tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/immortality-37/articlesImmortality – The Conversation2023-07-11T12:31:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2086412023-07-11T12:31:14Z2023-07-11T12:31:14ZModi’s gift of ‘10 danas’ – the 10 donations – to Biden reflects ancient Hindu wisdom and carries a deep symbolism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536641/original/file-20230710-12423-ykj999.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C5%2C1183%2C668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An image of one of the gifts that Prime Minister Modi gave to President Biden – the '10 danas,' or 10 donations – each with a specific symbolism.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroompost.com/india/pm-modis-gift-to-president-joe-biden/5261962.html">Newsroom Post Press Release</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During his state visit to the United States in late June 2023, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented several gifts to U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden. Among those were the “10 danas,” items with symbolic importance in Indian traditions. I study these traditions in my work as a <a href="https://www.etown.edu/depts/religious-studies/faculty.aspx">scholar of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism</a>. Each of the danas is believed to have an auspicious meaning.</p>
<h2>What are the 10 danas?</h2>
<p>The 10 danas are (1) til, or sesame seeds; (2) a gold coin; (3) a cow, though Biden received a silver image of a coconut as a substitute; (4) a piece of land, in place of which Biden received a piece of fragrant sandalwood; (5) ghee (clarified butter); (6) cloth - for which Biden received a piece of silk; (7) long-grained rice; (8) a piece of jaggery, a very sweet brown sugar made in India from palm tree sap; (9) a silver coin; and (10) some salt.</p>
<p>What does <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44146016">each substance represent</a>?</p>
<p>Sesame seeds are a symbol of immortality. According to a story in the Puranas, or books of ancient lore about the Hindu deities, during the churning of the ocean, the sweat of Hindu Lord Vishnu dropped to the Earth in the form of sesame seeds. The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23002226">churning of the ocean</a> was an event, famous in Hindu literature, in which the devas, or deities, and the asuras, or demonic beings, joined forces to acquire a life-giving substance called amrita that had sunk to the ocean floor. This required great exertion, especially on the part of Lord Vishnu, who transformed himself into a giant tortoise to play his role in the process.</p>
<p>Gold is considered purifying and also is symbolic of wealth and prosperity. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1178915">cow is a symbol of life and of nurturing</a>. The substitution of the silver image of a coconut for an actual cow reflects a common Hindu ritual in which an actual coconut is used in a ceremony to substitute for some other object that is unavailable or that would be impractical to include.</p>
<p>The gift of a piece of land also represents wealth. Traditionally, the gift of an actual piece of land is something one could draw upon in times of financial difficulty. It could be cultivated, rented out, and so on.</p>
<p>Ghee, or clarified butter, is an element in Hindu rituals <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24663482">going back to at least the second millennium B.C.</a> It represents both nourishment and healing.</p>
<p>Cloth represents financial security: one’s ability to obtain the necessities of life, such as decent clothing.</p>
<p>Rice, in India, has long been a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Subhash-Ahuja/publication/321334487_Rice_in_Religion_and_Tradition/links/5bf4de87a6fdcc3a8de62413/Rice-in-Religion-and-Tradition.pdf">symbol of fertility</a>. The ability to grow rice has been vital to life in most of India since before recorded history.</p>
<p>The sweetness of the jaggery represents good news. Giving it represents a hope that one will receive good news and hear <a href="https://journalppw.com/index.php/jpsp/article/view/11683/7568">auspicious things in the years ahead</a>.</p>
<p>Silver is connected with the Moon in Hindu symbolism – as gold is connected with the Sun. The gift of silver is a wish that one will <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0972639X.2004.11886506">have good dreams and undisturbed sleep</a>. </p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44146016">salt is a symbol of Lakshmi</a>, the goddess of prosperity. Like salt, she is said to have emerged from the ocean. Salt thus represents lifelong prosperity.</p>
<h2>A thousand full moons</h2>
<p>The 10 danas are given to someone who has seen 1,000 full moons, or “sahasra chandra.” This is an ancient practice first <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2014.858659">described in a set of texts called the “Grihya Sutras</a>,” which date from roughly 500 B.C. These sutras, or authoritative texts, describe household rituals and regulations. The practices they enjoin are rooted in the culture of the Vedas, the <a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe29/index.htm">oldest sacred literature of Hinduism</a>.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi presents several gifts to President Joe Biden on his recent state visit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/5447d3c095c04974a667435d389c14f3?ext=true">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span>
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<p>The full moon is an auspicious symbol in many Indian traditions. The full moon day, or Purnima, of each month is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/soutjanth.20.1.3629413">time when many people engage in religious observances</a>. The full moon day is the culmination of the “bright half,” or the shukla paksha, of each month in the Indian lunar calendar. The bright half is the roughly two-week period during which the Moon is waxing, and is seen as a better time to undertake any important activity. Seeing the full moon is an auspicious act, so having seen a thousand full moons is a particularly auspicious and noteworthy event in one’s life.</p>
<p>The ceremony is typically <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2014.858659">performed for someone who is between the ages of 81 and 84</a>, though Modi gave the 10 gifts to Biden on the occasion of his reaching the age of 80. Giving these gifts amounts to congratulating the recipient for having lived a long life – itself a sign of virtue and wisdom – and wishing continued good luck, health and prosperity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208641/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffery D. Long does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of the gifts that Prime Minister Modi gave to President Biden symbolizes the recipient’s having seen 1,000 full moons, implying a long and auspicious life.Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Elizabethtown CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040352023-05-21T20:00:05Z2023-05-21T20:00:05ZSumner Redstone: the other media baron who inspired Succession was more toxic and dysfunctional than Logan Roy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526103/original/file-20230515-18-7g22tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C1920%2C1270&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just before the third season of the hit HBO television show <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-succession-feeds-the-hidden-fantasies-of-its-well-to-do-viewers-201936">Succession</a> began, the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, was asked (again) what it was about real-life media tycoons Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch that drove him to create a TV series about a fictional media family that bore some resemblances to each of them.</p>
<p>Armstrong’s answer was simple: when Redstone and Murdoch had been asked about their succession plans, both had joked they didn’t plan to die.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Empire – James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams (Cornerstone Press)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“It felt like something quite basic about not wanting to give up and feeling that loss of influence at the end of your life,” Armstrong <a href="https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/435246.aspx">explained</a>. “And I started to feel there was a show about what those people are like in general.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526220/original/file-20230515-8760-ma8fg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jesse Armstrong (second right) was inspired to write Succession by Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch, who both joked they intended not to die.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Pizello/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Armstrong’s success has been to combine the all-too-common anxiety about our legacy with the elevated stakes that come with being one of those rarefied ultra-wealthy corporate media figures who believe mortality is negotiable.</p>
<p>It appears that for these media tycoons’ families, an inheritance goes beyond how much it’s worth, or what corporate outpost might come their way: it’s also about the family dynamic. Sibling rivalry, parental respect – and often, the banality of favouritism. Emotional fealty can have dollar signs attached to it. </p>
<p>We understand this almost instinctively in Armstrong’s depiction of the Roy family and the gruesome fascination patriarch Logan Roy conjures from a combination of psychopathic paternalism and deal-making wizardry. </p>
<p>But now we can also see it in even more lurid detail, with the release of a book by two New York Times journalists on Redstone’s savage battle to secure his own legacy: <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/unscripted-9781529912852">Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Empire</a> by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"695000477734285312"}"></div></p>
<h2>An American success story</h2>
<p>Redstone was one of those classic American success stories. His father sold linoleum, and went on to run two drive-in theatres, which Redstone would later develop into the movie theatre chain National Amusements. (And as a child, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/9/29/20886840/succession-season-2-episode-8-recap">just like Logan Roy</a>, Redstone briefly lived in a house with no inside bathroom.)</p>
<p>Redstone escaped his background with a scholarship to Harvard that set him on the path to a career that, at its peak, delivered him control of Viacom, Paramount Pictures, CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and publisher Simon & Schuster, as well as National Amusements. It was a playpen of great wealth and wide influence.</p>
<p>Unscripted makes clear that Redstone’s travails are even more compelling and incredible than his small-screen avatar’s. The reality is more toxic, more dysfunctional and far more complicated than any TV script. </p>
<p>Unscripted catalogues Redstone’s sexual predations – including finding on-air roles for women he was interested in (another Logan move), and repeatedly dating or trying to date his grandson’s girlfriends. Said one Hollywood executive of his behaviour: “He acts like a 15-year-old kid at summer camp.”</p>
<p>His fed-up grandson eventually hired TV’s Millionaire Matchmaker, Patti Stanger (whom Sumner called his “dream girl” and unsuccessfully pursued), to find him a companion. This would have unforeseen consequences.</p>
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<p>But what Unscripted really reveals is how desperately Redstone clung to the hallmarks of his successful life, and how vulnerable that made him to those who wanted to take advantage of him. </p>
<p>Central to the book, and his later life – as Armstrong noted – is Redstone’s gobsmacking denial of his own mortality.</p>
<p>At the age of 85, and having survived a hotel fire in his 50s, and later prostate cancer, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/02/sumner-redstone-in-love-the-cringey-sexcapades-of-a-horny-billionaire">Redstone boasted</a> to CNN’s celebrity interviewer Larry King that he had “the vital statistics of a 20-year-old”.</p>
<p>In case Larry had any doubts, Redstone laid out his case. “Even 20-year-old men get older. Not me. My doctor says I’m the only man who’s reversed it. I eat and drink every antioxidant known to man. I exercise 50 minutes every day.” Redstone even told one of his numerous paramours that he was the inspiration behind <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421715/">The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</a>, a film about a man who defies chronology by getting younger.</p>
<p>Not long after the King interview, Redstone’s health started to deteriorate. And that, of course, brought his family’s inheritance and succession issues into sharp relief. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rich-are-pouring-millions-into-life-extension-research-but-does-it-have-any-ethical-value-201774">The rich are pouring millions into life extension research – but does it have any ethical value?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The successor: Shari Redstone</h2>
<p>Redstone had two children: a son, Brent, who was estranged from his father, and Shari, a lawyer, three years younger than her brother. The similarities of Shari (who, incidentally, has red-blonde hair) to Shiv Roy, played by Sarah Snook, have been noted.</p>
<p>Over the years, Shari had clashed bitterly with her father, sometimes publicly. At the same time she craved his affection and approval, which he dangled frequently before her (especially when he needed something) but then withdrew his favour. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1179841050623565826"}"></div></p>
<p>Shari was initially nominated as his successor, but after a public feud between them, Sumner announced his inheritance would instead be shared between his five grandchildren. </p>
<p>The book hums with the steady undercurrent of the cruel and fraught relationship between Sumner and Shari, reaching its crescendo as Sumner chose two of his lovers to become his live-in carers in a bizarre affront to his family. </p>
<p>One of them was Sydney Holland, introduced to Redstone by the Millionaire Matchmaker: she became his live-in fiancee. The other was his old flame, Manuela Herzer, who moved in (with her daughter) while the house Redstone had bought her was being renovated – and stayed, sharing Holland’s duties of managing the household and Redstone’s medical care. </p>
<p>Together, they not only found every way possible to prevent Shari from visiting him – but also <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sumner-redstone-sues-companions-elder-abuse-reclaim-150m-gifts-937749/">extracted US$150 million</a> from him.</p>
<p>By that stage, Redstone was being fed through a tube into his stomach. He spent most of his day watching sport on TV, and could barely speak. The fate of his companies swung in the wind. Shari, who was still part of the corporate landscape, was trying to salvage something from the wreckage. </p>
<p>She never gave up, although she came close to walking away. All she wanted was a signal from her father that – after years of being patronised, yelled at, ignored and belittled – he trusted her. </p>
<p>After she managed to extract the two carers from the Redstone home (no easy feat), Shari “all but moved to Los Angeles” to be near her father. His nurses installed a large clock so he could track the hours and minutes until her arrival, and she “became adept at interpreting Sumner’s speech”.</p>
<p>There is an echo here too of Succession: Logan Roy’s business rival, Sandy, whose daughter Sandi – also apparently inspired by Shari – is his translator to the world, after he falls seriously ill (with what’s <a href="https://screenrant.com/succession-season-3-sandy-illness-syphilis-what-happened/">rumoured</a> to be syphilis, seemingly a dig at his hypersexuality).</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Succession’s Sandi (Hope Davis) is also inspired by Shari Redstone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
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<p>Sumner and Shari’s conversation turned to the proposal to sell a stake in Paramount to a Chinese property conglomerate. Sumner was viscerally opposed to the idea, hatched by a longtime executive whom Sumner now determined was on the outer. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What do I do?” Redstone asked his daughter. </p>
<p>“This is your battle, not mine […] I have a new life,” Shari replied. </p>
<p>Redstone pleaded: “Shari, you have to do this. You need to stop this.” </p>
<p>For Shari, that was the moment he finally said: “Shari, I trust you.” </p>
<p>“I’ll do it for you,” she said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shari’s determination to follow her father’s wishes helped make sure the deal never happened.</p>
<p>All this will resonate with those Succession fans who felt the whiplash of Logan Roy’s disdain towards his children, and its savage counterpoint as he tried to woo them. </p>
<p>Logan seems indomitable, but what makes the Redstone story so compelling is, eventually, the patriarch’s vulnerability – his confrontation with mortality – and the desperation and loneliness that drove him to restore his relationship with his daughter. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-biography-of-lachlan-murdoch-provides-some-insights-but-leaves-important-questions-unanswered-192403">The first biography of Lachlan Murdoch provides some insights, but leaves important questions unanswered</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Corporate misogyny</h2>
<p>There is no denying the other essential thread in Unscripted is one that clearly links Redstone’s appalling behaviour towards the women in his life with the corporate play that finally resolves his legacy.</p>
<p>The deal was to be a merger of the successful CBS network with the ailing Viacom, an idea Redstone had aggressively rejected for years. But the older Redstone became, the more appealing the merger became to the executives at CBS, particularly its chief executive, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-les-moonves-got-to-leave-cbs-on-his-own-terms-while-others-in-metoo-miscreant-club-got-canned-103041">Les Moonves</a>.</p>
<p>As the heat around the deal increased, rumours started to circulate about Moonves. Several women <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/les-moonves-and-cbs-face-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct">came forward</a> to accuse Moonves of sexual harassment and, in some instances, alleged sexual assault.</p>
<p>As Unscripted follows Moonves and the complex network of law firms and investigations that surrounded him, Sumner Redstone recedes from view. Shari, emboldened and central to the corporate action, becomes the character linking the two ends of the Redstone story. She had counted Moonves as a friend who had helped make CBS successful. Her father had championed him – but the CBS chief had let Shari down and betrayed her with his behaviour. He had to go.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526173/original/file-20230515-15-vs5j9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sumner Redstone and Les Moonves with Ewan McGregor at movie premiere Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Pizello/AP</span></span>
