or people don't die early from infections, etc, they live long enough for cancer, heart disease, etc, to get them. It's a great advance for humans to have better quality of life for the years they are on the planet, but no one's gonna live longer than 125 years anytime soon.

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[Retric]

I think the brain uses a "refresh" cycle to keep memories around for longer periods of time. Basically when you think about something you can then re encode that thought as a memory and thus make more copies of that memory. Thus, important moments like your fist kiss stay strong while the names of your High School friends become ever harder to recall.

This would be above and beyond the basic process where specific bonds grow stronger as you keep using them. The idea is that you don't want to lose an important skill or forget where you buried the treasure just because a single cell died.

So if you lived to be 300 you would probably forget the names of your coworkers in over your first 100 years but that seems normal to people as they grow older they tend to forget unimportant things.

Just wait until...

[WalletBoy]

all the grups start to die off.

Re:Start small, cure cancer

[ebrandsberg]

Actually, they have created a pill that does that--it's called meth. It has it's own problems though...

careful

[Quadraginta]

If you look at human life expectancies, they have been increasing for the past 500 years.

The life expectancy at birth has gone up quite a lot, yes. But that mean less that people are living a lot longer than that more people are living what we think of as a "normal" lifespan of 75 years or so. For example, here the CDC has some nice tables of historical life expectancy in the US by age. So, from 1900 to 2002 the US life expectancy at birth increased from 49 to 77 years. Impressive, no?

But the life expectancy at age 85 has only increased from 4.0 to 6.5 years. That is, if you were 85 in 1900 you could expect to live to be 89. If you were 85 in 2002 you could expect to live to be 92. That's much less impressive.

Re:Start small, cure cancer

[Vellmont]

We can't even cure hunger and this guy wants to talk about curing aging?


Hunger stopped being a scientific problem long ago. Hunger is a political and/or economic problem. Cancer is a different story. One of the biggest risk factors for cancer is simply age. The very old are far more likely to develop cancer. If this is a result of accumulated cellular damage, then curing aging would also be a major step towards preventing cancer in the first place.

Also the biggest cause of death (at least in the developed nations) is simply a result of the ageing process. We ignore that because we've always assumed it's inevidible. But what if it's not?

Super!

[raisedbyrobots]

Hey, it worked just fine for the Kryptonians.

For a thousand years...

[xactuary]

For a thousand years, not being able to get that dang Snoopy Charlie Brown song out of my head? No thank you.

joke-remake

[gyepi]

"Death will die" - Aubrey de Grey.

"Aubrey de Grey will die" - Death.

Profound!

[Darius Jedburgh]

Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels

Similarly, most people being poor isn't an inevitable consequence of the human condition but simply a consequence of the fact that the protons and neutrons in all of the matter around them isn't arranged as gold nuclei. All we need is a bit more research and we can fix that. We can already do it to a small extent.

Uhm, isn't that already discussed?

[BerntB]

But who's to say that there are not even more aging effects that will only become apparent after 150 or 200 years?

That is quite likely.

The argument is that the known list of problems can be solved in a few decades. The next bunch of problems will be solved faster, when there is functioning gene therapy on living humans(!). (-: There might be continous attrition amongst the oldest people living... :-)

I haven't read too carefully (one of the previous times it was posted), but I think that is the "official" argument. Read the web site, most obvious counter arguments are answered.

you don't grow new [Neurons]

Sigh. The brain do grew new ones. Quite old knowledge. If the brains stop doing them, you get a depression. Exercise increases the rate. Google, or something.

The biochemists I studied with had lives, so I guess they have no /. where we can ask? :-)

If ageing is really to be solved, I think it will be done from the inside, by understanding and altering the functions of harmful genes. That's a long ways in the future, though.

See previous argument -- new, unknown effects will be found after a while and cured faster than the previous ones. (Sure, a generation or two might die before something new thing is cured.)

The whole thing seems to hang on (a) if the list of magical solutions are possible and (b) if there are unknown aging changes that can't be fixed.

Re:Uhm, isn't that already discussed?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is technically a repost already, but to get down to the specifics, there is a reason why he claims a thousand years. It's not just some completly random number, thi is because fundamental problems tend to betray themselves in diverse populations at younger ages. The reason is bad gene combinations or simply corrupted genes from birth, which means that something which say shouldn't kill you for atleast 500 years will happen ten times faster, or in other words, when you are 50 years old.

Because of this, we've already managed to isolate most if not all aging/killing factors for the coming centuries. So once you start solving them your lifespan will really have the potential to increase quite alot. There is one problem though, which is, we don't actually know which of these specific failures is the bottleneck right now. Meaning we don't know which problem is the one that is really responsible for the current age limit and not the one that will kill you when you are 200. But to make a wild guess, it might be the mitochodrial failure, maybe. But I'm not very sure of that at all, it could also be a waste disposal error that cause mitochondria to fail faster then they should.

