Blogpost 2: Is there a way to be Immortal?

Immortality. What comes to your mind when you hear the word immortality? Living forever, not dying. Some of us want that even me, I like to be with my family forever. What if there is a way that you can be immortal? Would you do that?

When I was researching about the myths of immortality, there is an article that caught my attention which is entitled “Latest Research on Immortality: Is it Myth or Reality?” by Elena Moiseenko. This article wasn't anything about the myth of immortality at all. It is about how we are getting closer to discovering the secret of immortality.

The article first stated about the time when people are trying to find the Fountain of Youth so that they can look young and stay healthy forever. It said that people effort to extend human lives and fight aging since 3500 BC. Many people had been searching for the Fountain of Youth like Ponce de Leon, who discovered Florida and Alexander the Great, a king of Macedon, because they believe that the Fountain of Youth would provide eternal life.

In the 20^th century, a lot of inventions and discoveries that changed the human life like phones, television, cars, computer, Internet, etc. Now, in the 21^st century, the age of the latest technologies, and one of these a few scientific approaches to immortality that is quite interesting yet shocking at the same time.

She mentioned two theories of immortality.

Immortality Theory #1: Cybernetic Immortality

This theory is about the young Russian billionaire, Dmitry Itskov, whose dream is to achieve cybernetic immortality for humans by 2045. This has been featured on Discovery News channel and also in ABC News.

He assigned dozen of scientists who will work on his immortality project in which they will create avatars to transfer human personality into artificial body. Together with his team created a 4 step plan on how to achieve eternal life by 2045.

Step 1: It will include creating a robotic copy of a human body which can be controlled by a computer interface from 2015 to 2020.

Step 2: In 2020, a specially designed avatar will be created to transplant personality into by the end of the project.

Step 3: The scientists will be working on creating an avatar that will contain an artificial brain from 2030 to 2035.

Step 4: It will start in 2040 and end in 2045 a hologram-like avatar will have a human brain.

The cybernetic immortality is based on utilizing cutting-edge technologies in android robotics, nanotechnology and neuroscience for “building a bright future for mankind”.

This idea is not new to people. We already have some movies about cyborgs. Maybe people will not be thrilled to become a new cyber human being-walking hologram with brain- it will have much higher survival abilities of extreme conditions such as radiations, cold, heat, lack of oxygen, etc.

We are already a low level of cyborgs. We are using controlled technologies for almost everything these days from doing maths and to explore the edges of the Universe, from utilizing microscopes to using pacemakers.

Only time will tell if this project will be successful or not. But now, Elena think that this is just another fiction movie for her.

Immortality Theory #2: Reprogramming Our Bodies

Scientist named Ray Kurtzweil believes that immortality will be possible 20 years from now that we will be able to reprogram our bodies the way that we can reverse aging and with the help of nanotechnology, we will be able to live forever. His theory is based on the latest discoveries of nanotechnology and a better understanding how the human body works. Also, on the facts that medical and computer technology have been accelerating at an incredible rate and it will be possible to replace human body parts.

It was explained that human blood cells will be replaced by nanobots in which will work thousand times effectively. Getting replaced of the vital organs will be just a minor surgery for humans and having bionic hearts and other organs will give them an opportunity to do things that we think is impossible. Holograms will give all the necessary information we needed.

She doesn't know if humankind wants to go through this or just eat some healthy foods to prolong our life.

I have also read some article related to Cybernetic Immortality. It is entitled "Cybernetic immortality. Fantasy or scientific problem?" by D.I Dubrovsky. He answered the question and he said that is a scientific problem. Why? He has many reasons for that. One of them is that it does not contradict the principles with science. Also artificial body requires creating a self-organizing system of a non-biological type. It transforms the nature of the human being, human consciousness, and an earthly civilization. 

One thing is clear: Humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.

Blogpost 1: Science Behind Immortality

Immortality is the ability to live forever. People aspire immortality simply because they are afraid of death. We are uncertain of what is life after death so that we do not want to face it.

According to an article called “Live Forever! Can Science Deliver Immortality?” by Adam Leith Gollner. This article has an overview of how humans have an idea to cope up with death and attempt to prevent aging.

“It’s time to end death and it takes a community of like-minded individuals to do it.” This is the motto of the people who believe that no one deserves to die.

He first mentioned about the Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine in 1912, Alex Carrel who started a tissue culture of fibroblast cells from the heart of a chicken embryo. He experimented it by placing the cells in a sealed flask and replenish the culture medium regularly with his lab assistants. As he expected, the culture reproduce rapidly. Being regularly nurtured with fresh poultry extract, the cells lasted for three and a half decades. So he concluded that cells are immortal. "Death is not necessary merely a contingent phenomenon" Carrel said. Soon, he predicted that growing old would be a thing in the past because we like cells, are meant to live forever. Also, he said that we would be engineering human tissues from cells clusters and replacing organs.

He took back what he said about Carrel. Fifteen years later after Carrel's death, scientists realized that cells are not meant to live forever, they die like us. But the predictions of Carrel regarding regenerative medicine may now be getting closer to reality. In the near future, scientists say that if we need to replace some body parts, we'll use artificial organs from the laboratories using our own cells. "By putting in the parts you need, you’ll be able to extend life by several decades,” explains Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “We may even push that up to 120, 130 years."