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<p>Recurring and relentless misogyny characterises the corporate, entertainment and media worlds. We see this in Redstone’s corporate kingdom – and in the fictional setting of Waystar Royco, the corporate behemoth in Succession. Truth marches alongside fiction, without a sideways glance.</p>
<p>The book is an assiduous piece of journalism from two Pulitzer Prize winners: Abrams was part of The New York Times reporting team that worked on the Weinstein stories, and her knowledge of that context gives Unscripted a sharp clarity. </p>
<p>But Abrams and Stewart also have some great material to work with: we eavesdrop on conversations, and read text messages and emails, that together amount to a picture of greed, arrogance and despair. Most of these details are on the public record because there has been so much litigation between various parties seeking to either protect Redstone’s legacy or snatch some of it for themselves.</p>
<p>It ended on August 11 2020, when Sumner Redstone died at the age of 97. The merger between CBS and Viacom went ahead and Shari attempted to reshape the culture with seven women on the 13-member board of the merged company.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-crave-the-approval-of-an-abusive-or-narcissistic-parent-and-what-can-they-do-about-it-203664">Why do people crave the approval of an abusive or narcissistic parent? And what can they do about it?</a>
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<h2>Living+</h2>
<p>Redstone might have died, but Armstrong’s other inspiration – Rupert Murdoch – continues. Murdoch turned 92 in March and seems resolute, if less robust.</p>
<p>Just like Redstone, Murdoch had his moment to pronounce on his longevity. He was 69 and had triumphed over prostate cancer. </p>
<p>“I’m now convinced of my own immortality,” <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/rupert-murdoch-cover-story">he declared</a>, although it’s highly likely he was half-joking. Nonetheless, there is longevity in the family genes: Murdoch’s mother, Dame Elisabeth, died at 103.</p>
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<span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch joked, aged 69, ‘I’m now convinced of my own immortality’. That idea seems to have inspired Succession’s retirement product, Living+.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
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<p>After Redstone’s departure, Murdoch remains the oldest media tycoon still actively in charge. It’s clear he believes there’s still much work to be done, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrity-money-and-power-tvs-obsession-with-the-murdoch-family-dynasty-146113">who will follow him</a> from among his four grown-up children remains a work in progress.</p>
<p>Whatever happens, it’s highly unlikely the public turmoil and angst that surrounded the Redstone succession will be repeated with Murdoch: it has so far felt like a much more discreet display.</p>
<p>If there’s any doubt about how the Murdochs want to keep all this private, it’s that one of the terms of the settlement of Murdoch’s divorce from his fourth wife, model Jerry Hall, was that she couldn’t give story ideas to the writers of Succession.</p>
<p>And yet in a recent episode from what is the final series, Kendall Roy launched a new retirement product from Waystar, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/succession-living-plus-inspiration-explained.html">Living+</a>, which he described in his unique corporate mangling as a “personalised longevity journey”.</p>
<p>What actually is that, Ken? Somewhere to go while you’re waiting, or just maybe some intimations of mortality? Most likely, it’s just a Jesse Armstrong joke.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Richardson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new book, Unscripted, tells the incredible story of Sumner Redstone, the other model for Succession’s Logan Roy – and the epic succession journey of his daughter, Shari, now chair of ViacomCBS.Nick Richardson, Adjunct Professor of Journalism, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1973042023-01-12T08:20:16Z2023-01-12T08:20:16ZHow immortal jellyfish turn back time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503655/original/file-20230109-7616-czgz2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3610%2C3204&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Turritopsis dohrnii'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Achieving immortality is something that has driven human beings throughout much of their history. Many peculiar legends and fables have been told about the search for the elixirs of life. Medieval alchemists worked tirelessly to find the formula for the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/jwXhqPSro7CIJQ">philosopher’s stone</a>, which granted rejuvenating powers. Another well-known story is the travels of Juan Ponce de León, who, while conquering the New World, searched for the mysterious <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/fountain-of-youth">fountain of youth</a>.</p>
<p>But to this day no one has succeeded in discovering the keys to eternal life. There is, however, one exception – a creature no more than four millimetres in size <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em>, also known as “the immortal jellyfish”.</p>
<h2>Biological immortality, within reach of a jellyfish</h2>
<p>Unlike the vast majority of living organisms, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764029/pdf/peerj-06-4225.pdf"><em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em></a> is capable of rejuvenation and biological immortality. This challenges our perception of ageing, but how does it do so?</p>
<p>Let’s start by understanding the <a href="https://sciencepress.mnhn.fr/en/collections/memoires-du-museum-national-d-histoire-naturelle/introduction-hydrozoa">generic life cycle of a “mortal jellyfish”</a>. It reproduces sexually: the male’s sperm fertilises the female’s eggs and the zygote is formed. The zygote grows as a larva and drifts until it attaches itself to the seabed. Once settled, it grows into a polyp and, when ready, it reproduces asexually. To do this, it releases tiny jellyfish from its own body, which then grow to the adult stage and reproduce, before dying.</p>
<p>The immortal jellyfish, <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em>, also follows this cycle, but after reproducing it does not always die: it can choose an alternative path and reverse its life cycle. Along the path, its jellyfish body shrinks to form something like a sphere, called a “cysto”. This drifts until it sticks to the bottom, and then generates a new polyp, which in turn gives rise to new jellyfish, thus entering the cycle again.</p>
<p>This process can occur endlessly and allows the jellyfish to escape death.</p>
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<span class="caption">Life cycle of Turritopsis dohrnii with the alternative rejuvenation path.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Deciphering the immortal jellyfish genome</h2>
<p>The keys to the immortality of <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em> are written in its DNA, but discovering them has been no easy task.</p>
<p>Our research team led by Carlos López Otín at the University of Oviedo has contributed to deciphering the genome of this immortal jellyfish. The results <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118763119">have been published in the journal PNAS</a>. This was done by reading letter-by-letter and writing out gene-by-gene all its DNA as if it were a huge instruction book.</p>
<p>This huge book contains all the information needed for cells to carry out their vital functions. As a result, several genomic clues have been defined that contribute to understanding the extraordinary longevity of the immortal jellyfish.</p>
<p>Using various bioinformatics tools and comparative genomics (the comparison of the genetic book between species), it has been discovered that <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em> possesses a number of genetic variations that contribute to its biological plasticity and longevity. </p>
<p>The genes found are associated with different <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/">keys to ageing</a> such as DNA repair and replication, renewal of the stem cell population, cell-to-cell communication and reduction of the oxidative cellular environment that damages cells, as well as the maintenance of telomeres (chromosome ends).</p>
<p>All these processes are associated with longevity and healthy ageing in humans.</p>
<p>In addition, by studying each stage of their rejuvenation in detail, a series of changes in gene expression have been identified that are necessary for the cells to transform, through a process known as dedifferentiation. This allows the <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em> to effectively reset its own biological clock.</p>
<p>All these mechanisms act synergistically as a whole, thus orchestrating the process to ensure the successful rejuvenation of the immortal jellyfish.</p>
<h2>The true secret of immortality</h2>
<p>If Juan Ponce de León had known the secrets kept by <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em> during his search for the fountain of youth, he would have been left parched. And the alchemists would not have found the philosopher’s stone they so longed for. That’s because, unfortunately, it wouldn’t be possible for a human body to replicate what the jellyfish does. Perhaps the only way to find such a fountain or stone is to realise that there is no life without death. That every system, like humanity or our own body, needs the death of some of its parts to remain in balance and survive.</p>
<p>From the fascinating exploits of <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em> we have learned the keys and limits of cellular plasticity, and from this knowledge we hope to find better answers to the many ageing-related diseases that trouble us today.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the dream of biological immortality for humans remains just that: a dream. Humans have at least discovered how to be immortal in another way – by making their contribution to history through art and knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Las personas firmantes no son asalariadas, ni consultoras, ni poseen acciones, ni reciben financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y han declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado anteriormente.</span></em></p>The immortal jellyfish ‘Turritopsis dohrnii’ is capable of escaping death. The molecular keys involved in its longevity have been revealed by researchers at the University of Oviedo.Daniel Maeso Miguel, Doctorando en biomedicina y oncología molecular, Universidad de OviedoMaria Pascual Torner, Investigadora Postdoctoral, Universidad de OviedoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1878182022-08-03T14:38:57Z2022-08-03T14:38:57ZMarilyn Monroe: why are we still obsessed 60 years after her death?<p>For some, death can be a smart career move. Quite how smart a move depends a lot on who you are and how you die. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the death of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marilyn-Monroe">Marilyn Monroe</a>, we can learn a few lessons about the art and implications of dying a huge public personality.</p>
<p>As with any icon, the brand of Marilyn Monroe far transcends Marilyn Monroe the person, and even more so Norma Jeane Mortenson, as she was until 1946. The Wikipedia page “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe_in_popular_culture">Marilyn Monroe in popular culture</a>” has entries for almost every year since her death, charting a posthumous career that extends across most media forms.</p>
<p>She has been referenced in adverts for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQxcQy5zn8c">cheese</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShTJsvhCBSg">cars</a> and <a href="https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/surprisingly-mild">whisky</a>, and in multiple music videos. She lends her name to a <a href="https://christian-metal.fandom.com/wiki/Norma_Jean">Christian metalcore band</a>, a <a href="https://youtu.be/jy_beEbr9Rw">jewellery collection</a> and <a href="https://www.e-architect.com/canada/absolute-towers-mississauga">a pair of skyscrapers in Ontario</a>. She is the subject of countless pieces of visual art, including caricatures, collages and digital prints.</p>
<p>Her visual image has been a recurring theme for artists, notably <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andy-warhol-2121">Andy Warhol</a>, who produced several pieces using images of her face, and who channelled Marilyn himself in photographs by Christopher Makos. In turn, Warhol’s representations have become a touchstone for subsequent artefacts including a <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/be-at-rbrick-bearbrick-andy-warhols-marilyn-monroe-1000-percent">70cm-high plastic figurine</a>, a <a href="http://inventorspot.com/articles/andy_warhol_marilyn_monroe_pop_art_sneakers_nike_34184">Nike Warhol/Monroe custom AirMax shoe</a> and a 3,000-piece Lego reproduction. </p>
<p>And now she is the subject of a US$22 million (£18 million) Netflix biopic, Blonde, starring Ana de Armas, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/apr/09/fiction.reviews1">fictionalised account of her life</a>, published in 2000. Why does this fascination endure so many decades after her death?</p>
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<h2>Perfect storm</h2>
<p>Monroe made her name as a “blonde bombshell,” a glamorous pin-up model and Hollywood actress/singer who was a favourite focus for the voracious mid-century male gaze. But she was by no means the first, following in the high-heeled footsteps of Mae West and Jean Harlow. Nor was she the last: Anita Ekberg, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Novak and Doris Day all came after. So what elevates Monroe above mere celebrity into the status of icon? </p>
<p>In her lifetime, Monroe was exalted as one of the most bankable stars of the day, essentially guaranteed to attract an audience to any event. Famously, she used her own appeal to help boost the career of Ella Fitzgerald, bribing the reluctant owners of the Mocambo jazz club to take a chance on the gifted black singer with the promise of a front-row appearance every night.</p>
<p>Monroe achieved such popularity due to a perfect storm of biography and cultural context, a potential that she managed to capitalise on with shrewd image management.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is the radical reinvention of her image that helps explain her appeal. In the shift from Norma Jeane to Marilyn, from girl-next-door brunette to blinding-peroxide blonde, and from stammerer to vocal seductress, she also moved from victim to agent.</p>
<p>Norma Jeane grew up in foster homes and orphanages, during which time she was sexually molested, and her mother was hospitalised with paranoid schizophrenia. As Marilyn Monroe, she took control of her brand, wielded her sex appeal to build her career and founded her own production company – a rare thing for a woman at the time.</p>
<p>Such transformation is one classic hallmark of the icon, including Elvis Presley, Maria Callas, Aretha Franklin and Dolly Parton. For Monroe, as with others, the capacity to overcome adversity was humanising and inspiring.</p>
<h2>America’s emblem and sweetheart</h2>
<p>The particular image she constructed also mattered, as her white-blonde hair was a startling reassurance of American-ness at a time when American identity was itself being fiercely protected.</p>
<p>The height of Monroe’s popularity coincided with the intensification of the US civil rights movement, with the 1954 landmark <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka">Brown v Board of Education</a> decision (which ruled that the segregation of black and white children in schools was unconstitutional), swiftly followed by <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/history-of-america/civil-rights-movement">Rosa Parks’</a> famous refusal to yield her bus seat in 1955.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till">brutal lynching of Emmett Till</a> the same year, and particularly <a href="https://www.distractify.com/p/why-did-emmett-till-have-an-open-casket">his mother’s insistence on an open casket</a>, further propelled civil rights issues into the public eye. In such a context, Monroe’s whiteness apparently stood as unequivocally American, comforting those who would resist the advance of racial equality. </p>
<p>The other great theatre of identity wars was the cold war, where Monroe represented a celebration of everything that the American narrative insisted the Soviets wanted to destroy. The eager popular consumption of Marilyn was emblematic of the golden age of capitalism born of a post-war economic boom.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nexttv.com/news/rise-television-entertainment-90245">Broadcasting grew in importance</a> as television ownership was on the rise. The <a href="https://www.whenitwascool.com/fast-explosion-of-the-1950s">fast-food industry flourished</a> with the growth of franchising. And in 1959, Mattel launched <a href="https://www.whenitwascool.com/fast-explosion-of-the-1950s">Barbie</a>, the intersection of mass production and idealised femininity, essentially Marilyn in US$3 plastic form. Monroe epitomised all that was carefree and enjoyable about western popular culture, everything that needed protecting against the advance of communism.</p>
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<h2>An icon in death</h2>
<p>Ultimately, though, it may be the circumstances of her death at just 36 that assured Monroe of a place in the pantheon of 20th-century icons. The unexpected and untimely nature of her death is crucial, meaning her stardom works differently from, say, Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton or Madonna (the latter two still alive, but distinctly post-menopausal).</p>
<p>Crucially, it was a tragic death that spoke of inner demons, not one resulting from “an act of God”. Monroe’s story therefore aligns with those of <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/music/amy-winehouse-death-world-reaction-10-years-ago-age-27-1116707">Amy Winehouse</a>, <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/judy-garland-troubles-from-the-end-of-the-rainbow-20860565">Judy Garland</a> and <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/the-sad-secret-life-of-whitney-houston-1.3105861">Whitney Houston</a>, rather than Patsy Cline (plane crash), Jean Harlow (kidney failure) or Jayne Mansfield (car crash). Because if there’s one thing more appealing than a rags-to-riches story, it’s the <a href="https://medium.com/@roc_52978/tragedy-porn-a1080bd5926b">rubbernecking joy</a> found in a riches-to-ruins tale. </p>
<p>It was arguably the way in which the circumstances of her life fed into those of her death that keeps us revisiting Monroe. For her sexual expression, she has been claimed by both <a href="https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/marilyn-monroe-is-a-feminist-icon-fc88148ff330">feminism’s second-wave (as a cautionary tale)</a>, and its third-wave (<a href="https://womensmuseum.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/7-sensational-things-marilyn-monroe-can-teach-us-about-feminism/">as a poster-girl for bodily self-determination</a>).</p>