Anycase, what this all leads to is, is that unless you manage to isolate the bottleneck, you'd be solving these problems until you hit the actual limiting factor for age at this moment, which will give a first boost in overall life expectancy. Ofcourse, that is a rather inefficient way of working, so I guess you'd preferably start with the actual limiting factor right off if you can figure it out. But failing that I suppose the easiest problems first.

Re:Uhm, isn't that already discussed?

[beeplet]

Sigh. The brain do grew new ones. Quite old knowledge. If the brains stop doing them, you get a depression. Exercise increases the rate. Google, or something.

I did: see No evidence of new neurons in adult primate neocortex, among others. The general consensus seems to be that some areas of the brain have some capability to generate new neurons, but there's no evidence that it can happen in the neocortex, which is a pretty critical part... Though if you can point me to more recent research that contradicts this, please do.

Netcraft confirms it.

[Polo]

Netcraft confirms it - Death is dying.

Damnit.

[fonetik]

First of all, you know how much those old people like to vote? I was looking forward to retiring and running a condo association when I get to be 60. Those old curmodgeons are never gonna die now! This is gonna suck.

And do you have any IDEA how fucked social security is if this is true?

Have you ever seen someone that is 100 years old? Now imagine that's only 10% done. Look at the skin on your elbow with your arm straight out... and imagine a bag of that with eyes.

On the plus side, my grandparents always did give the best gifts.

Re:Damnit.

[MisterPinchy]

Yeah...I can just imagine 100 retirees to 1 worker ratio. That sounds like it is achievable and self-sustaining. Or do people have to work until their are 675 now?

Mod parent up!

[BerntB]

Re mitochondria, there is a quite new paper with getting an enzyme transported into mitochondia that handled H2O2 -- it increased the length of life for rats, I think. Google.

Hmm... ok, that was a good argument. But higher level system features like brain reactions?

To just look at biochemistry is like looking only at the metabolical level for obesity. Hunger/appetite reactions is the deciding factor there. (Or maybe even psychology!)

We don't know much about age changes that aren't purely physical. (I think I'm copying a common point here.) Ah well, when they are reached -- we can probably solve them.

If the basic techniques are implemented.

I'd love to be around to read about the results from the next few generations of space telescopes!

If it works and Grey manages to kickstart it, he would be like an Anti-Hitler or Anti-Stalin, who saved at least hundreds of millions from death.

Ah well, how long will serious genetic engineering take?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Cher Act?

[tepples]

The patent secured monopoly granted to the two or three companies who are actualy allowed to sell this product will

...expire. Unlike with copyrights, nobody has proposed a Cher Patent Term Extension Act that makes a patent last longer than the currently typical human lifetime.

Re:Cher Act?

[Ahaldra]

good point. But Disney only geared into action when one of their cash-cows was under imminent threat. In my lifetime copyright has gone from a voluntary opt-in system to a 70+ years opt-out system with some scaringly powerful people claiming "infinity minus one" as the appropriate compensation time.
The first valuable genomic patents will run out in about 45 years from now. I guess we will have to wait and see how this plays out, maybe politicians will be less dependent on corporate money by then ...

I just realized: Cher Patent Term Extension Act? You are an evil genius ;-)

The jury is still out :-)

[BerntB]

Seems correct, at least for mammal neocortex. The research from '99 seems to have been withdrawn.

But the jury is still out, anyway. :-)

Neurogenesis seems to be well documented for songbird neocortex, though.

Since the argument we're discussing assumes working genetic engineering in the body, it seems like a smaller problem to extend the functioning from the speech center of birds to mammal brains... :-)

Humans are not ready to live that long....

[Anonymous Coward]

because of several factors:

1. Humans don't have a consciousness (including depth of thought and memory recall - span as psychologists would describe it) that is commensurate with that lifespan. Too many people would continue to abuse themselves, others, make the same mistakes over and over again, and get caught in a rut - people are creatures of habit. People are still cruel to one another, adept at screwing over the other guy, etc... which can be attributed to Natural Selection, but.... with long lifespans, is it morally justified? As a scientist trained in chemistry, I think the macromolecular world is pretty much in tune with the microscopic world of atoms, molecules, quantum mechanics, etc... that lead to mutations, free radicals, etc... and eventually doom us to death (cancer, diabetes, conjestive heart failure, neurological atrophy, etc..).

2. Sex can lead to over population (Slashdot readership excluded - they don't get dates WITH WOMEN). People in general would either have to refrain from sexual urges (unlikely, since it is FUN), take pharmaceutical contraceptives to prevent pregnancy (both MEN and women), or consciously/behavorially not have the urges as often as they manifest themselves now.

