High-tech hope: escape from the sands of time
Life-extension movement gains momentum as baby boomers push to live longer
(Page 3 of 3)
Further into the future, but still in this century, nanobots - tiny robots the size of molecules - may be able to do tasks such as replacing white or red blood cells, he predicts, fighting diseases and carrying oxygen much more efficiently than their biological counterparts and extending life even more dramatically.
Others don't share this techno-exuberance, remaining firmly in the "show me" camp. Upgrading the human body from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0, as computer whiz Kurzweil suggests, may run into unexpected challenges. So far, modifying genes in animals has almost always resulted in negative tradeoffs, Olshansky says. A turkey altered to have more white meat, for example, might also develop problems with infections.
"We may have to pay a price, and the price we pay may be something we don't like," he says. He adds that he'd be "absolutely ecstatic" if science could lengthen the average life span by 10 years.
If lives were ever extended dramatically, bioethicists foresee a number of disruptive questions that will emerge, ranging from practical issues like its effects on government retirement programs and overpopulation to profound philosophical questions about whether there is a natural, even beneficial, shape to human lives. Mortality may provide an urgency to our endeavors and drive humans to achieve, they say.
Alexander sees the search for life extension as a kind of new religion. "What religion has promised to give us is trial and tribulation now, but a reward at the end," he says. "And we will have everlasting life, and we will have happiness, and we'll have enhanced bodies and minds.
"Well, if we can give ourselves these things, why do we need to wait for God to give them to us? That's quite a challenge."
If long-lived humans in the future were just like those of today, after "500 years or 1,000 years we would develop a deep ennui, a profound despair by having more time than we know how to deal with," Kurzweil concedes. But that won't happen.
"We're also going to be expanding our mental horizons during that time," he says. "I think this is our destiny. This is the whole point of our evolution. This is the next step in evolution." Being human, he says, means to "expand our horizons." Humans have learned how to fly and even how to leave this planet. "We didn't stay within the limits of our biology.... We're going to expand our thinking beyond that."
• Cryonics (not to be confused with cryogenics) refers to the freezing and resuscitation of organisms.
• Some reptiles freeze in solid blocks of winter ice and revive when they thaw. Their secret: high levels of glucose - a natural antifreeze - in their blood.
• R. Ettinger's 1962 book "The Prospect of Immortality" began the cryonics movement. His Cryonics Institute preserves clients in liquid nitrogen. Cost per person: $28,000.
• More than 70 people are frozen in the US, including a man from 1967.
• Many scientists - such as plant cryo-preservation expert Paul Lynch of England's University of Derby - call human resurrection an impossibility.
SOURCES: University of Florida, cryonics.org, Derby Evening Telegraph.