<p>The gluttonous media consumption of Monroe in life has been reconfigured as a story of being eaten up by her public, much <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21593569/princess-diana-explainer-crown-netflix-marilyn-monroe-britney-spears-innocence">like Princess Diana</a>. And the McCarthy-era obsession with uncovering secrets was surely mirrored in the question-mark-laden headlines reporting her death, inviting all sorts of <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/7-theories-marilyn-monroe-death/">unquashable conspiracy theories</a> around it.</p>
<p>Marilyn Monroe may have died in 1962, but in that same moment a legend was born. And while her life laid the groundwork for legendary status, it is her death that catapulted her into iconic immortality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Freya Jarman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marilyn Monroe endures as an icon thanks to a perfect storm of biography and cultural context.Freya Jarman, Reader in the Department of Music, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1775132022-05-25T13:46:19Z2022-05-25T13:46:19ZWhat the Voyager space probes can teach humanity about immortality and legacy as they sail through space for trillions of years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464877/original/file-20220523-11-z3t5y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C799%2C589&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scientists expect the Voyager spacecraft to outlive Earth by at least a trillion years.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIA17036_Voyager_the_Explorer.jpg#/media/File:PIA17036_Voyager_the_Explorer.jpg">NASA/JPL-CalTech</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth. After sweeping by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, it is now almost <a href="https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/">15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth</a> in interstellar space. Both Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, carry little pieces of humanity in the form of their <a href="https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/">Golden Records</a>. These messages in a bottle include spoken greetings in 55 languages, sounds and images from nature, an album of recordings and images from numerous cultures, and a written message of welcome from Jimmy Carter, who was U.S. president <a href="https://theconversation.com/voyager-golden-records-40-years-later-real-audience-was-always-here-on-earth-79886">when the spacecraft left Earth in 1977</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A golden colored record with 'The Sounds of Earth' written in the center." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464881/original/file-20220523-23-zyjgnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Each Voyager spacecraft carries a Golden Record containing two hours of sounds, music and greetings from around the world. Carl Sagan and other scientists assumed that any civilization advanced enough to detect and capture the record in space could figure out how to play it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sounds_of_Earth_-_GPN-2000-001976.jpg">NASA/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Golden Records were built to last a billion years in the environment of space, but in a recent analysis of the paths and perils these explorers may face, astronomers calculated that they <a href="https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-distant-future">could exist for trillions of years</a> without coming remotely close to any stars.</p>
<p>Having spent my career in the field of <a href="https://sipa.fiu.edu/people/faculty/religious-studies/hurchingson.james.html">religion and science</a>, I’ve thought a lot about how spiritual ideas intersect with technological achievements. The incredible longevity of the Voyager spacecraft presents a uniquely tangible entry point into exploring ideas of immortality.</p>
<p>For many people, immortality is the everlasting existence of a soul or spirit that follows death. It can also mean the continuation of one’s legacy in memory and records. With its Golden Record, each Voyager provides such a legacy, but only if it is discovered and appreciated by an alien civilization in the distant future. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People in black standing around a coffin at a gravesite." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464879/original/file-20220523-15-ck32f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many religions espouse some form of life after death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/outdoor-shot-of-funeral-royalty-free-image/104305070?adppopup=true">RubberBall Productions/Brand X Pictures via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Life after death</h2>
<p>Religious beliefs about immortality are numerous and diverse. Most religions foresee a postmortem career for a personal soul or spirit, and these range from everlasting residence among the stars to reincarnation. </p>
<p>The ideal eternal life for many Christians and Muslims is to abide forever in God’s presence in heaven or paradise. Judaism’s teachings about what happens after death are less clear. In the Hebrew Bible, the dead are mere “shades” in a darkened place called Sheol. Some rabbinical authorities <a href="https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12697-resurrection">give credence to the resurrection of the righteous</a> and even to the eternal status of souls.</p>
<p>Immortality is not limited to the individual. It can be collective as well. For many Jews, the <a href="https://library.yctorah.org/2016/05/the-importance-of-the-land-of-israel/">final destiny of the nation of Israel or its people</a> is of paramount importance. Many Christians anticipate a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kingdom-of-God">future general resurrection</a> of all who have died and the coming of the kingdom of God for the faithful.</p>
<p>Jimmy Carter, whose message and autograph are immortalized in the Golden Records, is a progressive Southern Baptist and a living example of religious hope for immortality. Now <a href="https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2015/08/082015_jimmy.carter.php">battling brain cancer</a> and approaching centenarian status, he has thought about dying. Following his diagnosis, Carter <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/04/jimmy-carter-says-he-is-completely-ease-with-death/">concluded in a sermon</a>: “It didn’t matter to me whether I died or lived. … My Christian faith includes complete confidence in life after death. So I’m going to live again after I die.”</p>
<p>It is plausible to conclude that the potential of an alien witnessing the Golden Record and becoming aware of Carter’s identity billions of years in the future would offer only marginal additional consolation for him. Carter’s knowledge in his ultimate destiny is a measure of his deep faith in the immortality of his soul. In this sense, he likely represents people of numerous faiths. </p>
<h2>Secular immortality</h2>
<p>For people who are secular or nonreligious there is little solace to be found in an appeal to the continuing existence of a soul or spirit following one’s death. Carl Sagan, who came up with the idea for the Golden Records and led their development, wrote of the afterlife: “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1221453-i-would-love-to-believe-that-when-i-die-i">I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than just wishful thinking</a>.” He was more saddened by thoughts of missing important life experiences – like seeing his children grow up – than fearful about the expected annihilation of his conscious self with the death of his brain.</p>
<p>For those like Sagan there are other possible options for immortality. They include <a href="https://gizmodo.com/why-freezing-yourself-is-a-terrible-way-to-achieve-immo-1552142674">freezing and preserving the body for future physical resurrection</a> or <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-your-uploaded-mind-still-be-you-11568386410">uploading one’s consciousness and turning it into a digital form</a> that would long outlast the brain. Neither of these potential paths to physical immortality has proved to be feasible yet.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cEzcFXRKHUw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Golden Records contain a snapshot of Earth and humanity.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Voyagers and legacy</h2>
<p>Most people, whether secular or religious, want the actions they do while alive to bear <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2004.08.002">continuing meaning into the future as their fruitful legacy</a>. People want to be remembered and appreciated, even cherished. Sagan summed it up nicely: “To live in the hearts we leave behind <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1029590-to-live-in-the-hearts-we-leave-behind-is-to">is to live forever</a>.” </p>
<p>With Voyagers 1 and 2 estimated to exist for more than a trillion years, they are about as immortal as it gets for human artifacts. Even before the Sun’s expected demise when it runs out of fuel in about 5 billion years, all living species, mountains, seas and forests <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sun-wont-die-for-5-billion-years-so-why-do-humans-have-only-1-billion-years-left-on-earth-37379">will have long been obliterated</a>. It will be as if we and all the marvelous and extravagant beauty of planet Earth never existed – a devastating thought to me.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing the path of Voyager 1 spiraling off into the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464878/original/file-20220523-21-ofwph8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voyager 1’s path, in white, has taken the craft well past the orbits of the outer planets into interstellar space, where aliens may someday come across the relic of humanity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voyager_1_skypath_1977-2030.png#/media/File:Voyager_1_skypath_1977-2030.png">NASA/JPL via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But in the distant future, the two Voyager spacecraft will still be floating in space, awaiting discovery by an advanced alien civilization for whom the messages on the Golden Records were intended. Only those records will likely remain as testimony and legacy of Earth, a kind of objective immortality.</p>
<p>Religious and spiritual people can find solace in the belief that God or an afterlife waits for them after death. For the secular, hoping that someone or something will remember humanity, any wakeful and appreciative aliens will have to do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Edward Huchingson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A professor of religion and science explains different views on immortality, from the religious perspective of President Jimmy Carter to the scientific, secular take of Carl Sagan.James Edward Huchingson, Professor Emeritus and Lecturer in Religion and Science, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1645422021-08-10T12:28:08Z2021-08-10T12:28:08ZThe maximum human life span will likely increase this century, but not by more than a decade<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412474/original/file-20210721-19-1cw069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C25%2C5590%2C3707&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Biologists and demographers are actively debating whether there is a natural cap on the human life span, and how high that might be.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-and-old-hands-royalty-free-image/183297590?adppopup=true">eucyln/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49746060">Jeanne Calment of France died in 1997</a> at the age of 122 years and 164 days, she set a record for oldest human. That record still stands. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2nGjQFsAAAAJ&hl=en">As statisticians</a> who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QN9RQAYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">study demography</a>, we expect that record will be broken by 2100. </p>
<p>We study the maximum human life span using a data-driven approach. <a href="https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol44/52/default.htm">Our peer-reviewed study</a>, published in June 2021, models and combines two key components: how the risk of dying flattens after age 110, and growth in the number of people to reach age 110 this century. </p>
<p>Our analysis of these two factors, which we did before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests it’s nearly inevitable that someone will break Calment’s record during the 21st century, with an 89% chance that someone will live to at least 126, but only a 3% chance that someone will reach age 132. </p>
<h2>Debate around maximum human life span</h2>
<p>Scientists are actively debating whether there is <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-150-years-really-the-limit-of-human-lifespan-162209">a fixed limit to the human life span</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1395.001">Some biologists</a> think the data shows that aging is not a disease that can be treated, but instead an inevitable process that cannot be fully stopped, whether through medical breakthroughs or other means. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2237414/">Some demographers</a> have argued that there is a natural limit to life expectancy, implying that maximum ages will level off as well. </p>
<p>But others think there’s good evidence that life spans will continue to lengthen - at least for a lucky few. Several <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1365-2">prominent biologists</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30545477/">medical experts</a> have recently published findings suggesting there is some hope for extending life spans dramatically via medical interventions. Ultrawealthy tech titans like Tesla’s Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin <a href="https://futurism.com/live-forever-silicon-valley">are investing heavily</a> in such research.</p>
<p>In 2002, two demographers named <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1069675">Jim Oeppen and James Vaupel observed</a> that between 1928 and 1990, limits to life expectancy proposed by leading demographers were broken just five years after the prediction on average. They also noted that flattening gains to life expectancy should not determine our view of maximum life span, as they are quite different things – the maximum is not the average! </p>
<p>Even a pair of prominent demographers who come down on the side of a fixed limit to human life, S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce A. Carnes, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8356-3_33">acknowledged that</a> there is no age at which death is absolutely certain, leaving open the possibility of continually broken life span records.</p>
<h2>Challenges studying supercentenarians</h2>
<p>Data on “supercentenarians,” or those who reach age 110, are limited and often of poor quality. There is the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-11520-2_1">problem of “age-attainment bias”</a>, or the tendency of very old individuals to misstate or exaggerate their age. For this reason, we’ve used only data from the <a href="https://www.supercentenarians.org/">International Database on Longevity</a>, a collection of rigorously verified death records for supercentenarians.</p>
<p>Since these individuals died before 2020, they were all born no later than 1910. Because of record-keeping limitations throughout the world at that time, only records from 13 countries could be included in the database. For that reason, our study is limited to individuals from those 13 countries. </p>
<p><iframe id="r7G3r" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/r7G3r/9/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Basic demography of super-agers</h2>
<p>Yearly mortality rates generally increase as people age. For example, individuals are more likely to die at age 80 than age 20. </p>
<p>But this changes for those who make it to 110 years old. The <a href="https://www.supercentenarians.org/">best available data</a> suggests that mortality rates for these “supercentenarians,” while high, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10687-017-0305-5">do not increase</a> as they continue to age. In a sense, this means that supercentenarians stop aging. </p>
<p>Instead, supercentenarians as a group have a steady but very high mortality rate of about 50% per year. This means that for every 1,000 individuals who have reached age 110, we expect approximately 500 of them will have died before their 111th birthday, and 250 more by age 112. Taken to its logical end point, this pattern suggests only 1 of the 1,000 would reach age 120, and only 1 in a million supercentenarians would reach age 130. </p>
<p>Even more, such traditional demographic factors as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10687-017-0305-5">sex and nationality that affect mortality rates also appear to not affect supercentenarians</a>. But scientists have yet to figure out what factors lead supercentenarians to live as long as they do. Do they benefit from excellent genetics? Or healthy environments? Or some other factor as yet unidentified? They appear to be extraordinary individuals, but the exact reason is unclear.</p>
<p>That pattern led us to the second component of our study: projecting how many people will reach age 110 during the 21st century, which ends in the year 2100. Using <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211452109">population forecasting methods developed by our research group</a> that are used by the United Nations, we found that large mid-20th-century population growth will likely lead to an orders-of-magnitude increase in the supercentenarian population by 2100. Our estimates suggest that about 300,000 people will reach age 110 by 2080, give or take about 100,000. Although this range is well below a million, it makes the one-in-a-million chance that at least one of them will reach age 130 a real possibility.</p>
<h2>Practical limit to human life span this century</h2>
<p>Predicting the extremes of humanity is a challenging task filled with unknowns. Just as it’s conceivable that a medical breakthrough could let humans live indefinitely, every individual to reach age 123 could simply die the next day. Instead, our study has taken a statistical, data-driven approach focused on what will be observed this century rather than on untestable hypotheses about absolute limits to life span. Our results indicate there’s only a 13% chance any individual will reach age 130, and a very tiny chance anyone lives to age 135 this century. </p>
<p>In other words, the data suggests that life span may not have a hard limit, but a practical one. Humans will almost certainly break Calment’s record of 122 this century, but probably not by more than a decade.</p>
