Today I would like to talk about immortality. It is no secret the human race is moving much closer to it. If we listen to what scientists have been telling us lately, a lot of it has to do with extending our lives. While life extension is a hot topic, immortality is also being discussed. It is hard for me to believe we have come so far science would even think we could reach immortality. If we would’ve heard people talking about this topic twenty or thirty years ago, many of us would have thought these people were crazy, but recent advances in science and technology have shown there is a possibility sometime in the future we will become people who do not age and are impervious to diseases. This assumes we don’t blast ourselves off the face of the earth with nuclear weapons or a comet doesn’t destroy the earth. There are several different ways in which we could become immortal and some of them bring into question whether or not we would retain our humanity.

One of the ways which has recently been discussed has to do with computers. Recent experiments have shown we are now able to read people’s minds if we connect them to certain types of computers. I don’t necessarily see this as an advance, but more as an invasion into our privacy, but others see it as a step forward and discuss the idea which states our brains are merely organic computers and as such we should be able to dump our consciousness into a machine, thus allowing us to exist forever inside this machine. If the machine happens to be a robot this would allow us to continue to be mobile while not aging and we could even have a backup of our consciousness in case anything goes wrong. At least this is what some scientists and technicians believe could happen in the future. Would we still be human if we did this? There is so much we still don’t know about the relationship between body and mind. It just so happens there was a story about this on television a while back and when the transfer was made it didn’t end well, because the person did lose all their humanity and no longer could see anything wrong with sacrificing others for his needs.

Another way some think this could be accomplished is by using quantum computers. The idea would be to have a quantum computer examined every aspect of the human body and brain showing us the areas which are vulnerable to aging and discovering the genes which might be able to switch this aging off. We are prone to think switching things off may be the answer to aging, but it may not be the entire answer. We may also have to add things such as an artificial gene or certain molecules or cells to accomplish this task. While it is true turning off a switch in a gene might accomplish some task we want, it could have more than one use we don’t know about and by turning it off in may be harming something in our body which we don’t suspect.

If one listens to scientists they begin to think the answer to everything is stem cell therapy. There is talk if we combine stem cells with genetic and cellular manipulation we can extend our lifespan and maybe even reach the goal of immortality. There may be more to it than just adjusting our bodies however. Just living on the earth could take its toll on us as certain types of radiation which make it through the atmosphere impact with our bodies. Take the case of neutrinos for example. Neutrinos are particles which initially were said to have no mass. Today it is believed they have an extremely tiny mass. Billions of these particles pass through our bodies every second. It is thought they have no impact upon us, but one does have to wonder if perhaps this constant bombardment may take its toll on us in ways we don’t suspect and in ways which have to do with our life spans. Then there is the environment. There are poisons in our food, and the air we breathe and in the water we drink. One way to increase the human lifespan might just be to clean up this mess. Perhaps just doing this would extend our lifespan by another twenty years or so and maybe even more. What good is it to try and extend the human lifespan if many of us will get poison induced cancer? Scientists are proposing many different ways to get us to live longer. Some say they may be able to use certain types of bacteria to slow down or stop aging, but they don’t all agree on what method to use. There are researchers who claim certain proteins in blood have a rejuvenating effect and they should be used.

Some scientists believe they can turn off the aging process and want us to go to a sort of lab every few years after this is done. This is to get a tune-up. This tune-up would correct anything which goes awry in our body. The idea is to keep us at the same level of health forever. It is hoped advanced machines would be available which could detect any change in our bodies and pinpoint where they should be corrected and perhaps even correct them for us. Maybe rather than using some sort of brain to computer transfer, artificial intelligence could be used to correct the defects in our bodies.

Will we ever be allowed to achieve immortality? There is a lot at stake here for many different reasons. One reason is the population would get out of hand. People being born are balanced out somewhat by people dying. We are beginning to see there are not enough jobs for the people who are in this country today and the same is true all over the world. If the government has to give out money to sustain the population will it be able to afford to do this on an ever growing population? The next thing is the power of the drug lobby. Drug companies would never want to see us live forever unless we had to take a pill every so often to do it. They don’t want to lose the profit they make from drugs, especially those super expensive ones, so I believe they would have their lobbyists fight against any bills where the government would try to increase research into life extension.

The human race is headed down a new path, but will it ever be able to reach its goal? If it does the younger people around today could become the first people in the history of the world to become immortal.