One step closer to inmortality

Average life expectancy has steadily been increasing over the last century. In 1912, hundred years ago it was about 50 years where today life expectancy is close to 80 years. If you plot this chart on a graph you get a nice trend line that has generally plotted upward consistently. However since it's life span that we're interested in right now and not 100 years ago there is a much more pertinent way to look at the data. Instead to taking the raw average for every year and simply plotting it, take the difference in life expectancy between years and show how many days of life expectancy were added each year. The punchline is that if the data ever shows that we have added 365 days of life expectancy in the course of a year we have effectively built enough road so we'll never crash, thus immortality. 

http://www.uni-kiel.de

Researchers at Kiel University in Germany have brought us another step closer to reaching the goal of unlimited life extension, with their work on the Hydra. A Hydra is a genus of tiny animals with bodies about 10mm long. What makes Hydras a source of curiosity in the first place is the fact that they reproduce by growing a bud which becomes a new Hydra. When the researchers at the Kiel University started to investigate how the hydra could maintain it's immortality they found that there was a very active gene "FoxO" which is responsible for allowing the production of stem cells. Where the story gets very interesting is that this same gene is found in humans except the FoxO gene in human bodies gradually becomes less and less active over out lives. We are already finding ways to correct our DNA and reprogram our genetic code, when we find the switch to keep the FoxO gene perpetually switched on we could very likely find a source of lengthening our life spans dramatically. In a previous post: dna-candy-shop I reviewed the state of the art therapies that give us the ability to cut and past new DNA into our genetic code throughout all the cells in our bodies. When we understand the system that controls gene expression a little better it would be easy for us to add a genetic patch to our DNA that allows us to maintain active FoxO genes. 

The pessimistic response to life extension is that it's a selfish desire and that people should be comfortable embracing the "natural" process of aging and then death. My question is "whats natural about aging and death?" We assume that these things are natural because it is all that we are accustomed to and have yet to see a better model. My favorite way to take someone through the immortality thought experiment is to ask them how they would feel if they could live to 180, the responses I often get are "old, tired, exhausted, done". Then I add more to the scenario, "what if when you turned 180 you felt just as young and exuberant as you did when you were 24, just as full of life, passion, lust, desire, energy, excitement and wonder" the responses change, "hmmm, that wouldn't be so bad". In my experience many of our fears about living longer are based on fears that are fueled by two things, one our lack of experience so it's unknown and we always fear what we don't know, and two a failure of imagination. 

This is not to say that the ability to allow people to live twice or three times as long as we do know won't bring challenges, but me, I'd much rather meet those challenges head on and courageously jump into the void than choose the cowardly option of sticking to what we know.