<p>While we carried out our analysis using data collected before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and its <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1343">impact on life expectancy</a>, we believe our overall findings remain accurate. The pandemic may lead to a somewhat smaller total number of 21st-century supercentenarians. But that reduction is unlikely to be very large, and any big effect on their mortality past 110 is unlikely to last many years into the future. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Raftery receives funding from NICHD. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Pearce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jeanne Calment of France died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. That record will be broken this century, statistical models suggest.Michael Pearce, PhD Candidate in Statistics, University of WashingtonAdrian Raftery, Boeing International Professor of Statistics and Sociology, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432552020-08-11T06:53:21Z2020-08-11T06:53:21ZCan ageing really be ‘treated’ or ‘cured’? An evolutionary biologist explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352143/original/file-20200811-14-1qjonhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As time passes, our fertility declines and our bodies start to fail. These natural changes are what we call ageing.</p>
<p>In recent decades, we’ve come leaps and bounds in treating and preventing some of the world’s <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/life-expectancy-death/deaths-in-australia/contents/summary">leading age-related diseases</a>, such as coronary heart disease, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>But some research takes an entirely unique view on the role of science in easing the burden of ageing, focusing instead on trying to prevent it, or drastically slow it down. This may seem like an idea reserved mainly for cranks and science fiction writers, but it’s not.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350145/original/file-20200729-31-101lw1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Fountain of Youth, a 1546 painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The famous fountain is a mythical spring that supposedly regenerates anyone who bathes in or drinks its waters. Stories of its power have circulated for thousands of years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The futurist’s quest</h2>
<p>There have been myriad scientific research efforts focused on stopping or slowing the effects of ageing. </p>
<p>Last year, scientists studying the
<a href="https://www.wormatlas.org/aging/introduction/mainframe.htm">nematode</a> worm <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> (a common model organism for ageing-related research) managed to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124719308587?via%3Dihub">manipulate its biochemical pathways</a>. The resulting worms lived five times longer than their typical lifespan of 20 days.</p>
<p>The length of the <a href="https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/basics/telomeres/">telomere</a> has also received a lot of interest. This is a tiny structure within a cell that protects chromosomes from deterioration. One <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/30/15122.full.pdf">study</a> found a faster rate of telomere shortening resulted in a shorter lifespan in many species, including humans. </p>
<p>This suggests if we can protect these structures, we could greatly increase our lifespan. However, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10522-018-9748-6#Sec2">telomere maintenance</a> is complex. Also, telomeres can vary in how quickly they shorten, depending on where they are in the body. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-live-longer-consider-the-ethics-101301">Want to live longer? Consider the ethics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The drug <a href="http://www.wch.sa.gov.au/services/az/divisions/paedm/endodiab/documents/metformin_information_sheet.pdf">metformin</a>, usually prescribed to manage type 2 diabetes, has also been touted as a way to delay the onset of a range of age-related diseases, thus increasing “health-span” (how long we remain healthy).</p>
<p>Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Ageing Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for the <a href="https://www.afar.org/tame-trial">first clinical trial</a> of metformin to treat ageing.</p>
<p>But other researchers are <a href="https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/502257">concerned</a>, as metformin intake has been associated with a higher risk of <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/vitamin-b">B vitamin</a> deficiencies. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31119857/">Some studies</a> suggest this can result in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/104/10/4837/5421021?redirectedFrom=fulltext">cognitive dysfunction</a>.</p>
<p>One 2018 study found metformin can reduce aerobic capacity and quash the benefits of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.12880">excercise</a> – something we know to help fight the effects of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10522-017-9719-3">old age</a>.</p>
<p>Metformin also shows mixed results in its effects on ageing depending on which model organism is used (such as rats, flies or worms). This raises doubts about whether its supposed anti-ageing capabilities would apply to humans.</p>
<p>Another <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/beyond-resveratrol-the-anti-aging-nad-fad/">compound of interest</a> is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). This naturally occurring substance is vital to energy metabolism in most animals including humans, plants, bacteria and even <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0134(199705)28:1%3C29::AID-PROT3%3E3.0.CO;2-E?casa_token=C73Z5lTPgsQAAAAA:D3RUbNbpUVWp0B27r_x7aZsp0inBSSY7VJbv-prNzC_yJNTRd8OoEZ85srBuvr8Ifiql2C23FTVQEXv8Vg">yeast</a>. In mice and humans, <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(16)30244-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1550413116302443%3Fshowall%3Dtrue">NAD levels appear to decline</a> as we age.</p>
<p>NAD and compounds like resveratrol (a chemical isolated from wine) have been <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867413015213?via%3Dihub#!">shown to</a> work together to maintain the function of our <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mitochondria-14053590/">mitochondria</a> – the structures that produce energy inside our cells – and thus fight off ageing in mice. But this research lacks much-needed human trials.</p>
<h2>The immortal jellyfish</h2>
<p>Evolutionary biologists know ageing is a highly “plastic” process influenced by many factors including diet, climate, genetics and even the age at which our grandparents <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000556">conceived our parents</a>. But, we don’t know why some species age more slowly than others.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12789#:%7E:text=A%20genotype%20moulds%20its%20phenotype's,across%20the%20tree%20of%20life.">Research</a> has shown several species appear not to age. For example, the “immortal” jellyfish <em>Turritopsis dohrnii</em> can revert to a juvenile stage of life and seemingly escape the process of ageing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352118/original/file-20200811-19-bpcm9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turritopsis dohrnii, famously known as the ‘immortal jellyfish’, can transform its existing cells into a younger state when suffering starvation, physical damage or other afflictions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To figure out why some species age better than humans, we have to understand so-called “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-019-0204-5">epigenetic changes</a>” which alter our DNA expression throughout the ageing process.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ageing-how-our-epigenetic-clocks-slow-down-as-we-get-older-129345">Ageing: how our 'epigenetic clocks' slow down as we get older</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157672/extended-heredity">Epigenetic changes</a> are mechanisms that can determine which genes are turned on or off in offspring. They have a huge influence on the course of a species’ evolution. </p>
<p>Understanding these mechanisms could also help us understand why humans and other animals evolved to age in the first place. </p>
<h2>The culture of DIY biology</h2>
<p>When it comes to research on ageing, immense interest from the public and large companies has created an environment where it’s difficult to separate unfounded claims from science. In this grey area, biohackers emerge.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/25/18682583/biohacking-transhumanism-human-augmentation-genetic-engineering-crispr">“Biohacking”</a> refers to actions that supposedly let you “hack” your brain and body to optimise their performance, without traditional medicine. </p>
<p>Its proponents often peddle claims exaggerated by cherry-picked evidence. One example is <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/alkaline-water-benefits-risks">alkaline water</a>, <a href="https://www.tyentusa.com/blog/a-wrinkle-in-time-slow-down-the-aging-process-with-a-water-ionizer-part-2/">claimed</a> to slow ageing by reducing <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/oxidative-stress">oxidative stress</a>. </p>
<p>Two studies highlight alkaline water’s positive effects for <a href="https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-7-29">acid-base balance</a> in the bloodstream, and <a href="https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-016-0153-8#auth-1">increasing hydration status</a> during exercise. But both of these studies were funded by companies selling alkaline water. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010438.full">systematic review</a> of the literature shows there is no research to support or disprove beliefs about alkaline water being a genuine biohack. </p>
<p>There are also bogus “young blood transfusions”, in which an older person is injected with a younger person’s blood to “cure” ageing. This is a <a href="https://static.insider.com/young-blood-transfusions-ambrosia-shut-down-2019-6">very real and exploitative</a> part of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/03/27/egalitarian-dreams-that-fueled-quest-young-blood-treatments/">anti-ageing industry</a>.</p>
<h2>Even if we could, should we?</h2>
<p>The concept of fighting ageing has <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/archaeology/fountain-of-youth/">long been woven</a> into the human narrative.</p>
<p>But forcefully extending the human lifespan by even one decade would present difficult social realities, and we have little insight into what this would mean for us.</p>
<p>Would a “cure” for ageing be abused by the wealthy? Would knowing we had longer to live decrease our motivation in life? </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s a good thing we won’t be diving into the fountain of youth any time soon – if ever.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: this article was updated to reflect the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is no longer affiliated with Yeshiva University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zachariah Wylde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As modern medicine improves, so too does our ability to stave off disease. But can we overcome the most inescapable of afflictions - old age? Researchers around the world are trying to find out.Zachariah Wylde, Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Biology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1080812019-08-25T19:53:02Z2019-08-25T19:53:02ZThe digital human: the cyber version of humanity’s quest for immortality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288845/original/file-20190821-170914-y90c1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=123%2C173%2C5380%2C3358&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If it were possible to download the neural networks of a human brain, could we preserve a computer simulation of that person?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Immortality has been a topic of discussion since the <a href="http://www.heroofcamelot.com/legend/holy-grail">legend of the Holy Grail</a>. </p>
<p>Some people have gone as far as <a href="https://www.medicaldaily.com/cryogenics-what-it-would-take-bring-frozen-dead-back-life-405431">cryogenic freezing after death</a> in the hope that one day science will have advanced enough to resurrect them. Others believe the route to immortality lies in the digital realm. </p>
<p>The theory that humans can be digitised and live on within the digital confines of a computer-based existence has been the subject of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771">debate</a>. But until recently, no one had taken the idea much beyond research and discussion. </p>
<p>Last year, a consortium of unidentified individuals launched <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virternity">Virternity</a> with the stated goal of a digital life for all. A world that would be owned not by any government but by the people. </p>
<p>This digital world, Virternity said, would remove the physical constraints upon us and the planet and usher in a completely new plane of existence. Then, without any warning, Virternity disappeared.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/virtual-reality-adds-to-tourism-through-touch-smell-and-real-peoples-experiences-101528">Virtual reality adds to tourism through touch, smell and real people's experiences</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The digital human</h2>
<p>Although the future evolution of humanity is much <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/22/regular-body-upgrades-what-will-humans-look-like-in-100-years">discussed</a> and conjectured, perhaps nobody had taken it quite as seriously as this. In its infancy, Virternity seemed concerned with the launch of a new digital currency, the Virie, by which it proposed to fund its endeavour. </p>
<p>An interesting point is that the creators of Virternity were so concerned with ensuring public ownership that very few people even know or knew who exactly they were. Their reasoning was apparently to prevent governments and their agencies subsuming their interests with corporate and other less desirable aims. But being anonymous also has its advantages if a company wants to slide into the shadows, as appears to have been the case. </p>
<p>The biggest question is whether it is even possible for a human, or any living being for that matter, to be digitised in the first place. Therein lies the dichotomy of two different schools of thought. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-you-know-that-we-arent-in-virtual-reality-right-now-98832">Curious Kids: How do you know that we aren't in virtual reality right now?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Philosophy versus mind uploading</h2>
<p>Those who would align themselves with thinkers such as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/">Gilles Deleuze</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/">Henri Bergson</a> believe there is a higher consciousness above the physical persona or body. Such philosophical thinking rests on the idea of duality - the mind and the body are not the same. Therefore, it would seem impossible to digitise a human. How can one put the essence of a human spirit into a computer, almost like a genie into a bottle? </p>
<p>Conversely, several <a href="https://www.popsci.com/article/science/neuroscientist-who-wants-upload-humanity-computer/">prominent scientists and neurosurgeons</a> contend that the physical is all there is. If one can copy the brain of a human in digital form then the rest is easy. Copying the brain is not particularly simple, though. Proposals include making thousands of <a href="https://www.mindful.org/upload-your-brain/">micro-thin slices of a brain</a> and copying the neural network revealed. </p>
<p>To do this, a machine would need to be constructed that can make these slices, and then a willing volunteer would need to be found. These would be physical slices from a brain preserved before death. That’s the drawback. In fact, a startup, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/">Nectome</a>, has been proposing to do just that and preserve your brain until the day it can be digitised. </p>
<p>The person, or at least the contents of their brain, would ultimately be transferred to a computer, and thus remain alive or perhaps be reborn. Experiments have been undertaken on <a href="https://www.popsci.com/article/science/neuroscientist-who-wants-upload-humanity-computer#page-3">scanning a mouse brain</a> but the breakthrough of digitising the entirety of even a mouse brain has not happened. </p>
<h2>What the future might hold</h2>
<p>Moving on from the mechanics that might digitise us all, what would await humanity with digital immortality? Virternity said that great scientists and artists could pursue their careers for centuries, and we need never say goodbye to our loved ones. </p>
<p>The demand for planetary resources would be severely reduced to only that needed for the physical humans left on the planet and of course the computers holding the rest of us. The planet itself might return to a more natural state. We ourselves would be free of famine, pestilence and disease, and could pursue whatever life we wanted, until the end of time.</p>
<p>Perhaps these sound like admirable goals, a utopian dream. But if humans were unleashed into this apparently digital world, would we take advantage of the freedom or simply go about reproducing a digital hell on earth? And what about digital viruses and other distortions of the virtual world itself? </p>
<p>We already have the experience of worlds such as <a href="https://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a>, a highly successful virtual world.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eKzSitgWl9Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Second Life explained.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Virternity would have been the first wholly immersive endeavour to replace the physical reality with a purely digital one. Once digital, there probably would be no going back.</p>
<p>Other important questions arise. How much computing power would we need to run Virternity. Where would it be based and how can we ensure that nobody will simply just switch us all off or press delete? </p>
<p>Perhaps these questions never will be answered or at least not by Virternity as it was. Perhaps a new pheonix will arise from their ashes or someone else will take up the torch. But for now it seems we will have to wait for a digital utopia to become a fact rather than fiction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108081/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Evans Bailey has conducted and written academic research on behalf of the company associated with the Virternity project, at their request. The papers have been published in book form and are available to the public and other academic researchers. </span></em></p>The quest for immortality is as old as humanity itself, but the prospect of being able to copy the neural networks of a person’s brain shifts the pursuit of perpetual life into the digital world.Dr David Evans Bailey, PhD Researcher in Virtual Reality, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1014052018-12-10T15:14:13Z2018-12-10T15:14:13ZSilicon Valley’s quest for immortality – and its worrying sacrifices<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248765/original/file-20181204-34154-1gr0mx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/laboratory-man-wearing-brainwave-scanning-headset-1036799923">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Somewhere in Silicon Valley, a man wakes early with the sunrise. Venturing into the kitchen, he pacifies his rumbling belly with a cup of coffee infused with a large knob of grass-fed butter. He’s in the <a href="https://www.selfhacked.com/blog/lifestyle-diet-increase-longevity/">middle of a fast</a>, after all. </p>
