It feels far fetched, but enticing. 1,000.
If the Body Is a Machine, Can It Be Maintained Indefinitely?
If the Body Is a Machine, Can It Be Maintained Indefinitely?
Just as a restored classic car can celebrate its hundredth birthday in peak condition, in the future, we’ll maintain our bodies’ cellular components to stave off the diseases of old age and live longer, healthier lives. ..... the healthcare impact of technologies like low-cost genomic sequencing, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, gene therapy, and more. ..... Most approaches to age-related disease aim to manage symptoms. They have contributed to longer life expectancy and eased complications, but because treatments interfere with the body’s finely tuned systems, they can have nasty side effects and are ultimately powerless (even with advances) to reverse age-related illness. ..... Metabolic processes drive the day-to-day business of living, but they also inevitably cause cellular damage. The body’s range of self-repair mechanisms don’t take care of everything. Eventually, a lifetime of accumulated damage causes the familiar signs of aging like “thinning skin, cloudy eyes, muscles sapped of strength, heart disease, and cognitive decline.” ..... Negligible senescence is a term used to describe certain animals that don’t display symptoms of aging. ..... we can use biotechnology to engineer negligible senescence in humans ..... cell loss and decreasingly effective cell replacement in the muscles, heart, and brain; uncontrolled cell division (cancer); the accumulation of toxins produced by damaged mitochondria (cellular power plants); the accretion of malfunctioning cells; the stiffening of tissues (like those in our arteries); and the accumulation of extracellular and intracellular junk. ..... there are already generic treatments to address all seven categories of aging either in development or believed to be feasible based on current research. ....... stem cell therapies to reverse cell loss and Alzheimer’s drugs to clear amyloid plaques in the brain ........ Within the next three decades, de Grey believes there’s a 50/50 chance we’ll have marshaled the necessary therapies to add 30 years to life expectancy. ...... Those who live 30 more years will be alive to see additional advances add more years, and so on. ...... If de Grey has his way, one day we’ll regularly visit the rejuvenation clinic to “replace, remove, repair, and reinforce” bodily systems damaged by the business of living...... We’ll not only live longer, we’ll do it in style.
