Sabre Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Recently a breakthrough was made in treating a cerain kind of aging deseise. To over simplify it, at present the drug stops/slows the cells that result in the bad stuff from aging at the cost of destroying your immune system. Again, for the sake of simplicity, it would be like having HIV in that a cold could cause serious harm if not outright kill you. Like all drugs, there is now a process of refinement to try and get rid or tone down the negative side effects and bring down costs. Here's the thing. Used on healthy people it could, IN THEORY, make you live longer. Again, it's more complex than that, but I'm not writing an essay here. Imagine if you will a world where, provided you keep taking your medicine, instead of living for 70 years, you live for 700 maybe even 7000 years. I'd imagine that would have a profound effect on everything. Imagine the advances in science and art. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psygonis Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 You're not making an essay, but the actual scientists that worked on that did, so links plz! The point, in keeping people's cells from dying is not how long they can live, but how long they can live in perfect state and functionality! The first tryouts for cellular immortality concerned the tips of chromosomes, the telomeres, that decay a bit each time the cell divides. By protecting telomeres from their processing enzyme, the telomerase, scientists could prolonge the lifespan of cells. But, this was just like putting a longer fuse on a time bomb. It explodes after a longer time, but it's meaningless if the internal components of it don't last that longer. As for humans, it's more interesting to "freeze" your age around 20~30 rather than spending 700 years more bearing the tired body of an old geezer... The problem is that the body is some complex piece of machinery: It works like a networked system of modules that trigger each other with timed events (such as growth and maturation of hormones-producing glands), which over the bargain are propelled by the chemical energy of the combustion of oxygen at the very start. Making cells immortal is a step indeed, but it's a loooong way from human's immortality for you'd have to get immortal organs, blood-cell, nerves, bones... Some would add soul as well! :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkstarfox Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Immortality has never really been a concern for me, even if the devil himself offered it to me i wouldnt except. Could you imagine spending the rest of eternity here on Earth? Humanity is sad depressing thing! But I imagine it appeals to some, a lot of money and effort over the ages has been spent trying to find the elixir of eternal youth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Orange Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 The choice of living forever seems to me like torture. But like Psy said: As for humans, it's more interesting to "freeze" your age around 20~30 rather than spending 700 years more bearing the tired body of an old geezer... What would be the point of living when most people stop being able to walk and have ANY energy or ability to run/jog around the age of 75-85 years of age. Watching life inside a hospital window ain't a life I would take. Even if they made a miracle drug to "Stop" aging, I would rather Die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 I'm pro of this, it would be great to see humanity reach the point of startreck fiction . Still, it's not like you are immune to cancer or other killing sickness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psygonis Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Well, as I pointed out to say that human immortality was still a long way to go, the interesting thing is how to keep things inside your body in a good state. That might improve your lifespan a bit, but it will definitely increase the quality of life! While living centuries appear like a devilish torture, dying at the conventional age but in a less miserable body is I believe a way more appealing perspective, isn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoneWolf Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 I don't want to be immortal. For one, you'd live through World Wars 3-17, and "Vietnam 2: The Sequel", not to mention various other wars. Odds are you'll end up dying in some unnatural way anyways. Oh yeah, and cancer and other terminal illnesses would suck when you live with them for years instead of dying in months. Maybe you'd get lucky and be disintegrated by a nuclear weapon. Or sliced and diced in some horrible alien laboratory. Immortality is a curse, man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabre Posted July 16, 2011 Author Share Posted July 16, 2011 You're not making an essay, but the actual scientists that worked on that did, so links plz! The point, in keeping people's cells from dying is not how long they can live, but how long they can live in perfect state and functionality! The first tryouts for cellular immortality concerned the tips of chromosomes, the telomeres, that decay a bit each time the cell divides. By protecting telomeres from their processing enzyme, the telomerase, scientists could prolonge the lifespan of cells. But, this was just like putting a longer fuse on a time bomb. It explodes after a longer time, but it's meaningless if the internal components of it don't last that longer. As for humans, it's more interesting to "freeze" your age around 20~30 rather than spending 700 years more bearing the tired body of an old geezer... The problem is that the body is some complex piece of machinery: It works like a networked system of modules that trigger each other with timed events (such as growth and maturation of hormones-producing glands), which over the bargain are propelled by the chemical energy of the combustion of oxygen at the very start. Making cells immortal is a step indeed, but it's a loooong way from human's immortality for you'd have to get immortal organs, blood-cell, nerves, bones... Some would add soul as well! Right, that's the problem. The aging deseise this effects is a specific one. Similar to how cancer is cells