<p>After a two-hour meditation session, he’s off to spend thousands of dollars on his latest indulgence – stem cell injections. The clinic’s practitioner assures him that removing stem cells from his bone marrow and injecting them into other tissues will rejuvenate them from <a href="https://balance.media/biohacking/">their fatigued state</a>. He trusts their word, just as he trusts that spraying nicotine into his mouth will <a href="https://balance.media/biohacking/">give him the benefits</a> of a cigarette without the negative side effects. </p>
<p>When he retires for the night, equipped with melatonin tablets and blue light-blocking glasses to ensure his <a href="https://www.selfhacked.com/blog/methods-to-fall-asleep-insomniac/">sleep cycle isn’t disturbed</a>, he’s satisfied with the day’s achievements. He’s taken another small step towards his goal. He may be a product of the 21st century, but he’s also part of the growing contingent who are doing everything in their power to make it alive into the 23rd. </p>
<p>Humans have long harboured an obsession with living forever. But all those who shared the quest for immortality have something in common – they failed. And yet the dream of eternity hasn’t wavered. So much so, that many alive today cannot help but wonder if the key to their immortality is already lurking in the ever expanding pool of human knowledge.</p>
<p>Modern science has opened an assortment of new ways to improve survival, and now members of the technology-driven ultra-rich are adopting these new approaches in an attempt to extend their own lives. But what is often left unsaid is that modern science has also revealed the darker side of longevity extension: the inevitable physiological trade offs that seem destined to hold us back. Nature seems set to deny our human forms from having it all. So what will it be: humanity, or something else entirely?</p>
<h2>A utopian fantasy</h2>
<p>Francis Bacon’s symbolic narrative <a href="http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/rmonteiro/pdf/The_New_Atlantis.pdf">New Atlantis</a> was published in 1627. The unfinished novel portrays a society where humankind has used science to wrestle control of its world from nature. To some, this world represents a foreshadowing of the scientific utopia that we are barrelling towards today. But our world, unlike Bacon’s, is one full of self-interest and greed, and it is to these traits that the quest to defy ageing belongs.</p>
<p>Failed quests for immortality have a long record. In the <a href="http://www.ancient-literature.com/other_gilgamesh.html">Epic of Gilgamesh</a>, one of humanity’s oldest tales dating back to the 22nd century BC, the title character embarks on an epic quest to attain everlasting life. After many trials and tribulations, he eventually hears of a flower on the ocean floor that will restore his youth. And despite a warning from the only people ever granted immortality by the gods - that his quest will ruin the joys of life - Gilgamesh plucks the flower from the watery depths.</p>
<p>His success doesn’t last. Gilgamesh inevitably loses the flower; and eventually, like all mortals before and after him, he dies. His is a story of defiance against our mortal forms, our endeavour to go to great lengths to overcome them, and the ultimate futility of the idea. It encompasses a theme that still holds significant relevance in the field of anti-ageing research.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248738/original/file-20181204-34145-psb3r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Qin Shi Huang dispatched expeditions to find the ‘Elixir of Life’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xu_Fu_expedition%27s_for_the_elixir_of_life.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nearly 2,000 years later, the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, also found himself enamoured with the idea of ruling forever. He tasked his subjects with finding him the “Elixir of Life”, but as he aged with no answer in sight he began to grow desperate. There is evidence that he began ingesting potions containing the highly toxic compound <a href="https://www.livescience.com/61286-first-chinese-emperor-sought-immortality.html">mercury sulphide</a>. So in an ironic twist of fate, his quest for eternal life may have led him to a premature grave. </p>
<p>Fast forward to the 19th century and Elixirs of Life had made their way into the mainstream, with many bars and apothecaries selling their own concoctions. <a href="https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140616/lower-east-side/archaeologists-recreate-elixir-of-long-life-after-unearthing-1800s-bottle">Consisting of</a> water, herbs and a considerable dose of alcohol, these potions, once touted to extend life, have slowly morphed into today’s herbal remedies. But it would take another 100 years before society could fathom replacing these elixirs with something based on actual evidence.</p>
<p>By the 1930s, scientists had used experiments on rats to reveal that restricting calories could lead to a significant increase in lifespan, a finding that still <a href="https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19351403082">holds a lot of weight</a> with today’s immortality seekers. Despite this success, research into the processes of ageing remained small scale at best. But a revolution was on the horizon.</p>
<p>The year 1945 saw the birth of the <a href="https://www.geron.org/about-us/history">Gerontological Society</a>, which established a journal and cultivated research interest in the fledgling field. Its work would prove worthwhile, as by the early 1980s humanity’s understanding of and appetite for ageing research had increased considerably.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248756/original/file-20181204-34145-1eg4nd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Calorie restriction remains a crucial tool for longevity seekers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-businessman-having-lunch-cafe-drinking-1067746376?src=e-Th9lWmhQCkBdI4ZjKrlw-1-1">AT Production/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Restricting calories was no longer the sole item on the list of age-halting strategies. New insights into how cells communicate via signalling and the impact of this process on cell behaviour had swiftly come to the fore. Most notably were those based around the hormone insulin, which was <a href="https://acmedsci.ac.uk/file-download/35180-ageingwe.pdf">found to regulate</a> many aspects of ageing.</p>
<p>Then, in 1990, Daniel Rudman transformed the field with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2355952">his study</a> of the human growth hormone. He had noticed that the amount of lean body mass (everything in the body except fat) decreased as the amount of growth hormone produced by the body’s cells waned. Curious to see if he could reverse this trend, his team injected older males with synthetic growth hormones, reinvigorating their bodies with a more youthful form by restoring their ability to break down fat cells and grow new bone and muscle cells.</p>
<p>At this, entrepreneurs sat up and took notice. Many leapt on the idea for monetary gain, determined to sell the hormone as an <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2695179">anti-ageing therapy</a>. Journalists were swept along in the wave of excitement, writing of the “<a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970642,00.html">shot of youth</a>” and asking if we could now stop ageing entirely.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248734/original/file-20181204-34122-26pwad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Long life in a pill (or ten).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/biohack-your-brain-smart-skillful-thoughtful-1040780251">Yakobchuk Viacheslav/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The metamorphosis of the anti-ageing industry had begun. And although no one quite knew what world would emerge when their longevity mission was done, they were determined that it would be something beautiful.</p>
<p>The human growth hormone craze has since fallen away, but a heap of alternative <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-ageing-drugs-are-coming-an-expert-explains-102792">supplementary therapies</a> have readily taken its place. 2003 also saw the completion of the Human Genome Project, which was thought to hold answers for solving many <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001305/">age-related diseases</a> by identifying the key <a href="https://www.genome.gov/11006962/2003-release-gene-for-premature-aging-disorder/">genes that caused them</a>. Yet the answer to avoiding the deterioration that comes with age has <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2582021/">remained elusive</a>.</p>
<p>In the years since, many research fields have been scoured in search of answers: health, sport science, psychology, medicine, computer science. Interest has only intensified and wealthy benefactors have shown unrelenting perseverance, with <a href="https://www.calicolabs.com/">entire companies</a> springing into existence in an effort to unlock eternity. Such confidence raises an inevitable question for the rest of us: can it really be done?</p>
<h2>Biohacking the body</h2>
<p>There are many, many coffee shops in California. But there are a few, in downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica for example, that offer a unique experience. Inside, you’ll find lighting that changes throughout the day, electromagnetic chairs designed to increase customers’ blood flow, and coffee that’s infused with oil and served with butter. These are the entrepreneur Dave Asprey’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/nov/25/bulletproof-coffee-is-adding-butter-to-your-morning-coffee-a-step-too-far">Bulletproof coffee</a> houses, located at the very heart of the so-called biohacking movement.</p>
<p>Asprey is a well-known, controversial figure who often <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/08/05/dave-asprey-biohacking-180-years-bulletproof-coffee/87916348">publicly claims</a> that he’ll live to 180 years old by augmenting his daily habits to alter his physiology. Asprey’s <a href="https://blog.bulletproof.com/">Bulletproof blog</a> is littered with articles and podcasts detailing the health benefits one can supposedly achieve by employing such “hacks”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248740/original/file-20181204-34122-1j8ngv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dave Asprey, complete with blue light filtering glasses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/collisionconf/26966143517/in/photostream/">Collision Conf/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These include dietary supplements – which the cynical will note are available as Bulletproof products – and activities that subject the body to stress. We see some of these debatable principles materialising in the <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/08/05/dave-asprey-biohacking-180-years-bulletproof-coffee/87916348/">Bulletproof coffee shops</a>, with Bulletproof coffee playing the star role but magnetic furniture, grounded floor panels and elevated yoga spots providing a diverse supporting ensemble.</p>
<p>Far from being an exact science, <a href="https://blog.bulletproof.com/beginners-guide-to-biohacking-101/">biohacking</a> is an umbrella term that encompasses a bunch of self-help material, a dollop of scientific reasoning, and a sprinkle of philosophy for good measure. (<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-biohackers-letting-technology-get-under-their-skin-60756">People who employ technology</a> to augment their bodies have also been referred to as biohackers, but they’re more commonly referred to as <a href="https://theconversation.com/super-intelligence-and-eternal-life-transhumanisms-faithful-follow-it-blindly-into-a-future-for-the-elite-78538">transhumanists</a>, which we’ll come to later).</p>
<p>Some of the more eccentric biohackers even encourage regular use of prescription and illegal drugs, such as the <a href="https://hackernoon.com/biohack-your-intelligence-now-or-become-obsolete-97cdd15e395f">psychoactive narcotic MDMA</a> to improve charisma and the <a href="https://blog.bulletproof.com/why-you-are-suffering-from-a-modafinil-deficiency/">narcolepsy nootropic modafinil</a> to enhance cognitive function. And unlike many of Silicon Valley’s anti-ageing companies, which pay considerable credence towards genetic variation playing a key role in ageing, biohacking adopts a purely epigenetic approach. It preaches that we can achieve longevity simply by changing our habits and lifestyle.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248742/original/file-20181204-34154-1hhx3km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cryo-sauna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-happy-young-woman-whole-body-452485297">Jacob Lund/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So what sort of physical stressors do biohackers recommend we subject ourselves to? There are many, but an excellent example is the common biohack of taking cold showers. Allegedly, soaking your body in ice cold water provides a <a href="https://impossiblehq.com/cold-shower-health-benefits">boon to the immune system</a>. The <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/out-in-the-cold">scientific evidence</a> supporting this is <a href="http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/isbn9789514296673.pdf">tentative at best</a>, and highlights the tendency of biohackers to readily extrapolate on scientific findings that reinforce their world view. But you only need to scratch beneath the surface to uncover the murky water beneath.</p>
<p>The cold may well train your blood vessels to be responsive, activate calorie-burning brown fat and decrease inflammation, but it is a double-edged sword. Low temperatures can also constrict your blood vessels - increasing blood pressure - and increase your susceptibility to infection. This acts as a counter to the <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/out-in-the-cold">supposed (and unconfirmed)</a> health boon.</p>
<p>With this in mind, cold showers and other extreme practices - which Dave Asprey thinks will help him live to 180 years old - are a young person’s game, and might fly in the face of prolonged life. A biohacking practice may yield a net gain in health when you’re young, but as you age there’s a good chance the balance will shift towards a loss.</p>
<h2>Inevitability of trade-offs</h2>
<p>The biohacking field rarely considers the dark side of longevity extension, that every gain comes with a trade off. Research has shown that we can extend life, but at a cost in ability to fight infection. For example, we can extend the life of the fruit fly, <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em>, by forcing them to eat high sugar, low protein diets. This comes at a cost in the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acel.12333">form of fewer offspring per parent</a> and a reduced ability to fight infection, a process that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/evo.12453">requires protein</a>. </p>
<p>We can also increase longevity by knocking down immune genes or by exposing flies to a dead infection. But, likewise, both of these treatments lead to a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/evo.12453">substantially reduced</a> ability to fight live infections.</p>
<p>Zooming in on cellular components reveals the molecular details underlying many such trade offs. The Cinderella story of the anti-ageing field is mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), a molecule that performs a diverse range of roles sending signals around the body. Controlling mTOR in effect allows us to control much of the cell system, including how it ages and divides. And there are now a raft of anti-ageing drugs that modulate the activity of mTOR. </p>
<p>Biohackers, for their part, have cracked a way to naturally manipulate mTOR into a similar state by <a href="https://idmprogram.com/fasting-and-autophagy-mtor-autophagy-1/">restricting their calorie intake</a>, sometimes through <a href="https://blog.bulletproof.com/bulletproof-fasting/">intermittent fasting</a>. The logic behind this being that mTOR only signals the cell to build and grow when there are enough nutrients around for it to be worthwhile. So consuming less food means less mTOR activity, reducing cell growth and, in turn, the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2806018/">rate of cell death</a>. But <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3616892/">evidence shows</a> that inhibiting this important molecule’s function not only slows ageing but also suppresses the immune system.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248771/original/file-20181204-34138-15mzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suppressing the immune system protects our mitochondria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/digital-illustration-mitochondria-colour-background-255109180?src=O-u9LHsAO6haC07Few8OpA-1-7">Raj Creationzs/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our immune system is costly because it uses our precious mitochondria (the batteries that power our cells) to produce toxic compounds and cause inflammation <a href="https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/pdf/S1097-2765(16)00081-2.pdf">when fighting germs</a>, which damages the mitochondria. So by suppressing the immune system - as shown in both in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/evo.12453">our own work</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806056/">elsewhere</a> - we can avoid this sort of damage and make it possible to increase longevity. </p>
<p>Of course, this approach comes with considerable risk. These experimental studies have all taken place in controlled environments with minimal exposure to germs. In a natural environment, deliberately impairing an immune system, whether through drug supplementing or caloric restriction, can <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160314101759.htm">cost us dearly</a>, especially in a world where bacteria are persistently evolving <a href="http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance">more resistance to antibiotics</a>.</p>
<p>The trade off between immunity and longevity is a fine example of nature’s way of balancing the scales. Preventing mitochondrial damage and suspending cell death may seem like excellent life-extending practices on their face, but foregoing a fully functional immune response to get there is a heavy, and potentially fatal, price to pay. </p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that natural selection has conserved the mTOR-equivalent mechanism throughout the evolution of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19100909">all animal, fungal and plant life</a>, which highlights just how useful it must be. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so ready to tamper with such an integral element to the fitness of our cells.</p>
<h2>Immortality or humanity?</h2>
<p>There will always be a myriad of ways our mortal forms can go wrong. And we’ve seen that physiological constraints seem set to always hold us back from drastically extending our lifespans and remedying the root cause of ageing – if there even is one.</p>
<p>But on the border between science fiction and pioneering science rest exciting technological ideas that could perhaps unlock a different kind of immortality. Technology can already help us catch age-related defects early, but it holds the potential to become even better: what if we were able to circumvent biological trade offs entirely?</p>
