Did you ever imagined how it will be when you could live 100s of years instead of the 80-90 years currently being the average age of women and men in most of the western world? Already in the 80s I was getting signals from the scientific community in our abilities (sometime in the future) to prolong human life with a good number of years.
Back then I was (and still am) fascinated about this!
I sometimes do this thought experiment / question with peers:
- Assume you have a pill in front of you that gives you absolute eternal life, no chances to die, not from deceases, not from any weapon, not from anything, truly a life that never ends
- Question: Would you consider to take/swallow that pill?
- When No: Why Not?
- When Yes: Why Yes?
- When between No/Yes: Explain
I generally get an instant and clear answer: "No Way I would take that pill". Most of the time with the reason: "I cannot handle all the losses that I'll experience, over and over again." Fair reason, I must admit!
I personally am somewhere in between the Yes and No: ie I consider to take that pill.
The reason is simple: my curiosity in how technology will develop, how technology will change the way we will continue to live on this planet, and maybe other planets somewhere in the galaxy, the discovery of life on other planets, the survival (or not) of the human race, and what will be after that, the better understanding and maybe even the discovery of the great secret of the universe and all and everything in it, is so strong that I consider to deal with all the negatives of an eternal life. However, it is not a absolute 100% YES for me at the moment. In the last 30/40 years of my life, I repeatedly ask myself this question and although I move slightly closer to a YES over time, the consequences of a eternal life are very big...and once the pill is swallowed, it is definite!
How about you?
But there may be a middle way, prolonging of life to maybe 200 or 300 years! That is far from eternal, and I would immediately opt for that option, no matter what! An absolute clear YES!
In recent year we heard from time to time the scientific community telling the world they are progressing in controlling cell ageing, and with that the control of ageing of living species, hence maybe humans as well.
Research at the University of Lunds in Sweden suggest we are close to the ability to stop ageing of cells, and maybe even reverse the ageing process. Tests on mice looks very promising.
Our blood changes as we age due to epigenetics, a process by which our gene expression is silenced or activated over time, without modification of the genetic code itself. With this in mind, the team of researchers at the University of Lunds took a look at the hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) of aged mice to see if they could unlock the mysteries of how our cells age.
HSC cells are progenitors to all other blood cells. As we age, scientists believe that our cells age, too. Aging blood cells mean we’re more vulnerable to diseases like leukemia, which target those cells specifically. Likewise, the researchers at the University of Lunds observed reduced functionality of the blood of their aging mice. But when the old mice were provided with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — essentially a batch of fresh stem cells — something quite fascinating happened. The iPS cells served as a “reset button”, reprogramming the blood stem cells and sparking a rejuvenation of sorts. Researchers observed that the progenitor HSC cells in the old mice began to produce blood cells functionally similar to those seen in younger mice.
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