Want To Live Forever? Just Wait!

So, you really want to live forever, huh? Well, it appears that that may be within our reach in the near future, if Ray Kurzweill is to be believed. I was surfing through the web looking for some new scientific news and I sure found it. This is pretty exciting stuff! I pasted the first few paragrqphs of the story below; you can get the full story here.


Futurist predicts that one day people will live forever

By Nancy Averett
Special to The Morning Call


If you'd like to have your cake and eat it, too, without gaining weight or clogging your arteries, just hang on for another 10 years. That's when biotechnology will have evolved enough to control the processes that make our bodies store fat and develop diseases, according to Ray Kurzweil, a highly respected futurist and inventor, who co-authored the recently released book ''Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough To Live Forever.''

In the book, published by Rodale Press, Kurzweil and physician Terry Grossman argue that we are living in a transformative age during which the intersection of biology, information science and nanotechnology — the production and manipulation of minute objects — will allow us to achieve immortality.

''I think death is a tragedy,'' Kurzweil says. ''Human civilization has expended a lot of effort over the millennia rationalizing it as a good thing because we haven't had an alternative … Death is natural, but, in my view, we are precisely the species to go beyond natural expectations. We didn't stay on the ground. We didn't stay on the planet.''


I think I'll read the book and hang around a few years and see if they're right.

Reminds me of the film Zardoz. I was never able to have sex after seeing that.

I always thought that "Highlander" was the best movie about imortality.

[img=http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg128r/images/highlander/highlander_02.jpg[/img]
there can be only one!



[edit on 6/22/2005 by lightseeker]

[edit on 6/22/2005 by lightseeker]

[edit on 6/22/2005 by lightseeker]

Actuallly IMO the immortality is closer that many other people think. Basically all you need is to solve is the damage of the brain cells during the life. Everything else could be replaced.

Originally posted by longbow
Actuallly IMO the immortality is closer that many other people think. Basically all you need is to solve is the damage of the brain cells during the life. Everything else could be replaced.

Not that easy...you can't just say "everything else could be replaced" with a handwave. You need procedures and mechanisms for doing this. Organ transplants are still dicey, crude procedures, and we have yet to make repairs on a cellular level feasible, and that's where most of the damage of aging occurs.

If you do some research on Telomerase and telomere research in regards to aging, I think you'll find that is the most promising avenue for greatly extended lifespans right now. But that does not prevent you from getting hit by a bus.

Originally posted by lightseeker
I always thought that "Highlander" was the best movie about imortality.


there can be only one!



Edited Image

No way man...Highlander 3 easily surpasses the previous two... and any arguments will be greeted with derision.

Originally posted by KhieuSamphan
No way man...Highlander 3 easily surpasses the previous two... and any arguments will be greeted with derision.

I will not argue with you about it; I bow to your knowledge as a Scot. A highlander yourself, I presume?

But I have to say that the 1st Highlander movie was and is one of my all-time favorites.

[edit on 6/24/2005 by lightseeker]

Silly people......look up anti ageing gene on google, or elixir pharmecuticals (spelt wrong tho) All you have to do is reset the gene which controls the ageing process (there is one, otherwise you would either grow old too fast or not grow up or not have puberty etc. This gene controls it all). Basically it resets your body clock so your body begins producing young cells. Youre wrinkley old skin will quickly flake off and underneath, perfect young skin. Youre worn out liver from youre binge drinking will regenerate. Etc....or so thats what they hope.

to stay at a steady age youde have to take the injection about every 5 to 10 years, or if you prefer a more mature look, every 20!

There is howver the worry that if not kept in check you could go through puberty many times, ending up either 30 foot tall, with infrasonic vocal cords or a 60 foot penis due to the growth spurts etc in puberty.......but that may not be a problem!

news.bbc.co.uk...

www.mpmcapital.com...

[edit on 24-6-2005 by Shadow88]

Want to live Forever?

Not if drawstring pants come back into style.