<p>Billionaire Elon Musk’s company <a href="https://theconversation.com/neuralink-wants-to-wire-your-brain-to-the-internet-what-could-possibly-go-wrong-76180">Neuralink</a> is already on the march to set us down this transhumanist path. It envisages a future where humans are far more intimately connected with their electronic devices than we are today. It invites us to work towards a brain-machine interface that would fundamentally integrate us with our technology, achieving a truly symbiotic relationship.</p>
<p>The research is still in its early stages, but brain-machine interfaces are already in use in the form of ear and eye implants that can <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262686051_From_cochlear_implants_to_brain-computer_interfaces">restore our senses</a>, and brain implants that allow disabled people to remotely control <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20805058">computers</a> and <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7560425">robots</a>. Neuralink aims to take this a step further by seamlessly connecting us to electronic devices, the internet and even other humans. Essentially, we’d all have encyclopaedic information on hand and be able to communicate with one another telepathically. </p>
<p>To make this remarkable enhancement possible, a brain-machine interface would be injected into our bloodstream and travel to the brain. There it would self-assemble into a mesh-like structure on the outside of the cerebral cortex, entwining technology to the core of our <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part3">intelligence and sentience</a>.</p>
<p>Despite the invasiveness of Neuralink’s implants, there are already a host of healthy individuals who are eager for such artificial enhancement. Some have even gone so far as to perform surgery on themselves just to install a gadget of <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-biohackers-letting-technology-get-under-their-skin-60756">meagre real-world value</a>. But this may be just the start.</p>
<p>Neuralink and the technology it inspires could become a gateway to a post-human future. Through research in this area, we may decipher the means to accurately translate our organic, chemical neuronal pathways into electronic data that could encapsulate them. And so we may, eventually, be able to capture our beings within a computer, living forever as digital memory accessed by a piece of software.</p>
<p>This might be an extreme solution to the question of how to live forever, but there are wealthy individuals, such as entrepreneur <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dmitry-itskov-2045-initiative-immortality-brain-uploading-a6930416.html">Dmitry Itskov</a>, devoted to the idea of merging with a computer. Itskov’s <a href="http://2045.com/">2045 Initiative</a> views brain-machine interfaces as just the first step in a four-part journey that culminates in an artificial brain housing a human personality that controls a hologram-like avatar.</p>
<p>Itskov and other futurists are promising immortality, but to attain it we’ll have to make possibly the biggest trade off of them all, giving away one of our most precious and defining gifts: our human form. The organic brain has forever been the vessel of our soul. An artificial copy may go as far as capturing your entire network of <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/100-trillion-connections/">100 trillion connections</a>, but would it truly be you?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248733/original/file-20181204-34148-kgv4wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What will we leave behind if upload our brains?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/artificial-intelligence-concept-man-1232939095?src=mewpebfy-R935QGHdqy6FQ-1-15">Elnur/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s a deep question, but our transcendence (or just divergence) away from organic matter means that we may well cease to be human as we know it. Concerns that humans have been warring over for millennia – resources, wealth, mates – could cease to be important. Physical pleasures that have been fundamental to our experience – intimacy, excitement, music, food – might be replaced by virtual signals and synthetic stimulants.</p>
<p>Or at least for some. The rest of us who can’t afford to become immortal avatars will be left to battle over these now trivial concerns, while the wealthy post-humans drift above for eternity. </p>
<p>Musk has shown that entrepreneurship can contribute to science through his forays into the space industry and his company’s <a href="http://www.spacex.com/falcon9">revolutionary rocket design</a>. But the quest for longevity has been embraced so tightly by Silicon Valley and others in the business world, that some scientific researchers have actively distanced themselves from <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2695179/">tackling the issue</a>. In a biological research field that’s so reliant on a worldwide network of experts, more noble goals need to take the prominent position. </p>
<p>A fundamental difficulty of all of these endeavours is that they are an example of science, presumably driven not so much by a desire for greater understanding of the universe or the betterment of humanity, as by personal profit and individual gain.</p>
<p>Whether we will ever find a way to overcome the physiological trade offs that hold back immortality, or whether we will really be able to replicate human consciousness in a computer are questions too difficult for us yet to answer. But are those leading the charge against death at least inspiring us to lead healthy lives, or are they simply rallying against an inevitable fate? </p>
<p>If you were to ask the wealthy patrons of Silicon Valley, the answer would be the former. They’d direct you to the lifespan statistics, which have shown that we survive well over a decade longer on average today than we did <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy">just 50 years ago </a>. They’d also emphasise <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6396/1459.full">the growing evidence</a> that defies the idea of an “upper limit” on how long an individual can survive.</p>
<p>Ongoing research, they’d argue, is already yielding fruit, and it’ll only be exponential progress from here. But, perhaps unfortunately, our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/evo.12453">research</a> has shed light on the considerable drawbacks in health that may well come as a consequence of our meddling with anti-ageing therapies. Man’s reach, it appears, continues to exceed his grasp.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Priest has received external funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Scottish Government and the
Wellcome Trust. This funding has supported basic research on disease modelling and life-history trade-offs, which has informed this article. There are no conflicts of interest in the publication of this article. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James S. Horton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Long read: How nature is fighting our attempts to use biohacking to live forever.James S. Horton, PhD Candidate, University of BathNicholas K. Priest, Lecturer, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1080072018-12-09T17:21:40Z2018-12-09T17:21:40Z‘Start-up nation’: a symptom, but of what?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248198/original/file-20181130-194941-1adhfws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C1500%2C866&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under pressure, young entrepreneurs would tend to forget to take into account the effects of their ambitions on their surroundings. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Just dance/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today, becoming a “start-up nation” is a public policy objective in virtually every country in the world, be it Morocco, Bangladesh, Mexico or Peru. They are all rushing to follow the nations that have led the way – the United States, China, South Korea, Israel, Canada. </p>
<p>France got off to a laborious start in the early 2000s, but has recently reactivated this goal. On October 10, 2018, President Emmanuel Macron addressed an audience of digital entrepreneurs at Station F, which calls itself the <a href="https://stationf.co/fr/">“biggest start-up campus in the world”</a>, and announced an ambitious roadmap to assist and promote entrepreneurs in France.</p>
<p>Everywhere, institutional pressure to transform young people into entrepreneurs is becoming an obsession. It’s a symptom, but of what? Can it not be seen as a sign of panic among politicians contemplating the shortage of prospects to offer young people?</p>
<h2>A cascade of service providers</h2>
<p>Let’s try to interpret this strange new command: “Become entrepreneurs!” It seems to suggest that established institutions only open up two avenues for the younger generation: opt for indigence with some degree of welfare assistance (e.g. a basic living stipend) or take a gamble. If so, then encouragement to create start-ups may be seen as the public face of a very discreet strategy on the part of large state and capitalistic organisations intent on sweeping this social issue under the carpet.</p>
<p>To an increasing extent, these same organisations are subcontracting, outsourcing, automating, robotising and digitising to reduce the cost of labour as a percentage of total operating expenditure. They look for “talent”, i.e. a small minority of high-value added employees, while systematically avoiding the employment of workers deemed interchangeable, leaving them to the hard law of the market and progressively transforming them into service providers; into the providers of other providers; into the providers of providers of providers; and so forth.</p>
<h2>A new wave of utopias</h2>
<p>What’s going to happen to university graduates? Whether they major in physical education, the humanities, communication and journalism, marketing or human resources, they all dream of finding jobs that will bring them self-fulfilment and even enjoyment. In France, they also expect five weeks of annual paid vacation and time off in lieu of overtime pay under the “RTT” scheme.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, young university-goers saw themselves as radical activists, reading Trotsky, Lenin or Mao in preparation for the revolution to come. To a small degree, that dream has persisted in variant forms such as eco-activism, alter-globalisation or feminism. However, it is now part of a new wave of utopias that amalgamates digitisation, virtual reality, risk-taking, entrepreneurship, start-ups, easy money, the get-rich-quick ethic and the cult of performance.</p>
<p>The problem is that, in today’s society, young people arrive on a job market that is not prepared to accommodate them. Leaving them to themselves, it calls them “entrepreneurs”. This magic word, with its connotations of freedom and hope, actually shifts responsibility for any eventual disappointments or failures onto them and them alone. Failure will then be <a href="https://www.odilejacob.fr/catalogue/psychologie/psychologie-generale/fatigue-detre-soi_9782738108593.php">a token of their inadequacy</a> and the success of the few will be taken as proof that the many could have done the same, as Alain Ehernberg rightly pointed out in his book <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/weariness-of-the-self--the-products-9780773536258.php"><em>Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age</em></a>.</p>
<h2>Even brilliant successes are problematic</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://theconversation.com/la-bataille-dazincourt-1415-la-mode-des-start-up-1998-2017-et-lhistoire-des-passions-francaises-85491">previous article</a>, I raised the issue of the rate at which start-up founders meet with failure. I also stressed how little we know about the collateral damage to their lives and those of their families as well as, more generally, the social and financial cost of aggregate business closures.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that even the most brilliant successes are problematic. Inevitably, outsized ambitions to achieve impressive growth built from nothing, or virtually nothing, will have moral consequences on “les entrepreneurs et les entrepris”, a phrase coined by <a href="https://classiques-garnier.com/entrepreneurs-entreprise-histoire-d-une-idee.html">philosopher Héléne Verin</a>, <em>entrepris</em> being a neologism for those caught up in the toils of entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>I encourage you to read an article on this subject by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pour-en-finir-avec-le-machiav%C3%A9lisme-start-up-diana-filippova/">Diana Filippova</a>, formerly the start-up ecosystem lead at Microsoft France, in which she expresses her indignation at the Machiavellian behaviour of some of the start-up founders that have crossed her path.</p>
<p>In particular, she notes that young entrepreneurs, obsessed with growth targets and under pressure to deliver results, quickly become sharks. Some remain oblivious to the effects of their ambitions on those involved in or affected by their venture. Many careers starting out with the best of intentions end up marked by serial bankruptcies, business registrations and cynicism.</p>
<h2>Irresponsible opportunism</h2>
<p>Start-ups like <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2018/03/22/ce-qu-il-faut-savoir-sur-cambridge-analytica-la-societe-au-c-ur-du-scandale-facebook_5274804_4408996.html">Cambridge Analytica</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/theranos-les-inavouables-secrets-dune-start-up-frauduleuse-103860">Theranos</a> have displayed an extreme form of irresponsible opportunism. Was Mark Zuckerberg really so busy focusing on his own start-up’s mega-success that he didn’t realize what he was doing prior to testifying before committees at the US Senate or the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.fr/en-direct-audition-mark-zuckerberg-au-parlement-europeen/">European Parliament committee hearing</a>? Have Facebook users finally gotten the picture? Have they finally understood that Facebook, the platform enabling them to “stay connected with family and friends”, is also dirty, selling their personal data on the sly?</p>
<p>One lesson to be learned from the history of capitalism is that the accumulation of massive wealth in a very short lapse of time almost always involves <a href="https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-Portrait_de_l_homme_d_affaires_en_predateur-9782707150745.html">predatory activities</a>. To cite Aristotle’s terminology, this is <em>chrematistikos</em> (the art of acquiring wealth), not <em>oikonomia</em> (the art of running a household).</p>
<p>The investment funds that back start-ups exert pressure on them to accumulate as much wealth as possible as quickly as possible. And scenarios like this, in which outsized ambitions run rampant, are precisely those in which predation becomes the most probable factor of success.</p>
<h2>Under pressure to succeed</h2>
<p>Some successful start-ups, GAFAs and unicorns achieve growth by crushing everything that stands in their way. But what about the entrepreneurs whose business, mismatched with the market, fails to get off the ground? This fragilised population is the one likely to suffer the most from the pernicious effects of propaganda in favour of entrepreneurship.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242155/original/file-20181024-71011-1l8j9gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert K. Merton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Robert K. Merton pointed out in his book <em>Social Theory and Social Structure</em> (1968), “<em>In societies such as our own, then, the great cultural emphasis on pecuniary success for all and a social structure which unduly limits practical recourse to approved means for many set up a tension toward innovative practices which depart from institutional norms</em>”. He also noted that: “<em>Several researches have shown that specialised areas of vice and crime constitute a "normal” response to a situation where the cultural emphasis upon pecuniary success has been absorbed, but where there is little access to conventional and legitimate means for becoming successful.</em>“</p>
<p>If the strongest survive, it’s often because they commit fouls on other players in the game, feel that "anything goes” in order to win and think that, on this playing field, the end justifies the means.</p>
<p>So, what are we looking at? Innovation or criminal deviance? Impressive growth or future disasters? New technologies that liberate or enslave? Social entrepreneurship or a well-planned, right-minded scam? Given its current modus operandi, entrepreneurship promises a fortune for the few, while the many slip and fall by the wayside. The moral climate of this “accident-prone” business environment can only be characterised as sinister.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was translated from the <a href="https://www.universite-paris-saclay.fr/en/news/the-start-up-nation-a-symptom-but-of-what">French original</a> by Université Paris Saclay.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108007/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michel Villette ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The enthusiasm for business creation is not without negative consequences, especially for the many who fail. However, the “all entrepreneurs” discourse remains predominant.Michel Villette, Professeur de Sociologie, Chercheur au Centre Maurice Halbwachs ENS/EHESS/CNRS , professeur de sociologie, AgroParisTech – Université Paris-SaclayLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1013012018-08-31T10:44:27Z2018-08-31T10:44:27ZWant to live longer? Consider the ethics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233952/original/file-20180828-86126-1rw930s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Telomeres, a part of DNA that hold the key to biological aging.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/telomere-growth-longer-length-dna-medical-611922089?src=cStGUiKO4G39KUYpIPiWvA-1-0">Lightspring/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Life extension – using science to slow or halt human aging so that people live far longer than they do naturally – <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/aging-is-reversible-at-least-in-human-cells-and-live-mice/">may one day be possible</a>. </p>
<p>Big business is taking this possibility seriously. In 2013 Google founded a company called <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603087/googles-long-strange-life-span-trip/">Calico to develop life extension methods</a>, and Silicon Valley billionaires Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have invested in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/29/-jeff-bezos-is-backing-this-scientist-who-is-working-on-a-cure-for-aging.html">Unity Biotechnology</a>, which has a market cap of US$700 million. Unity Biotechnology focuses mainly on preventing age-related diseases, but its research could lead to methods for <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/article/can-unity-biotechnology-find-a-cure-for-age-cm956706">slowing or preventing aging</a> itself.</p>
<p>From my perspective <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-methuselahs">as a philosopher</a>, this poses two ethical questions. First, is extended life good? Second, could extending life harm others?</p>
<h2>Is living forever a good thing?</h2>
