Posted on 03/31/2014 8:58:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A pair of advocates—they do legitimate research too, but their ardor is so intense, it’s hard to call them scientists—believe that they will, within their lifetimes, make ours the first generation of humans to live forever.
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Their quest is elegantly laid out in The Immortalists, a new documentary making its way around the film festival circuit. The Immortalists follows the triumphs and tragedies of three years in the lives of William H. Andrews and Aubrey de Grey, two men who prove just as interesting as the work they’re doing. The Immortalists is really a film about death, not life, which is what makes it so fascinating.
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Here’s the trailer:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
The goal of Andrews and de Grey is not merely to extend life, but to actually reverse the aging process. “Once we are really truly repairing things as fast as they go wrong, game over,” de Grey says in the film. “We will have the ability to live indefinitely.”
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The mechanisms by which each man proposes to end death are radically different. Andrews suggests that in order to lengthen our lives, we may have only to extend the length of our telomeres, which are caps on the end of our DNA that shorten as we age, leading to the breakdown and demise of cells. This mechanism for extending life has the advantage of a potentially straightforward solution: If we can find a pill that lengthens telomeres, we’ve won. Andrews spends the duration of the film searching for one.
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De Grey, a theorist who comes across as the better scientist despite his lack of experience “at the bench”—scientist parlance for doing research in a lab—disagrees with Andrews. While his solution to mortality isn’t as clearly articulated in the film, it seems to line up with the strategy articulated by the dean of transhumanism (a movement that aims to remove the limitations on human existence), Ray Kurzweil: Stay alive until microscopic robots that swim through our bloodstream and physically repair our cells are invented, in 20 or so years.
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All this may sound crazy, but de Grey has convinced Silicon Valley luminaries such as PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to give him millions of dollars to fund a full-fledged research foundation devoted to testing his ideas.
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What will we do when some portion of humanity refuses to die?
The science behind this sort of thing is extremely controversial—and so are its philosophical implications. It might seem premature to start talking about what we’ll do when the day of the undead finally arrives, but after spending two hours with Andrews and de Gray, I came out convinced that this is a conversation at least worth starting.
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David Alvarado, who made The Immortalists with Jason Sussberg, described a similar pivot to me after the film’s premier at South by Southwest. He said he went into this project feeling skeptical of the science behind life extension. Three years and countless hours of filming later, however, it struck him that, eventually, we will radically extend human lifespans—it’s just a question of when.
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If humans could live forever, it would transform our civilization in ways more profound than just about any other technological breakthrough. Lifelong marriage—already on the ropes in the age of ever-lengthening lifespans—would cease to make sense. Overpopulation could become an even more significant issue than it is now. The cost of war might have to be re-evaluated. We could live long enough for humans to reach other stars. Young people might find themselves unable to compete in an ossified job market, full of people with centuries of experience.
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The Immortalists poses a straightforward question: Why shouldn’t we cure death? But the answer to that question depends on who is asking it—any individual one of us, or all of us.
Will we still get colds?
It’s called “Receiving Jesus.” The only way you’re going to make it out of here alive.
Get back to me when they find a cure for cancer and the common cold.
Sure.
Right after that manned mission to Mars.
I loved the clarity here
“We will have the ability to live indefinitely.”
WELL YES! Lifespan’s are rather indefinite.... by nature.
these guys probably communicate with the TRANS HUMANIST types Im guessing.
Says who?
My life became eternal the moment I received Christ as my Savior.
Gonna need this technology as we have birth controlled, aborted and buggered ourselves out of new generations.
That's been my theory - some scrubbing bubbles to keep my arteries clear of buildup.
“I intend to live forever — or die trying.” — Groucho Marx
Read Hugh Howey’s “Wool” to see his vision of what bio-nano technology will bring us to.
I’ve got a better way. Take 3-D ultra-sounds of all organs.
3-D print them and replace before they wear out. Simple.
"Some people want to achieve immortality through their work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying." - Woody Allen
we won’t every cure death as long as we are stuck with Obamacare, ......because what would all the Obamacare “death squads” do then?!
Quackery.
Lead in to gold.
Snake oil.
Etc...
Nothing new under the sun and a sucker born very minute.
Already in the works:
Hearts - the next stage of the 3D printing revolution: This medical miracle is shockingly close
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3117604/posts
3D-printed living human tissues one step closer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3126289/posts
A new way to print cells could make it easier to 3D print organs
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3121529/posts
The first 3D printed organ — a liver — is expected in 2014
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3105585/posts
nope.
extending teleomeres doesn’t guarantee the body has theability to repair damage as fast as it goes wrong. further it doesn’t solve cancer and it doesn’t solve deaths by murder, accident, natutal disasters, suicide, poisoninbgs, drownings, being crushed, etc.
Depending on your physiology the common cold can already be prevented. BTDT.
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