growing out of control, in this case you die of old people like disorders, strokes, heart attacks ect. So in theory it would stop or at least reduce deaths from 'old age' but yeah, it's not etural youth. Also, in it's current form it would only make you live a decade longer, or so I've read. I'm pro of this, it would be great to see humanity reach the point of startreck fiction . Still, it's not like you are immune to cancer or other killing sickness Or getting hit by a bus, or highlanders. Unless you are religious, I find it very hard to believe anyone would really pass up a magic youth potion if it was proven to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rusakov Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Me, I'd like to live longer. But forever? The answer to that will just have to wait until the time comes. Immortality is a big thing, once I've lived life more then I'll decide whether or not to become immortal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sluggsnipa Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Recently a breakthrough was made in treating a cerain kind of aging deseise. To over simplify it, at present the drug stops/slows the cells that result in the bad stuff from aging at the cost of destroying your immune system. Again, for the sake of simplicity, it would be like having HIV in that a cold could cause serious harm if not outright kill you. Like all drugs, there is now a process of refinement to try and get rid or tone down the negative side effects and bring down costs. Here's the thing. Used on healthy people it could, IN THEORY, make you live longer. Again, it's more complex than that, but I'm not writing an essay here. Imagine if you will a world where, provided you keep taking your medicine, instead of living for 70 years, you live for 700 maybe even 7000 years. I'd imagine that would have a profound effect on everything. Imagine the advances in science and art. You'd look Butt Ugly at the end of it though... But I doubt I'd want to live that long,unless I had some kind of reason other than being afraid of death,I'd like to meet my maker before everyone else lives longer,has more babies that live longer,and thus,overpopulates the planet.Besides,I'd go insane if I had to live for 700 years with taxes rising,nations on the verge of war,and lack of anything on TV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matrilwood Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Last I checked up on this stuff, they could prevent you from aging, but your life span is exactly the same. You just don't know when you're going to die. In other words, someone could be perfectly healthy, then drop dead randomly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkstarfox Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 In other words, someone could be perfectly healthy, then drop dead randomly. Yeah... that happens regardless of fancy dancy medicine. People just be dieing' all the time unexpected like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sluggsnipa Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 People just be dieing' all the time unexpected like. "Ok children,it's Timmy's Birthday,and he brought his old Grandfather in!" *Man walks slowly from behind* "I'm so proud of you-" Grandfather stops mid sentence,his eyes roll up,blood pours from every cavity of his body and he collapses to the floor. All hell breaks loose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psygonis Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Maybe not *that* much unexpected! The closest scenario is a cardio-vascular accident, when someone do actually collapses on his feet, but it's usually not bloody (or sometimes, there is a bit of nosebleed). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkyway64 Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Immortality sucks anyway. Time will begin to fly by faster than you can even notice it, and cherishable moments and events will be fleeting. Also assuming everyone didn't have it, you'd start losing everyone close to you and the replacements would be gone just like that too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thu'um Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 i agree imortality isn't a postive thing. Life can suck and by the time your 200 you'll be ready to die Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faisul Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 I'm not going to pretend to know anything about the biological mechanics of immortality - thanks to Psygonis, I know a little more now. Since he already covered that base, I'd like to add some personal input on another - ethics. There's already been a couple mentions of the ethical side of immortality in the thread, so I'll try not to rehash them. So, you've just become an immortal, congratulations. You can still get shuffled off the mortal coil by being stabbed, poisoned, drowned, getting infected by some horrible disease or by stumbling into a manhole while talking on your cell phone. But you'll never get old and, barring any physical harm, won't ever die. At least by conventional standards. Surely this is the pinnacle of human ingenuity and exellence! So what are you going to do with your immortality? Spend the millennia accumulating knowledge, cultivating your tastes for the arts, studying the sciences, and mastering trades both old and new as the centuries roll by? It's certainly an inviting prospect. You'd even get to see human civilization develop over the course of your long, long life time. I know I'd like to. But, would it be that simple? You've already mentioned the problem with family, friends and loved ones growing old and dying all around you, and then everyone else that could replace them in your life does the same. Surely this would make you at least a little depressed in the long run. Then there's the problem that we as a species can be real scumbags all around, also mentioned, and you'd have to witness the world descend into crisis and conflict again and again. And, while you may have the longevity of a demigod, your psyche is still very much human and prone to shock and trauma. No one knows what the effects of immortality will have on the mind, and you might very well go insane eventually for all we