<p>Not everyone is convinced that extending life would be good. In a 2013 survey by the <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/08/Radical-life-extension-full.pdf">Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life project</a>, some respondents worried that it might become boring, or that they would miss out on the benefits of growing old, such as gaining wisdom and learning to accept death.</p>
<p>Philosophers such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jun/13/guardianobituaries.obituaries">Bernard Williams</a> have shared this concern. In 1973 Williams <a href="http://resourcelists.st-andrews.ac.uk/items/75AD40A1-A3D3-0F78-163C-E8851C80C650.html">argued that</a> immortality would become intolerably boring if one never changed. He also argued that, if people changed enough to avoid intolerable boredom, they would eventually change so much that they’d be entirely different people.</p>
<p>On the other hand, not everyone is persuaded that extended life would be a bad life. I’m not. But that’s not the point. No one is proposing to force anyone to use life extension, and – out of respect for liberty – no one should be prevented from using it.</p>
<p>Nineteenth-century philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/">John Stuart Mill</a> <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm">argued that society must respect individual liberty</a> when it comes to deciding what’s good for us. In other words, it’s wrong to interfere with someone’s life choices even when he or she makes bad choices. </p>
<p>However, Mill also held that our liberty right is limited by the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#HarPri">“harm principle.”</a> The harm principle says that the right to individual liberty is limited by a duty not to harm others.</p>
<p>There are many possible harms: Dictators might live far too long, society might become too conservative and risk-averse and pensions might have to be limited, to name a few. One that stands out to me is the injustice of unequal access.</p>
<p>What does unequal access looks like when it comes to life extension?</p>
<h2>Available only to the rich?</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will life extension increase inequality?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wealthy-couple-classic-convertible-308973545?src=tR9N13P-uGaqJT9ChsU3pg-1-7">Nejron Photo/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many people, such as philosopher <a href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/john.harris/">John Harris</a> and those in the Pew Center survey, worry that life extension would be <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/288/5463/59">available only to the rich</a> and make existing inequalities even worse. </p>
<p>Indeed, it is unjust when some people live longer than the poor because they have better health care. It would be far more unjust if the rich could live several decades or centuries longer than anyone else and gain more time to consolidate their advantages.</p>
<p>Some philosophers suggest that society should prevent inequality by <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8519.00287">banning life extension</a>. This is equality by denial – if not everyone can get it, then no one gets it.</p>
<p>However, as philosopher <a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/">Richard J. Arneson</a> notes, “leveling-down” – <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+Contemporary+Political+Philosophy%2C+2+Volume+Set%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781405136532">achieving equality by making some people worse off</a> without making anyone better off – is unjust.</p>
<p>Indeed, as I argue in <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-methuselahs">my recent book on life extension ethics</a>, most of us reject leveling-down in other situations. For example, there are not enough human organs for transplant, but no one thinks the answer is to ban organ transplants.</p>
<p>Moreover, banning or slowing down the development of life extension may simply delay a time when the technology gets cheap enough for everyone to have it. TV sets were once a toy for the wealthy; now even poor families have them. In time, this could happen with life extension.</p>
<p>Justice requires that society subsidize access to life extension to the extent it can afford to do so. However, justice does not require banning life extension just because it’s not possible to give it to everyone.</p>
<h2>Overpopulation crisis?</h2>
<p>Another possible harm is that the world will become overcrowded. Many people, including philosophers <a href="https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/">Peter Singer</a> and <a href="https://phil.ucalgary.ca/profiles/walter-glannon">Walter Glannon</a>, are concerned that extending human life would <a href="https://doi.org/10.1076/jmep.27.3.339.2978">cause severe overpopulation</a>, pollution and resource shortages.</p>
<p>One way to prevent this harm, as <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/walter-glannon/genes-and-future-people/9780813345512/">some philosophers have proposed</a>, is to limit the number of children after life extension. </p>
<p>This would be politically very difficult and very hard on those who want longer lives, but trying to ban life extension would be equally difficult, and denying people longer lives would be just as hard on them – if not more so. Limiting reproduction, as hard as that may be, is a better way to follow the harm principle.</p>
<h2>Will death be worse?</h2>
<p>Another possible harm is that widespread life extension might make death worse for some people.</p>
<p>All else being equal, it is better to die at 90 than nine. At 90 you’re not missing out on many years, but at nine you lose most of your potential life. As philosopher <a href="http://jeffersonmcmahan.com/">Jeff McMahan</a> argues, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-ethics-of-killing-9780195169829?cc=us&lang=en&">death is worse the more years it takes from you</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What will be the right measure of age?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smiling-aged-businesswoman-glasses-looking-colleague-1027563301?src=keTJkbAWjq5GI06k0170hw-1-17">fizkes/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now imagine that people living in a far wealthier neighborhood don’t have to die at 90 or so. They can afford life extension, and will live to 190. You can’t afford it, and you are dying at 80. Is your death not so bad, for you’re losing only a few years, or is your death now far worse, because – if only you had life extension – you might live to 190? Are you losing 10 years, or are you losing 110 years? </p>
<p>In a world where some people get life extension and some don’t, what’s the right measure for how many years death takes from you?</p>
<p>Perhaps the right measure is how many years life extension would give you, multiplied by the odds of getting it. For example, if you have a 20 percent chance of getting 100 years, then your death is worse by however many years you’d get in a normal lifespan, plus 20 years. </p>
<p>If so, then the fact that some people can get life extension makes your death somewhat worse. This is a more subtle kind of harm than living in an overpopulated world, but it’s a harm all the same.</p>
<p>However, not just any harm is enough to outweigh liberty. After all, expensive new medical treatments can extend a normal lifespan, but even if that makes death slightly worse for those who can’t afford those treatments, no one thinks such treatments should be banned.</p>
<p>I believe that life extension is a good thing, but it does pose threats to society that must be taken seriously.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248895/original/file-20181204-133100-t34yqm.png?w=128&h=128">
<div>
<header>John K. Davis is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-methuselahs">New Methuselahs
The Ethics of Life Extension</a></p>
<footer>MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John K. Davis is a Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. His research on life extension ethics was partially supported by a grant from The Templeton Foundation through the Immortality Project.
MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</span></em></p>Several companies are trying to develop life extension methods that could enable some people to live far longer. There are some ethical dilemmas.John K. Davis, Professor of Philosophy, California State University, Fullerton Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/962482018-05-31T20:20:03Z2018-05-31T20:20:03ZCryopreservation: the field of possibilities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217966/original/file-20180507-46364-qq7nqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C926%2C533&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/zzOPJR7tlK0">Adam Jang/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cryonics have long been a staple of fiction, including everything from Philip K. Dick’s classic 1969 sci-fi novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik"><em>Ubik</em></a> to the cheesy 1992 Mel Gibson film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWPsNthP_1w"><em>Forever Young</em></a>. More recent examples include French author Marc Levy’s <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/l-horizon-a-l-envers-de-marc-levy-passe-le-test-de-la-page-99_1762713.html"><em>L'Horizon à l'envers</em></a> (<em>The Upside-down Horizon</em>) and Don DeLillo’s 1996 <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/don-delillo-new-book-zero-k-review-cryogenics-immortality-and-the-fragility-of-life-a7022351.html"><em>Zero K</em></a>. The idea is certainly attractive, and simple: pop yourself or a loved one into a freezer, wait a century, rethaw, and you’re good to go.</p>
<p>From time to time, some stories draw attention to the real world of cryonics. For example, in 2016 a British judge authorised the cryopreservation of a fatally ill <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/18/teenage-girls-wish-for-preservation-after-death-agreed-to-by-court">14-year-old girl</a>, and the following year, a <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/woman-cryogenically-frozen-after-dying-10985205">49-year-old woman</a> became the first person to be cryopreserved in China.</p>
<p>In reality, at a time when several hundred people around the world have already been cryogenised, such cases are no longer so rare. The three best-known companies in this field – <a href="http://alcor.org/">Alcor Life Extension Foundation</a>, Cryonics Institute and <a href="http://kriorus.ru/">KrioRus</a> – offer various cryopreservation packages ranging from $28,000 to $200,000 that can be funded through a life-insurance policy with the selected company as the designated beneficiary. Far from being a mere fantasy, cryopreservation penetrates contemporary culture and is becoming a real business.</p>
<h2>Towards a “postmortal society”</h2>
<p>As early as the 1960s, a milestone was reached in the quest for immortality thanks to the development of body cryopreservation techniques making it possible to stop the decomposition process and envisage subsequent resuscitation. Robert Ettinger, the founder of the Cryonics Institute and considered the father of cryonics, popularised these methods in his 1962 book <a href="https://www.cryonics.org/images/uploads/misc/Prospect_Book.pdf"><em>The Prospect of Immortality</em></a>.</p>
<p>According to its defenders, cryonics would be the way in which the present mortal community would become the future “postmortal society” described by Céline Lafontaine and predicted by transhumanists. The claims for cryonics renew the quest for immortality and undoubtedly participate in the phenomenon of relegation of death that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Ari%C3%A8s">Philippe Ariès</a> was able to describe by noting that “society has expelled death”. In this context, it is not surprising that some individuals, are beginning to claim a right to cryopreservation, as a precursor of a right to immortality.</p>
<h2>Immortality in court</h2>
<p>In the United States, cryonics does not seem to pose any legal difficulties, but in Europe, especially in France, the situation is different.</p>
<p>In this country, the law is not clear on cryopreservation, neither authorising nor prohibiting it. Therefore, can a French citizen be cryogenised despite this legislative uncertainty? That is the question put to the government by the French senator Jean-Louis Masson in 2006. The answer was unambiguous: only burial and cremation are legal, so cryopreservation is prohibited. Therefore, despite the recognition of the freedom of funerals by an 1887 French law and the obligation to respect the deceased’s choices regarding his funeral provided by Article <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719&idArticle=LEGIARTI000006418594">433-21-1 of the French Penal Code</a>, cryopreservation seems impossible to implement in France in the current state of the law.</p>
<p>The French supreme court for administrative justice is also against cryopreservation. One of its decisions concerned the preservation by a brother and sister, Michel and Joëlle Leroy, of their dead mother’s body. On <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriAdmin.do?idTexte=CETATEXT000008094821">July 29, 2002</a>, the State Council rejected their request for permission to keep their mother’s remains in a freezer located in the basement of their property in Saint-Denis de La Réunion. A second case concerned the maintenance of the remains of Dr. Raymont Martinot and his wife in a machine that their son, Rémy Martinot, was handling. On <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriAdmin.do?idTexte=CETATEXT000008260055">January 6, 2006</a>, the State Council reiterated that burial and cremation are the only legal burial methods.</p>
<p>Faced with the same issues, the British justice system has been more favourable. This may be due to the particularly tragic case of the terminally ill 14-year-old girl who wanted to be cryopreserved after her death but whose divorced parents disagreed. Her mother was in favour of the procedure but the father was not. However, in November 2016, the judge hearing the case indirectly accepted the cryopreservation of the girl by ordering that her remains be entrusted to her mother. While resolving the particular case before him, the judge refused to reason on the legitimacy of cryonics.</p>
<h2>A little “judicial science fiction”</h2>
<p>In a play by the French writer Jean Giraudoux, one of the characters says that “law is the strongest school of imagination”. Let us take the writer at his word and perform some “legal science fiction”, according to the expression of the French jurist Jean Carbonnier: let’s imagine the legal regime of cryopreservation if it were authorised in France.</p>
<p>Dead without being definitively dead, the cryogenised person could possibly be resurrected; it would thus be necessary to create a system making it possible to protect the body and its inheritance during the cryonic suspension.</p>
<p>As regards cryogenised bodies, <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070721&idArticle=LEGIARTI000019983158">paragraph 1 of Article 16-1-1 of the French Civil Code</a> could be amended and include a reference to cryogenisation by formulating it as follows: “The respect owed to the human body does not end with death nor with cryogenisation”. Once this principle has been established, things should be considered more precisely by regulating the activity of cryopreservation societies, creating specific rules and drafting security contracts whose purpose would be to ensure the proper preservation of bodies.</p>
<p>Various solutions can be envisaged for the assets of cryopreserved persons. The most logical would certainly be to open the succession because the resurrection is, at the moment, a simple hope. It would then be sufficient to amend the current article 720 of the French Civil Code so that it specifies that “successions are opened by death and by cryopreservation, at the last domicile of the deceased”. But this solution is severe for the cryogenised person, so we could appoint an administrator to manage his or her assets. But for how long? And for what fee? Finally, it would be possible to ensure a certain legal and patrimonial security to the cryogenised person by offering her the possibility to subscribe, with the cryogenisation contract, <a href="http://durfeelawgroup.com/cryonic-suspension-trust/">a cryonic trust</a>, a new form of trust that already exists in the United States and is proposed by some American companies. However, this solution seems difficult to implement in France where trusts do not exist. The problem is thus far from being solved and cryonics raises questions still without answers.</p>
<p>This being the case, the best short-term solution seems to be to fire up a copy of the classic 1969 Louis de Funès comedy, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernatus"><em>Hibernatus</em></a>, which poses a whole series of knotty – and amusing – questions of its own.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne-Blandine Caire ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Cryonics is no longer synonymous with science fiction. What are we technically capable of doing and what do we have the right to do?Anne-Blandine Caire, Professeur de droit privé et de sciences criminelles - École de Droit - Université d'Auvergne, Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/764582017-04-30T20:01:35Z2017-04-30T20:01:35ZFighting the common fate of humans: to better life and beat death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167142/original/file-20170428-15086-15blist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can technology help us to beat death?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Zwiebackesser</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/millennials-strike-back/">Millenials Strike Back</a>, the 56th edition of Griffith Review. Selected pieces consist of extracts, or long reads in which Generation Y writers address the issues that define and concern them.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>The oldest surviving great work of literature tells the story of a Sumerian king, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gilgamesh">Gilgamesh</a>, whose historical equivalent may have ruled the city of Uruk some time between 2800 and 2500 BC.</p>
<p>A hero of superhuman strength, Gilgamesh becomes instilled with existential dread after witnessing the death of his friend, and travels the Earth in search of a cure for mortality. </p>
<p>Twice the cure slips through his fingers and he learns the futility of fighting the common fate of man.</p>
<h2>Merging with machines</h2>
<p>Transhumanism is the idea that we can transcend our biological limits, by merging with machines. The idea was popularised by the renowned technoprophet <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-biography">Ray Kurzweil</a> (now a director of engineering at Google), who came to public attention in the 1990s with a string of astute predictions about technology. </p>
<p>In his 1990 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Intelligent-Machines-Ray-Kurzweil/dp/0262610795">The Age of Intelligent Machines</a> (MIT Press), Kurzweil predicted that a computer would beat the world’s best chess player by the year 2000. It <a href="https://www.wired.com/2011/05/0511ibm-deep-blue-beats-chess-champ-kasparov/">happened in 1997</a>.</p>