3. WORK! What the hell are all of those people going to do? The U.S., Canadian, and European economies are in a slump due to outsourcing - again, businesses and humans being amoral to one another, fucking each other over to make one more buck/day. People don't work to help advance the human race, they work to make money with which to live, and the more one makes, the better the chances are of securing a good life for the family and offspring. As is found in nature, there is limited source of food for the population, and just as in economics, there is a limited amount to money and securities in the world. Governments can't just print more money, that would dilute the value of the currency. So, taking from one human (the weaker) to give to another (your family) secures your future offspring will likely prosper. Hence, competition would become intensely fierce or would fade away statistically since everyone would know the game plan.

4. Politics - republicans want to cut taxes so that the wealthy can spend more on their families. Democrats want to increase taxes to spend more on the poor. With either extreme, no one wins! Given the current trend of economics in the world, the haves and the have nots, the haves (republicans) are winning, and doing so by proclaiming religious conservativism, but if one were to examine religion, then the democrats, the ones wanting to help everyone, would be winning the political races, which is not the case these days.

5. This is not trolling, but just some ideas to consider when trying to prolong human life. We are not ready or longer lifespans yet, even though I would want to live a long and prosperous life (I could be part Vulcan), but then again, some asshole bureaucrat would think that me being a geek/nerd designates me to a life of pain, oppression, and serfdom. Again, I have to say, no one life is more valuable than the next guy/gal, but we place rank and value on the lives we encounter, and our opinion is not always justified in determining who deserves a better/longer quality of life than the next because we cannot know an individual without actually becomming that person (convicted felony prisoners, rapists, and child molesters excluded).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Re:Scientific Progress

[Baron_Yam]

You don't have to have doubts about your theories to be a scientist! You merely have to be able to show your theory matches known reality, make some predicitions about the future, and then test in a rational way to see if those predicitions are accurate. ...It really does help if you can accept that you were wrong if the test results don't match the predicitions. Lots of 'scientists' have failed at that step and fudged their numbers rationalizing that the tests were flawed in some way, and just a little more research will find out why and vindicate them.

Anyway, I don't necessarily see de Grey as a bad scientist simply because he's a dreamer. He may be a bad scientist because his theories are too vague to test - but they are interesting enough ideas to follow up on until we do have a test to prove or disprove them.

back to OT times then I guess

[Weh]

Those early OT people had mega lifespans as well.

Solve the basics first; then make sweeping claims!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't he solve the basics first, instead of claiming we'll have all the hard stuff worked out "in a few decades"?

The lens of your eyes doesn't stop growing for your entire life. For people with an average lifespan of 30 years, this wasn't a real issue; they lived up to reproductive age, passed on their genes, and didn't worry too much about it.

When you start getting past 50 or so, though, you notice your eyes get worse, in part because the lens has trouble focussing.

Before positing that we'll be able to solve problems for systems we don't understand (with potential side effects we also don't understand), why not solve issues that we do understand.

Laser eye surgery has taken twenty years to get to where it is today; and it's still crude and rudimentary (we cut open the eye, burn away the surface of the cornea, then drop the lens back over top, and hope it all heals right...) ; at least, compared with gene therapy, or repairing the internals of our cells (telomeres), or curing the issues related with faulty cell reproductions at the cellular level (which may be one of the causes of cancer!), and so on...

When we can fix the problems that we understand on a macroscopic scale, then perhaps I'll believe that 1,000 year lifespans are only a few decades away.

Until then, colour me skeptical.
--
AC

Size matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth is not large enough for such immortals.

Re:Size matters

[mark99]

Not true. Especially with the collapsing birth rates everywhere.

Short Term is the Bigger Problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

Our Society could evolve to deal with these problems - if it can survive the creation of these problems.

What happens when we discover the means to 120 years old when the Baby Boomers are 90? Who's paying for another 30 years of retirement for them? They didn't save enough. There aren't enough of us to pay their Social Security. Are we going to deny them the 30-year treatment? Are we going to take our parents into our homes like the Chinese do?

One solution is to let them die, through not paying for treatment or outlawing it. That has serious moral repercussions. Another is to kill them when they take the treatment. Another is to stack them like cord-wood into old-folks-homes like we used to do. Another is to effectively enslave the 'younger class' with 75%+ income taxes. Another is to make them go back to work.

None of these are workable solutions. There's going to be Hell to pay when it happens.

Most of that is discussed on the web site

[BerntB]

The author claims to be able to fix aging, but doesn't go into much detail how to do it.

Check the web site for details. He goes over what he claims are the damaging changes found -- and argues that there probably aren't that many more of those on the cell level, since they should be known by now.

I have done a bit of biochem courses for fun and can't see any obvious errors in the description.

