Is the biotech revolution the key to living longer?
Life, space travel, artificial intelligence: we will have made great inroads to bend all this to our will within half a century.
A century is an exceptional lifespan for a human being, but 21st-century technologies will make many more years possible. A life expectancy of several centuries is not an impossible dream.
This is a goal that is now more than contemplable, with the hundreds of scientific studies and their promising results that have come to light in recent years. Of course, this goal also takes place under what the laws of physics allow, and what the scientific community believes can be achieved in the next 15, 20 or even 100 years.
If aging is caused by damage, the reversal of aging (rejuvenation) can be achieved by repairing that damage. This would involve the creation of targeted therapies and new forms of medical biotechnology that are somewhat more sophisticated than the conventional drug-based medicine of today.
Fortunately, in most cases, there is a way to repair every form of damage that occurs. These methods, or repair therapies, can now be seen and described in great detail, and thus the only thing standing between the human and regeneration is the work required to build these medical technologies.
Biotechnology is the necessary first step on this path: the biotech revolution, still in its early years, is a gateway to the future in that it will allow us to prolong our healthy lives by repairing the evolved world of nanoscale machinery within our cells and other vital biological systems.
This future, for many of us, will require rejuvenation biotechnologies such as those being worked on by the SENS Research Foundation. This future is one in which our biochemistry does what we ask, aging can be repaired and molecular manufacturing is in full swing.
“SENS Research Foundation’s strategy to prevent and reverse age-related ill-health is to apply the principles of regenerative medicine to repair the damage of aging at the level where it occurs. We are developing a new kind of medicine: regenerative therapies that remove, repair, replace, or render harmless the cellular and molecular damage that has accumulated in our tissues with time. By reconstructing the structured order of the living machinery of our tissues, these rejuvenation biotechnologies will restore the normal functioning of the body’s cells and essential biomolecules, returning aging tissues to health and bringing back the body’s youthful vigor.”
But back to the question of immortality: is immortality impractical? Given existing mortality rates and uncertainties in the timeline for completing efforts to repair and reverse the damage of aging, it may be unlikely for many of us alive today.
If progress is too slow, or we are simply unlucky in our health, then we will not get beyond the first step along the way. We should all support the development of rejuvenation biotechnology, as it is the gateway to a life that may ultimately have few limits.