<p>He also foresaw the explosive growth of the internet, along with the advent of wearable technology, drone warfare and the automated translation of language. Kurzweil’s <a href="https://futurism.com/kurzweil-claims-that-the-singularity-will-happen-by-2045/">most famous prediction is what he calls</a> “the singularity” – the emergence of an artificial super-intelligence, triggering runaway technological growth – which he foresees happening somewhere around 2045.</p>
<p>In some sense, the merger of humans and machines has already begun. Bionic implants, such as the <a href="http://www.cochlear.com/wps/wcm/connect/au/home/understand/hearing-and-hl/hl-treatments/cochlear-implant">cochlear implant</a>, use electrical impulses orchestrated by computer chips to communicate with the brain, and so restore lost senses.</p>
<p>At <a href="https://svhm.org.au/home/research">St Vincent’s Hospital</a> and the <a href="http://research.unimelb.edu.au/">University of Melbourne</a>, my colleagues are developing other ways to tap into neuronal activity, thereby giving people natural control of a robotic hand.</p>
<p>These cases involve sending simple signals between a piece of hardware and the brain. To truly merge minds and machines, however, we need some way to send thoughts and memories.</p>
<p>In 2011, scientists at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles took the first step towards this when they <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677369">implanted rats with a computer chip</a> that worked as a kind of external hard drive for the brain. </p>
<p>First the rats learned a particular skill, pulling a sequence of levers to gain a reward. The silicon implant listened in as that new memory was encoded in the brain’s hippocampus region, and recorded the pattern of electrical signals it detected. </p>
<p>Next the rats were induced to forget the skill, by giving them a drug that impaired the hippocampus. The silicon implant then took over, firing a bunch of electrical signals to mimic the pattern it had recorded during training. </p>
<p>Amazingly, the rats remembered the skill – the electrical signals from the chip were essentially replaying the memory, in a crude version of that scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves learns (downloads) kung-fu.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Matrix: I know king fu.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Again, the potential roadblock: the brain may be more different from a computer than people such as Kurzweil appreciate. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nicolas-p-rougier-201211">Nicolas Rougier</a>, a computer scientist at Inria (the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation), <a href="https://theconversation.com/silicon-soul-the-vain-dream-of-electronic-immortality-52368">argues</a>, the brain itself needs the complex sensory input of the body in order to function properly.</p>
<p>Separate the brain from that input and things start to go awry pretty quickly. Hence sensory deprivation is used as a form of torture. Even if artificial intelligence is achieved, that does not mean our brains will be able to integrate with it.</p>
<p>Whatever happens at the singularity (if it ever occurs), Kurzweil, now aged 68, wants to be around to see it. His <a href="http://www.fantastic-voyage.net/">Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever</a> (Rodale Books, 2004) is a guidebook for extending life in the hope of seeing the longevity revolution. In it he details his dietary practices, and outlines some of the 200 supplements he takes daily.</p>
<p>Failing that, he has a plan B.</p>
<h2>Freezing death</h2>
<p>The central idea of cryonics is to preserve the body after death in the hope that, one day, future civilisations will have the ability (and the desire) to reanimate the dead.</p>
<p>Both Kurzweil and de Grey, along with about 1,500 others (including, apparently, Britney Spears), are <a href="http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2015/06/19/can-buy-immortality-200000-want/">signed up to be cryopreserved</a> by <a href="http://www.alcor.org/">Alcor Life Extension Foundation</a> in Arizona.</p>
<p>Offhand, the idea seems crackpot. Even in daily experience, you know that freezing changes stuff: you can tell a strawberry that’s been frozen. Taste, and especially texture, change unmistakably. The problem is that when the strawberry cells freeze, they fill with ice crystals. The ice rips them apart, essentially turning them to mush. </p>
<p>That’s why Alcor don’t freeze you; they turn you to glass.</p>
<p>After you die, your body is drained of blood and replaced with a special cryogenic mixture of antifreeze and preservatives. When cooled, the liquid turns to a glassy state, but without forming dangerous crystals. </p>
<p>You are placed in a giant thermos flask of liquid nitrogen and cooled to -196°C, cold enough to effectively stop biological time. There you can stay without changing, for a year or a century, until science discovers the cure for whatever caused your demise.</p>
<p>“People don’t understand cryonics,” says Alcor president Max More in a YouTube tour of his facility. “They think it’s this strange thing we do to dead people, rather than understanding it really is an extension of emergency medicine.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Alcor president Max More.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The idea may not be as crackpot as it sounds. Similar cryopreservation techniques are already being used to preserve human embryos used in fertility treatments. </p>
<p>“There are people walking around today who have been cryopreserved,” More continues. “They were just embryos at the time.”</p>
<p>One proof of concept, of sorts, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/">was reported</a> by cryogenics expert Greg Fahy of <a href="http://www.21cm.com/">21st Century Medicine</a> (a privately funded cryonics research lab) in 2009.</p>
<p>Fahy’s team removed a rabbit kidney, vitrified it, and reimplanted into the rabbit as its only working kidney. Amazingly, the rabbit survived, if only for nine days. </p>
<p>More recently, a new technique developed by Fahy enabled the perfect preservation of a rabbit brain though vitrification and storage at -196°C. After rewarming, advanced 3D imaging revealed that the rabbit’s “connectome” – that is, the connections between neurons – was undisturbed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the chemicals used for the new technique are toxic, but the work does raise the hope of some future method that may achieve the same degree of preservation with more friendly substances.</p>
<p>That said, preserving structure does not necessarily preserve function. Our thoughts and memories are not just coded in the physical connections between neurons, but also in the strength of those connections – coded somehow in the folding of proteins.</p>
<p>That’s why the most remarkable cryonics work to date may be that performed at Alcor in 2015, when scientists managed to glassify a tiny worm for two weeks, and then <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25867710">return it to life with its memory intact</a>.</p>
<p>Now, while the worm has only 302 neurons, you have more than 100 billion, and while the worm has 5,000 neuron-to-neuron connections you have at least 100 trillion. So there’s some way to go, but there’s certainly hope.</p>
<p>In Australia, a new not-for-profit, <a href="https://southerncryonics.com/the-project/">Southern Cryonics</a>, is planning to open the first cryonics facility in the Southern Hemisphere. </p>
<p>“Eventually, medicine will be able to keep people healthy indefinitely,” Southern Cryonics spokesperson and secretary Matt Fisher tells me in a phonecall.</p>
<p>“I want to see the other side of that transition. I want to live in a world where everyone can be healthy for as long as they want. And I want everyone I know and care about to have that opportunity as well.”</p>
<p>To get Southern Cryonics off the ground, ten founding members have each put in A$50,000, entitling them to a cryonic preservation for themselves or a person of their choice. Given that the company is not-for-profit, Fisher has no financial incentive to campaign for it. He simply believes in it.</p>
<p>“I’d really like to see [cryonic preservation] become the most common choice for internment across Australia,” he says.</p>
<p>Fisher admits there is no proof yet that cryopreservation works. The question is not about what is possible today, he says. It’s about what may be possible in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cathal D. O'Connell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How far would you go to better your life, to live longer, to beat death? And how much can technology help us in that quest?Cathal D. O'Connell, Centre Manager, BioFab3D (St Vincent's Hospital), The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/281292014-07-15T05:26:23Z2014-07-15T05:26:23ZMeet hydra, the shape-shifting Dr Manhattan of the animal kingdom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51378/original/2j7mpm6c-1403014140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indestructible.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/microagua/3947240328">microagua</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the comic series <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/characters/watchmen">Watchmen</a>, physicist Jon Osterman is blown apart in a science experiment gone awry. But his “consciousness” is able to pull his body back together atom by atom, becoming the radiating, blue-skinned Dr Manhattan. It took him months to reform, and in that time I wonder if he learned that trick from a tiny pond animal. For few creatures in fiction, and even fewer in real life, are capable of surviving being ripped to bits. But for hydras, it is an every day affair. </p>
<p>Hydras are tiny freshwater animals, with column-shaped bodies ringed at the top with tentacles around a mouth. Like little freshwater sea anemones, hydras spend much of their time with tentacles extended, waiting for prey to pass. Not exactly comic book material. But to see their true power, all you have to is blend a Hydra to hamburger meat and swirl the puree to the bottom of a bowl. </p>
<p>Slowly, the disembodied pieces will begin crawling together, rising like tiny volcanoes from the sea of shredded remains. Forms will begin to take shape. Mouths and skinny tentacles stretching out into the water, and suddenly little bodies everywhere have regrown. </p>
<p>Ulrich Technau, then at Darmstadt University of Technology, and his colleagues wanted to find out what gives hydras this incredible ability. The secret, they <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/97/22/12127.full">discovered</a>, to surviving being blown apart is all about keeping its head. </p>
<p>The Hydra’s head isn’t much to look at. It has a mouth and some tentacles. But instead of housing brains, hydras use their heads to constantly send signals telling the rest of their cells where to go and what to be. When a hydra is turned into puree, its head is scattered into bits. But if even a few cells keep their identity as head cells, that is all a hydra needs to regrow. </p>
<p>According to the Technau and his colleagues, hydra need is between five and 20 of these command cells to form a new body. These cells will take charge, barking out cellular orders that pull the rest of the cells in line. Once a cellular mound has formed around these command cells, it is just a matter of each member of the mound falling into place, and a new animal has grown where before there was only mincemeat. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51377/original/scr54qtj-1403013814.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hydra cell mounds after 24 hours (top), and new Hydras taking shape after 96 hours (bottom). Cells in blue that are part of the new head command centres.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pnas.org/content/97/22/12127.full">Ulrich Technau/PNAS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because there are many more than 20 cells in the original hydra head, and because these cells will be spread haphazardly when the animal is ground down, these cells will command multiple mounds to form and make new bodies. One animal becomes many. </p>
<p>For the hydra at least, this neat trick may mean fast recovery from predator attacks in the wild. If even a small piece is left after being eaten alive, there is hope of survival. But does it have any implications for those of us who, as a general rule, do not survive being blown to bits? If any, the implications are limited. We do not have an organising centre like hydra (at least not as adults), and so we are not going to find reassembly quite so easy. Unless, of course, we’re blown apart in the same mad science experiment that disintegrated Jon Osterman. Few will ever be as lucky as Dr. Manhattan and the minuscule hydra. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Next, read this: <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-bizarre-ocean-dandelion-is-like-an-ant-colony-on-steroids-24814">Why the bizarre ocean dandelion is like an ant colony on steroids</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Helm does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the comic series Watchmen, physicist Jon Osterman is blown apart in a science experiment gone awry. But his “consciousness” is able to pull his body back together atom by atom, becoming the radiating…Rebecca Helm, Ph.D. Candidate, Brown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/9322011-05-09T21:15:55Z2011-05-09T21:15:55ZWho wants to live forever?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/972/original/4746145302_0e381c8e5f_o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Your grandparents' lifespan can offer some valuable clues.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">joeduty/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s well known that humans are <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5570/1029.short">living longer than ever before</a>, thanks partially to developments such as sanitation and modern medicine. But will it ever be possible for humans to live forever?</p>
<p>The late Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman seemed to think so, having once said: <a href="http://memexplex.com/Meme/176/">“There’s nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death”</a>. Indeed, some scientists believe <a href="http://io9.com/#!5795660/sea-squirts-could-hold-the-secret-to-human-immortality">sea squirts</a> might hold the key to immortality.</p>
<p>While the the ability to live indefinitely is currently out of our reach, it is certainly possible for individuals to improve the quality and length of their life.</p>
<h2>What determines our lifespan? </h2>
<p>Your genetic make-up contributes approximately one third of the formula for a long life. Seeing how your grandparents and other family members fared will give you a good idea of how your own life might pan out.</p>
<p>At present there’s nothing you can do about your genes, but you can certainly develop a healthy diet and lifestyle. Avoiding alcohol, cigarettes and drugs are obvious measures, as is the introduction of regular exercise. </p>
<p>There is also <a href="http://www.ajcn.org/content/61/6/1402S.short">plenty of evidence</a> to suggest a diet rich in superfoods such as fruit, most vegetables, fish and olive oil can affect metabolic processes and pathways within your cells in a beneficial manner.</p>
<h2>My chemical romance</h2>
<p>Research conducted in <a href="http://www.physiol.usyd.edu.au/%7Ebrianm/">my lab</a> has shown that the chemical <a href="http://www.dovepress.com/resveratrol-in-prevention-and-treatment-of-common-clinical-conditions--a1757">resveratrol</a> – which is present in various fruits – can suppress a protein known as <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7110/abs/nature05092.html">p16INK4a</a>. This protein has been shown to be responsible for ageing in cells. </p>
<p>We also found that resveratrol can suppress Ras genes, which are part of a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3283542">well-known cancer pathway</a>. </p>
<p>Although <a href="http://www.resveratrol4life.com.au/">taking resveratrol</a> should make you live longer, what it actually does is improve your “healthspan”; that is, the years you will live free of debilitating disease. </p>
<p>So, rather than suffering for decades – let’s say with type two diabetes as you go blind, have your legs amputated and feel miserable – you could live to 85 or 90 and then have a week or two of illness before finally popping your clogs.</p>
<h2>Living a longer life</h2>
<p>Thankfully, there may be ways we can extend our lifespan, not just our healthspan.</p>
<p>It has been <a href="http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/content/148/3/614.full.pdf">known for six decades</a> that reducing calorie intake by about one third can markedly increase the lifespan of rats (and all other animals tested) by approximately 30%.</p>
<p>Promisingly, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812811/">similar studies</a> have showed that calorie restriction increases the lifespan of rhesus monkeys as well.</p>
<p>Given that monkeys are primates just like us, I believe it’s reasonable that those of us willing to undertake <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1963392_1963366_1963381,00.html">the ordeal of eating less</a> will be able to live longer.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, a common drug, <a href="http://scienceandreason.blogspot.com/2009/07/rapamycin-and-lifespan-extension.html">rapamycin</a>, has been shown to <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7253/full/nature08221.html">extend the lifespan of middle-aged mice</a>.</p>
<h2>The possibility of immortality </h2>
<p>There is no doubt that in the future, advances in biotechnology will allow us to live beyond our current lifespans.</p>
<p>This is because scientists are constantly learning more about how the ageing process works at a molecular level, and consequently how we might be able to lengthen our lifespans.</p>
<p>One popular suggestion is that the ageing process is due to the build up of <a href="http://longevity-science.org/orgel.html">“errors” at a genetic level</a>, and that we might one day be able to reverse ageing by targeting these errors through <a href="http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/medicine/genetherapy.shtml">gene therapy</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, this raises a range of <a href="http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/hgn/v10n1/16walter.shtml">ethical questions</a> and, at the very least, taking advantage of such technology will be extremely expensive. </p>
<p>Governments are unlikely to be willing to foot the bill, meaning, at least initially, that these technologies will only be available to the rich.</p>
<p>So, can we live forever? Sadly, no, but there are certainly things we can do to lengthen and improve the quality of our lives. </p>
<p>And while we’re busy staying healthy, the science will only continue to improve, allowing us to extend our lives even further.</p>
<p><strong><em>Would you pay to extend your lifespan if you could? What would you consider to be good value, assuming the technology were available? Leave your comments below.</em></strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian J. Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s well known that humans are living longer than ever before, thanks partially to developments such as sanitation and modern medicine. But will it ever be possible for humans to live forever? The late…Brian J. Morris, Professor of Molecular Medical Science, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.