Is it possible to have eternal youth

Cells have a variety of systems for breaking down and recycling unwanted materials. However, sometimes these constituents are so badly fused together that the body can't tear them apart. Think about it. It is not like an infection at all. It is a side-effect of being alive. It is a consequence of having too much of a certain type of damage in the brain. Aubrey de Grey says that this misunderstanding is the reason why research into ageing is generally heading in the wrong direction.

The ill health of old age. We usually call this pathology. But that is really just the application of ageing to living organisms. However, the strategies for achieving this vary greatly. Biologists who study ageing try to examine whether the damage metabolism causes can be avoided. However, this is an extremely complicated task. Geriatrics studies medicine that can prevent old people from becoming ill, regardless of how much damage metabolism has caused to their bodies.

Metabolism is continuing progressively to create more and more damage. And the damage is more and more powerful at creating pathology. Aubrey de Grey therefore believes that throwing so much money at geriatrics is a mistake. The money should instead be used to develop therapies for maintaining the human body.

The research has not yet led to any specific products, but Aubrey de Grey is optimistic. Only time will tell whether Aubrey de Grey is mad or a genius. He previously asserted that the first person to live years has already been born.

This spurred some of his critics to start a debate on the overpopulation to which such a steep increase in life expectancy would inevitably contribute. Because it means we are just going to carry on getting sick and dying just the way our parents, grandparents and great-great-great-grandparents did.

In addition, Aubrey de Grey also believes that the existence of new knowledge and technologies ethically obligates us not to give up but instead do even more to avoid our descendants having to suffer the same disorders of old age that we increasingly do.

And I do not want to be responsible for condemning an entire population to an unnecessarily painful and an unnecessarily early death — just because I thought that it would be better for them. He received his BA in Computer Scienc Customize and select the areas of interest and relevance to you. Then we'll tell you when there's something new. Sign up for free. Already have a user? Then enter your email address and receive a login link to your email. A century ago in the US, the average lifespan was 56 years.

Journalist Adam Gopnik recently donned the astronaut-esque garment and described his experience testing it in the New Yorker. Every move in this suit, he wrote, became awkward and trying. The inconvenience made him irritated, then downright angry.

He writes:. The suit bends you. It slows you…Your emotional cast, as focussed task piles on focussed task, becomes one of annoyance; you acquire the same set-mouthed, unhappy, watchful look you see on certain elderly people on the subway.

The concentration that each act requires disrupts the flow of life, which you suddenly become aware is the happiness of life, the ceaseless flow of simple action and responses, choices all made simultaneously and mostly without effort. Happiness is absorption, and absorption is the opposite of willful attention. Because being old is difficult, living longer is only what we want if these long lives include ever-longer youths, not extended periods of struggle. Some people seem to be able to extend youth or the traits associated with it without hocus-pocus.

At 60, Madonna is looking good, performing energetically, making music, raising kids, posting on social media about fighting the patriarchy, and willing to take on any reporter who obsesses over her age. She believes that we, as a culture, are too worried about aging; her vibrant life makes a pretty good case for age as just a number that need not be a hindrance. Similarly, at 54, Keanu Reeves is experiencing a resurgence of affection and attention.

Today he is, perhaps more than ever before, a beloved sex symbol, a legend who is only half-jokingly referred to as immortal. At this point it is endurance that makes them more great. Sure, they were both successful and widely adored before. But arguably their appeal now stems in large part from the fact that they are a tiny bit wrinkled and have refused to politely fade away.

A simple answer is evolution isn't strong enough to weed out genes that only cause us grief after we've popped out a few offspring. But this model of ageing adds a new element to the existing hypothesis — even if evolution did select for eternal youth, competition inside our own bodies would see us to an inevitable grave. In other words, since multicellular organisms are the cumulative effect of bunches of cooperating cells, we logically can't have it both ways — if you clear the way for 'younger' cells to keep your skin baby-smooth, you're just asking for the big C.

None of this means there is zero headway that can be made in retaining some youthful characteristics longer, or staving off cancer for a few more years. It just means fixing one problem makes the other one more of a challenge, so eventually one of those issues — cancer or senescence — is going to catch up. Given that kind of choice, maybe a few more wrinkles and failing eyesight isn't sounding all that bad.

This research was published in PNAS.