Our understanding of aging changes rapidly. Life-extending breakthroughs are being tested in other species. Like in 2011, it is reported that if you dye worms yellow with a pigment called Thioflavin T makes them live 60-70 percent longer than the normal. There is a molecular compound found in the human semen called Spermidine has been proven to prolong the life span of fruit flies, worms, and yeast. These experiments can affect our lives. Will longevity research yield breakthroughs leading to immortality?

Belief is a powerful panacea. If we believe that taking a drug fixes our problem, it will end up fixed. But if the patient doesn’t believe that it will work, it definitely won’t. Therefore, belief has the possibility to be as curative as the drugs or treatments.

The explanation of growing old is in many ways. One of the most discussed theories of aging is the oxidative model in the twentieth century. Denham Harman, chemist and bio gerontologist, suggest that aging is caused by cellular exposure to oxygen. Air makes things age. If we could prevent oxygen from invading our molecular structure, we could prevent aging.

Other experiments have rise to doubt that oxidative damage is the main cause of aging. “In simple language, we don’t get old, we rust from oxygen,” announced Dr. Harry B. Demopoulos in 1989. Demopoulos was one of the first to theorize that consuming antioxidants might slow aging because antioxidants seem to protect the body from free radicals. Consuming antioxidants won’t make us live longer but it can make us healthier.

Cynthia Kenyon, biologist at San Francisco, in which her findings appear to contradict what we assume we know about aging. Her work on roundworms has demonstrated that they can live four times than normal but then again it is not immortal. “That’s not immortal,” she concedes. “That’s not to say that you couldn’t. But we haven’t.” She is confident that her discoveries may translate to human applications. “We don’t know yet, but to me it seems possible that a fountain of youth, made of molecules and not simply dreams, will someday be a reality.”

Another scientist from San Francisco, Leonard Hayflick, an evolutionary biologist and anatomist who spent his entire career working with cells and debunking false scientific claims about immortality. The biological cause of aging, Hayflick says, “is the same as the cause of nonbiological aging—it’s the second law of thermodynamics.” Everything eventually breaks down, collapses, and falls apart. “Let’s take something infinitely simpler than your body and mine: automobiles,” says Hayflick. “Even if you put the car in a garage and don’t use it, it won’t stand there forever. Eventually, it will age and disintegrate. This is an inevitable law of physics.”

Scientists have done experiments with fruit flies, mice, yeast, and worms. What if we could find a way to activate genetic pathways in life? The results are unquestionable but still there is another issue of interpretation. “When single genes are changed, animals that should be old stay young,” Kenyon with her fellow worker summarized in an article about the increase in the life span in simple animals. “On this basis we begin to think of aging as a disease that can be cured, or at least postponed.” Not everyone agrees with their conclusion. It’s certainly a leap to go that aging in humans is a curable disease.

The scientific understanding of our aging is actually limited. The researchers still don’t know if there’s a universal biological process behind aging. One side believes that in all species we will be able to manipulate longevity genes. They are hoping that they can translate the findings they’ve made on a molecular level into human-ready medicines. On the other side, they don’t think that we’ll be able to intervene in fundamental human aging. For the rest of us, seeing aging is normal.

“I doubt that aging can be reversed,” says Hayflick. “Aging is a random, stochastic process that occurs after reproductive maturation and results from the loss of molecular fidelity.” The only simple truth about aging is that nobody really understands how it works.

Cancer cells, stem cells, and unicellular organisms that experience unstoppable growth are being called as cellular immortality. But this does not mean they are indestructible, they are not undying. Cellular immortality doesn’t mean we can orchestrate the immortalization of life-forms.

August Weismann wrote of how immense numbers of organisms “do not die” in his book “Upon the Eternal Duration of Life” in the 19th century. Somatic cells die but the germ cells are “potentially immortal” like they can transfer themselves into a new individual.

Immortalists said that jellyfish, corals, deep-sea creatures and sponges appear not to be getting old. It is not because that they lack of nervous systems or memory. They don’t age said the prolongevists, they may be practically immortal. They die when they are killed, as slowly as the age.

The freshwater hydra is an organism with regenerative capabilities. It can spring back to health even it is killed giving the impression that it doesn’t die. A hydra can bud off some of the cells into entirely new hydra. It can rebuild itself. But still, it wasn’t immortal.

Telomeres are devices that prevent genetic data from fraying. As a cell divides repeatedly, its telomeres eventually grind down. The death of a cell happen because of the wearing out of telomere. In the 1990s, there is another enzyme that has been discovered called telomerase, in which it allowed telomeres to maintain their structural integrity. As the telomeres stay long, cells can divide endlessly. This was an amazing discovery but it doesn’t mean that telomerase can make us live forever.

The scientists who made the discovery who are Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak are still trying to understand the role of telomeres in aging as well as the telomerase. Everybody wants to find that there’s a great simplifying principle, explains Blackburn but telomeres and aging are anything but simple. The research of Telomere offer insights into how we age and fighting cancer. For now, what it really reveals is that chromosomes deteriorate as cells divide.

The Immortality Institute is a nonprofit educational organization in which their mission “is to conquer the blight of involuntary death.” The members of the institute don’t see aging as a reality but it is a curable disease. They all believe that someday science will defeat death and they are actually trying to accelerate the process.

To sum it all up, it may not be possible to be immortal but through science we can prolong our lives and scientists are still researching until now. Maybe in the future, as written in the science fiction stories, our mind with all of our memories can be preserved but not in our physical bodies. We should face the reality: we will die.