know, as the depredations of humanity and the disappointments pile on each other until the dam bursts and you turn into a very senior resident of a future booby hatch. Personal speculation aside, I don't think the positives outweigh the negatives; to me, it'd just be too much trouble to go on forever. Then there's another problem. What about, you know, all the other people on the planet? Would it be only you, your family, the rich or otherwise privileged who got the magic live-4-ever pill? If the latter example, is it morally defensible to allow the overprivileged even more time to accumulate ridiculous wealth and power while everyone not rich or influential enough continue to live and die around them forever? It seems to me to be a logical outcome that a society where the very few are immortal and the overwhelming majority are not would become a hyper-plutocracy at best or a neofeudal dictatorship at worst. Even more lovely speculation! Since I can't really say I've read much published academic works on the subject I can only point to science fiction for my conclusions - God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert springs to mind in where a society ruled by an immortal becomes increasingly restrictive and brutal in order to fulfil the immortal's inconceivable plan for the distant future. While the immortal's intentions prove to be ultimately benign in the end, the billions of deaths and the centuries of repression are never treated as having been excused. And it seems to me that the last thing we need on this planet is even more inequity. You could say that immortals inherently plan for the long-term, something we short-lived mortals rarely do (because what's the point in investing in a project if it won't be finished in your life time) and that would be a good thing to start doing so RIGHT GODDAMN NOW LOOK AT THE STATE OF THE WORLD but are we willing to risk all the undesirable side-effects of having a superior class of immortals making decisions for us? And what if the immortals were already stupid and greedy people from before becoming immortal - are we going to implement some sort of 'demigod audition' for potential immortals to prevent this from happening? Seems to me that most ruling bodies are already corrupt, do we need these assholes to live forever too? I know this is getting really long but bear with me, I have more concerns about this subject. Let's instead say that everyone on the planet, from the well-to-do Westerners to the poorest pauper in the South becomes immortal. Fantastic! Equity! Everyone gets to benefit from this amazing discovery, wouldn't this be the perfect and ultimate expression that science truly aims to help everyone? It's unlikely that it would happen this way should immortality be attained, but let's entertain the notion for a bit. What about the already exponential birth rate in impoverished countries? We're already way too many, what would happen if everyone currently alive - barring physical trauma, remember - could live for ever, and have babies that live forever, and they too reproduce unto infinity? People would be stacked upwards from here to Timbuktu in a century's time. There could never be enough food, unless our way of distributing it becomes fair, and our way of life in the West is already becoming threatened by shortages of other crucial resources, one of which is obviously oil and we've been arguing like children and blowing each other up over it for half a century trying to take it from each other. We can depend on scientific advances to alleviate this at least a little, but that's without 100 billion people being alive on the planet at once by 2150. I can't imagine a worse hell than living in a 3x3 cubicle, surrounded by millions of identical cubicles, inside of some dystopian super cube hive complete with food ration stamps and - even worse - the bureaucracy needed to support that kind of society. Welcome to the future! Here's your energy credit and food rations for the day, now report to the food synthesis factory in five minutes, or we process you into nutrients, drone! GOOD LUCK FINDING YOUR WAY DOWN THERE! Ultimately for me it all boils down to figuring out how it works, and then never using the technology. Could be that on the way there we also discover cures for cancer or HIV/AIDS, so I wholeheartedly support the research, don't get me wrong. But it would be a far greater accomplishment to me if we invented a way to attain immortality and, like the rational beings we pretend to be, nod in satisfaction with a job well done and then lock away the magic pill. We still have caches of nuclear weaponry spread across the globe, but they have only ever been used once in a conflict, and thankfully so. The other effects of having split the atom is that we now have a source of power that might well become the replacement for fossil fuel burning some day, that we reached a new understanding of how the universe works, and many other practical, benign innovations that did not involve dooming us all. I know that comparing the invention of functional immortality to the invention of the atom bomb might seem a bit alarmist, but both have equally disastrous implications and are innovations that need to be treated very, very carefully, and last but not least, studied for a very, very long time. Maybe forever. Could it be that it would be an immortal's job to do this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psygonis Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 TL;DNR! ... Naaah, just kidding, I read it all! \o/ Ok, so... Huh, to answer your ultimate question, yeah. I believe that would be the endless task of such immortal people. Figuring out what you could do of such a time, and being a witness (and actor?) of the course of Mankind. I'll just come back on your overpopulation point. I don't think such could happen. We are already tending to it as we are, and having a fraction of us being immortal would be a drop in the ocean. And iiiiif a fair part of the population ended up being immortal, well... the old ways would be war and such, a possibility that might arise soon enough when we'll have to decide who gets the oil, the water... the air? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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