There might be changes in the brain coming from age, of course. (The obvious answer would probably be that if the biochem problems are solved, there is ample time to nail anything like that. Sounds probable to me.)

In my country someone that is 50 years old is considered "old" and here in US someone who is 50 can still be in their prime.

The social definitions of aging is quite obviously irrelevant here, since the article discuss the kind of aging that destroys your health and increases the death risks by age.

The technical challenges are quite ... formidable. But it is a research program to reach a target.

Bad smell argument is, of course, a good heuristic -- but some people sold travel through the air with control -- and then built helicopters. Someone will be first.

OK, I won't find any real biochemists on this site.

Re:Start small, cure cancer

[cr0sh]

It's the lifestyle or physiolgical conditions that lead to high cholesterol cause the problem.

You are correct with this statement, but the problem goes deeper than that. There are commercial, psychological, and sociological issues which cause high cholesterol, and ultimately CVD as well.

• Commercial: It is easier, cheaper, and more profitable for companies to create and sell food containing refined sugars and trans-fats than to use regular sugars and non-trans-fats.
• Psychological: We like the flavor and convenience of this manufactured food. We would probably like it if it were available in another form, but it would cost more, and we have psychologically adapted to "cheaper-is-better" while at the same time (cognitive dissonance?) knowing it isn't.
• Sociological: Many of us are forced by society to lead go-go-go lives, hardly ever having the time to make a real meal, if we can even afford the raw ingredients. Many times, the best we can ever do is just to make a "meal" with less processed, but still "convenience" foods. These foods may or may not be any better for you than fast-food.

Ultimately, it is the complex interaction of all three of these concepts (along with the concepts you brought up) which lead to CVD and other problems (cancer, diebetes, high blood pressure, etc). We are a society that has limited time during our waking hours to do things. After work, after school, after cleaning house, after doing bills, after taking care of the kids and their homework (if you have any). What is left is some time to eat. Maybe there is time to cook? Maybe there is time to shop? Can we afford the lean meat or salmon steaks (have we gotten a raise lately)? Do we even have time to hit the farmer's market before we get home to get fresh vegetables, and even if we do, do we have the time or knowledge to prepare them? If we are lucky we have just enough time, after all of that, to maybe a bit of recreation or time to ourselves before we plop into bed. Some of us choose to use that time doing more work, in the form of exercize. Some of us use it for projects. Most of us use it to veg out in front of the TV, the opiate to get our minds off the fact that we are on a treadmill that will start up again fresh when we wake up in the morning.

We cut corners where we can, and our health concerns is the first to go. That is unfortunate. I truely hope for the day where I can go down to the store or fast-food place and get healthy, enjoyable food - food as enjoyable in taste, texture, and smell as the crap they are already feeding us, for the same price as I am paying now, and is as easy to purchase or prepare. Right now, no store satisfies all of those requirements in one package. The best you can do is cut back on the meat, bulk up on the fresh vegetables, lower the bread intake, and hope you have time to prepare it all. That, or eat a salad "dry" (that is, without any of the condiments or toppings) from Wendy's or McD's.

The rest of our day is mostly bland, boring, and difficult (from a psychological perspective, if not a physical one). We compensate by eating (a psychological problem for certain). We can either eat something bad, but tastes good, and get a small portion of "happiness", however bad it is for us - during our mediocre day-to-day lives - or we can use that same time and eat bland, boring tasting, but healthy food - provided we can find the time and money to buy and prepare it. Unfortunately, most people choose the former rather than the latter most of the time. Until our commercial industries, personal psychological makeup, and sociological pressures changes, we will likely never see widespread healthy lifestyle living.

It is bad for profit, don't you know...?

Death is a survival trait...

[fragamus]

... for the species as a whole. Without it we don't adapt.

Holy Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

No one seems to have mentioned the Bruce Sterling novel, "Holy Fire." It addresses many of the questions raised here: the rise of the "gerontocracy" as a result of increased lifespan, economic and social changes, the notion of effective immortality, etc.

social security

[Archalien]

The real question is: how quickly would this bankrupt social security?

A late comment

[ReverendLoki]

Such genes were never selected against when expected lifetimes were 35 years or less.

Seeing as how I'm posting this 7 days afterwards, I'm not expecting a lot of eyeballs on this comment, but I'll make it anyways...

Another thing that keeps those genes from being selected against is that most of the gene selection occurs during breeding age, based primarily on the characteristics of a person at that age. There aren't a lot of people who, in choosing a mate, use the health status of their grandparents as a major factor. The only way this might change is if viable breeding age extends significantly with any new age-lengthening technologies...

This, of course, only goes to further your idea, that major life-extending procedures will have to involve understanding and perhaps modification of these harmful genes.