Born 50yrs too early...
- Thread starter NeilF
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Look at every comment I've made (to you and others). I've never once suggested "forever". I've been suggesting (for realistic reasons) doubling for example your life expectancy... But you even poo-poo'd that
Man of Honour
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Look at every comment I've made (to you and others). I've never once suggested "forever". I've been suggesting (for realistic reasons) doubling for example your life expectancy... But you even poo-poo'd that
You did intimate that you think I "...feel immortal at the moment..." and I'm countering that whether I do or don't feel like that it isn't likely to affect my viewpoint. However I apologise for continuing as if you were suggesting that forever is the goal but I don't want to double my life expectancy, even if it can be engineered so that you live with the current quality of life of a (say) 30 year old for 50 years and then go into normal ageing. It doesn't appeal to me, as I say I am perfectly content with what should be a normal lifespan, maybe that is unusual but c'est la vie.
Come back in 10-15 yrs and let's see how your views have changed... I guarentee your 'young heroic' opinion probably will have changes to an 'oh ****!' one
Soldato
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Personally I'd love to live as long as possible, and I can't really understand why anyone wouldn't. I don't think we're anywhere near (besides the arguement if it's possible) to some sort of "immortality" of any kind. You've got to remember it takes years for new drugs to be accepted - let alone any kind of real break through. Truth is we're animals, we get old, and we die. simples.
I think that artifical implants will help more than anything over the next 20 years. Artifical hearts would be a huge step forward if the current designs were made more reliable.
Immortality is possible, i have said this before, all we need to do is reprogramme our system. To say its cant be done is so short sighted, our system repairs itself all the time, and to say that it'll be hard to do it because of the many variations but maybe its just on type of cell.
Look at it this way, they can now grow teeth from your own stem cells, so if your own body can grow its own stem cells you have already an unlimited supply, all its need s is just a reprogramme and its good to go.
ok did you hear about the guy thats has stem cell heart reprogramming, while his own heart is reparing a artifical heart has been put in place for a few months.
Just want to point out, there are now 3 times as many people on the planet as 50 years ago. That's a jump from 2 billion to 6 billion over a period of 50 years.
So continue that, and over the next 50 years we would jump to 18 billion.
However, you also have to take into account that there are more people on earth available to procreate now, so it won't be another multiple of 3, but more like a multiple of 6.
That means in another 50 years there will be between 18 and 36 billion people on eath as opposed to the current 6 billion.
Even with wide-spread disease likely to take place, it would be unable to happen on a large enough scale to put a large dent in that number. Overcrowding is going to be earths biggest problem in the next quarter/half century.
On top of that, our country - Britain - is the second most over-populated country in the world now. Imagine what that will be like with all these extra immigrants, er...I mean people, on earth.
So continue that, and over the next 50 years we would jump to 18 billion.
However, you also have to take into account that there are more people on earth available to procreate now, so it won't be another multiple of 3, but more like a multiple of 6.
That means in another 50 years there will be between 18 and 36 billion people on eath as opposed to the current 6 billion.
Even with wide-spread disease likely to take place, it would be unable to happen on a large enough scale to put a large dent in that number. Overcrowding is going to be earths biggest problem in the next quarter/half century.
On top of that, our country - Britain - is the second most over-populated country in the world now. Imagine what that will be like with all these extra immigrants, er...I mean people, on earth.
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I think it was survival based on the confined space we live in, and yes a programming error.
Regardless of the exact mechanism of senescence, you are implying that there are alleles of genes that would give a functional phenotype and 'immortality', when all of your observation of mammals, who invest a huge amount of energy in their offspring compared to fish or reptiles thus cannot achieve a 'large clutch size', suggests otherwise.
The function of our genes is to reproduce, not to live - these genes wouldn't exist and by their nature they couldn't give a fully functioning 'normal' phenotype that would be able to compete sexually. That's my final word on the matter because I view this as so trivial that it really isn't worth discussing further.
mattheman, there is a evolutionary stable strategy between how our body prioritises growth/repair and reproduction. We find a happy compromise by not focussing all of our efforts on growth/repair - if a rabbit spends 5 years eating grass to become an 'uber rabbit', then it would be an utter waste of time if it was eaten by a fox, caught myxamatosis or fell to its death. The same is true of humans and it explains why our evolution has not selected for the ability to grow back legs or arms.
The suggestion that we could ultimately replace all parts of the human body like a car would be silly, because that isn't how the body works - it is a series of systems created by cumulative expression of an unspecified amount of genes in different concentrations, with all systems relying on each other - the ultimate phenotype selecting for ageing. You can't just 'reprogramme' that to give a phenotype which goes against the very nature of the purpose of those genes, I'm sorry to disappoint. It would be like changing parts on a car to enable it to drill and extract oil from the ground - by the time you did so it wouldn't function as a car at all.
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Caporegime
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Yes I saw the news reports on him, he looks terrible, theres no proof it will work, its basically a shot in the dark last resort before he dies. If it fails it will be writen off as the guy being too ill to start with, if it works, I'd be surprised, theres entirely no evidence at all so far to suggest it will work.
Essentially, at this point, theres a guy with an incredibly weak heart, they've stuck a pump in his heart to relieve the pressure on one of the heart chambers, they pumped a load of stem cells into the area HOPING it would do something, thats as scientific as its gotten, and as far as its gotten. Theres literally nothing more to it, they have no idea if it will work at all, a little bit, work great, or kill him faster. Its a test, they are testing on human subjects and went to a foreign country to get around laws that would pretty much stop them testing a completely unknown procedure on a live human subject.
It was done PURELY FOR MONEY, they are playing off this guys hopes that he can survive rather than die, maybe it is a chance, but they want the money and nothing more. If he dies, dies in more pain, dies quicker than he would have, it doesn't matter to them, they got his money.
There are tonnes of stem cell tests/procedures being done in china and random countries costing the people having them done lots of money with so far, very very little proof of anything working at all.
You take a group of desparate people with money, offer than an option and they jump at it, that doesn't prove stem cells can do anything.
This was more funny though, care to comment as to what your realistic reasons for our life expectancy doubling is?
The closest we are is to growing a few more basic organs for implantation, it won't improve life expectancy, it will simply allow you to get closer to the current life expectancy. Every organ fails due to old age, as does everything else in your body, one organ failing early can obviously kill you earlier, replacing that organ doesn't reserve time, only allows you to get back to the previous life expectancy you had.
There is nothing, not a single shred of anything to suggest we can reverse the ageing process, the scientist in the article said nothing at all suggesting anything to back up what he was saying. He simply said he thought it could be done soon, it can't be, it likely won't ever be possible. He's made a statement, rather similar to "we'll have a new source of energy in 84 years" or ," we'll be colonising Mars in 34 years", statements with no facts and no basis, both of which are things that are incredibly unlikely to happen.
People simply think as technology moves fowards we'll be able to do anything at all, some people are rather stupid.
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That's just what we need, people living longer. There are already far too many morons in the world, funding slovenly lifestyles off the benefit system and breeding like global sterility is possible at any time. The elderly and incapable already consume a huge portion of any country's public spending, and they already continue to do so long, long after they should have died. Why does the prospect of Nanageddon appeal to anyone?
Sexual competition is irrelevant to an individual and not needed with genetic engineering. You seem to be arguing against immortality based on the principals of what a human is rather than an individual living forever.
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Soldato
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I for one welcome our virtual sex nanobot overlords.
Caporegime
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