Scientists take a step closer to an elixir of youth with "IMMORTAL CELLS"

reply to post by Good Wolf

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Well said Good Wolf. Unfortunately I don't honestly believe it is so when it comes to real world conduct. Research costs money and is, at the end of the day, funded by someone. It is their motives I question more than those who seek knowledge and enlightenment.

Kind regards

reply to post by Manawydan

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The struggle for decent funding is good motivation for results. In this case good results can only be the life extending kind so I'm not too worried about this research being corrupted. I don't think anything can compare to Climate Science for funding corruption.

I may be mistaken, but, if scientists were to complete a way to stop/greatly slow the degradation of cells, your fears of becoming 'old, frail, and feeble-minded' would be unfounded. Well, until you 'actually' reach OLD age. Probably around the same fraction of your life you'd have to go through it anyways.

i could think of nothing more amusing than immortality being invented in the next 10 years,all that depopulating via suicude machines and promotion of war and disease would have been for nothing!!!

roll it on,lets breed like rabbits and all become immortal and annoy them big time!,billions of ai hours spent killing us down the drain,oh wait theres the global nanobot mind control and ai made climate change to worry about and so much more,oh well,lets go out having a good time,like rabbits we shall be in our rabbit holes!,and when theyve wiped the surface clean 4 billion newborn humans will emerge from ther holes, ready to do it all over again!

have sex to annoy the future!,go forth and mulitply!

reply to post by welivefortheson

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Population would obviously be a big problem that we would need to do something about. Law could help us, maybe limit the amount of children people are allowed to have - 2 per person would work. There are always problems to get around in new technologies.

Apparently, with better resource management even with today's technology, the earth can sustain twice the population of today's. With advances in technology, maybe that limit could be pushed further.

Citizens in industrialized and educated first world nations also tend to have far less children. Average birth rates in the US, England, Japan, France, etc have been on the decline for several decades now. In first world nations, the general focus tends to be centered around getting and education, a career, and a portfolio. Family time is often scarce, and increasingly intermittent - especially since the economy and people's budget management schemes tends to support the two income family setup. It's extremely hard for an average woman to be a stay at home mother while trying to support the household only on the father's income (if there is spouse at all)

People by and large simply don't have the time or resources to manage large families which were common to their forefathers while also balancing personal goals like careers/further education.

However, in poorer and generally more agricultural or sweatshop based countries - large families are a blessing as they can help with the farm work, the house work, or gain employment to help support the family. People in these nations tend to pursue their daily survival - rather than higher education or careers. This would help to explain why birth rates in many poorer nations are on the rise. There's also an issue of medicine to consider as well. Having a large family means that it's less likely for all your progeny to be wiped out by disease, war, accident or famine which will statistically claim some of them simply due to inadequate medical care. In the richer first world nations, medical care is much much better, and severely decreases the likelihood that your smaller family will be wiped out by treatable disease or physical ailment.

What does this have to do with immortality? It allows people to spend more time chasing their careers, their dreams, or their education. They can spend more time establishing themselves a place in the economy and society before thinking about raising children. If some radically advanced and effective treatment for mortality were created, I would expect to see the rate of birth continue to fall in industrialized nations. After all, you don't have a short 30 year window in which to create a family... you have, well, however long you want. I don't think it would be moral to limit families to a certain number of children, but perhaps a certain number of children in a certain timeframe. To cut a family with two children off from having future children (such as though forced vasectomy or hysterectomy) leaves that family vulnerable to a quirk of fate destroying any chance for progeny - and it's morally unethical (in my opinion) to create such a limit in the first place.

If you want to have a family with 10 or 20 children, you should absolutely be allowed the right to have that many. However, it's clear that we are nowhere near the technological level yet to address rampant overpopulation created by deregulated population increase by "immortal" citizens. I would propose that until we DO have some working and reliable accommodations for burgeoning populations - that there be some form of enforced or encouraged time interval between children. Say... two right off the bat, and another child could be born to the couple once every 75, or effective immediately in the event of an accidental death of one of the current children.

One technology that's still in it's infancy now which can help alleviate some of the problem is genetic engineering. I wouldn't go so far as to say designer babies, but certain choices... such as the eradication of genes which make one predisposed to life threatening diseases such as cancer or heart disease. Etc. We could also potentially direct the selection of sexual orientation of the child before conception to avoid situations where a families have 3-5 female or male children before getting one of the opposite gender.

And of course, special concessions or regulations should be made in the case of multiple births - such as triplets, quadruplets, or octoplets. I would hope that nobody would seriously, even for a moment, think of consider mandatory abortions in the case of multiple births from the same pregnancy putting a family "over the alloted limit".


[edit on 25-11-2008 by Lasheic]

If people aren't selfish and greedy, make that 4x or more!



If you're a kind of person who have high ambitions, intelligence, and talents, it's hell to live in third world! In fact, I've contemplated suicide so many times, lol, It's my love for family that kept me alive.

[edit on 25-11-2008 by ahnggk]

lol? Man that's a backwards world you live in. lol

Well as a transhumanist, I opt for this option as well I'd take fangs in addition to 500 years of life

Fangs would be rad. Metal ones with white ceramic coating.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

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Likewise, the benefits of a vampire without the downsides. I like garlic, not so big on sunlight but hay I like to have the option.

Edit to add sense

[edit on 25/11/2008 by Good Wolf]

reply to post by Good Wolf

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Well Anne Rice's non-fiction work on vampires showed that they can eat garlic and wear crosses and drink holy water!

No sunlight though...

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

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Considering that everyone seems to disagree on what vamps can do/handle there isn't much reason to go from any one doctrine on these things.

...but if we are I'm going to have to go with the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion version.

I wouldn't be too sure on that. I mean, how can we know the real reasons behind someone funding such a project, especially one for researching life extendability? I suppose we just have to rely on that small part of goodness in man, lets hope it doesn't let us down.

reply to post by serbsta

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I don't think scientists were simply hired to work on a way to extend life spans. Scientists aren't freelance (that I know of). This will be a new development in genetics- a development that wouldn't have been foreseen. I don't think this is nefarious.

reply to post by Good Wolf

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Wolf, you're on ATS... remember? EVERYTHING has nefarious motivations around here. If you find something that doesn't, then you might just have a new conspiracy on your hands.


[edit on 25-11-2008 by Lasheic]

reply to post by Lasheic

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Your right, silly me. I forgot I was on ATS.

I'm a skeptic so you'll have to forgive me.

www.naturallygreen.co.uk...

What about this?

reply to post by serbsta

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One major problem here...

We can't cope with the Human race at the numbers it has now reached.

Are you willing to accept immortality, or even a longer life, if it means you can never have children?