Pfft i write sumat ded long and u write that! thee audacity

I don't know why people are wasting their times experimenting with this crap. They want to find the cure for old age?? I'm still sitting here waiting for the cure for baldness! That should come first! Why on Earth would I want to live forever if I'm still going to be bald? They just want to make my miserable life even longer and more miserable? Gimme a break!

I love stuff like this, I need about three to five hundred years to do all the stuff I want to do anyhow.

Bring it on frankensteins.

As for the best movie about imortality?

That's easy Dracula blah.

Why on Earth would I want to live forever if I'm still going to be bald?

Shaft made it work. And I happen to know for a fact that they haven't cured baldness in the year 2424.

SPidej

I thought that free radicals were the major cause of aging...don't exactly know how you'd get rid of those considering that they come mostly from the air we breathe!

By far, one of the most popular theories of aging is the “Free Radical Theory of Aging.” This theory was first proposed by Dr. Denham Harman,5 and postulates that aging results from an accumulation of changes caused by reactions in the body initiated by highly reactive molecules known as “free radicals.” The changes induced by free radicals are believed to be a major cause of aging, disease development or death. A major premise in this theory is that free radicals and their precursors may be produced endogenously (within the body) through normal metabolic processes, or exogenously (outside the body) from sources such as cigarette smoking.

Aging", along with all of the degenerative conditions that go hand-in-hand with it, greatly accelerates. The disease Progeria demonstrates this. It is a rare disease that affects children: They have an inability to produce metabolic antioxidant enzymes, and therefore, go through all of the uncomfortable conditions of "aging" at an extremely accelerated rate. At 10 years old, they look, feel and are biologically very old and in poor health. If they were producing a normal amount of antioxidants, this would not happen.

intelegen.com...
www.healthforce.com...

[edit on 25-6-2005 by zhangmaster]

Originally posted by Shadow88
to stay at a steady age youde have to take the injection about every 5 to 10 years, or if you prefer a more mature look, every 20!

There is howver the worry that if not kept in check you could go through puberty many times, ending up either 30 foot tall, with infrasonic vocal cords or a 60 foot penis due to the growth spurts etc in puberty.......but that may not be a problem!

Shadow, both of these possibilities are enough to make me say "Hold your horses". A 60 foot penis? I never thought I would hear myself say it but I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

Lightseeker

Nah that was a half-joke. All i meant was that the scientists worry that in resetting youre body clock, (the body clock that makes you have puberty at a certain age) in resetting it, youre body may begin puberty again, causing you to start growing again (all of you).

then, in another 10 years you reset it again, and you go through puberty again. OF COURSE this is only a worry. they say it most likely wont happen.

check out google for "anti ageing gene". bbc, livescience and tons others have the latest news on anti ageing.

but i see what your saying. LOL perhaps you could rest youre body clock back so far that you grow another penis! WOOHOO to monogamy!!!!!

Originally posted by lightseeker
I always thought that "Highlander" was the best movie about imortality.

[img=http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg128r/images/highlander/highlander_02.jpg[/img]
there can be only one!



[edit on 6/22/2005 by lightseeker]

[edit on 6/22/2005 by lightseeker]

[edit on 6/22/2005 by lightseeker]

Ever notice the theme of both films, sex & death. In Zardoz, the ideal world of the future has rendered men immortal, but impotent. In highlander, the movie, the immortals can have sex, but are sterile. Only the last man standing can procreate, because he has become mortal. by killing the other immortals. Seems a strange thing to do. Wouldn't it have been interest to keep each other alive, and remain immortal.

Warning to Children
Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
he lives - he then unties the string.

Robert Graves

Ever notice, as a small child, when watching the nature documentaries, that once the butterflies mate, they die?

Want to live forever? you have no choice souls never die Bwahaaahahhahaahahahaha

Originally posted by Wisdumb
Want to live forever? you have no choice souls never die Bwahaaahahhahaahahahaha

This is a true statement, Wisdumb; souls do indeed live forever but I would like to live a lot longer on this earth ( or somewhere nicer) a while before I "give up the ghost".