{"id":76513,"date":"2018-03-05T01:22:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T09:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/would-you-opt-for-immortality"},"modified":"2018-03-06T15:02:13","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T23:02:13","slug":"would-you-opt-for-immortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/would-you-opt-for-immortality","title":{"rendered":"Would You Opt for Immortality?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/would-you-opt-for-immortality.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Before the 7.6 billion people alive today, demographers estimate that about 100 billion people lived and died. This is the reality of the human condition. <em>Memento mori, <\/em>as medieval Christians reflected\u2014<em>Remember that you have to die<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>What if it didn\u2019t have to be this way? There are, in fact, organisms whose bodies steadily and reliably replace cells with healthier cells, and whose tissues and organs self-repair and maintain their vigor. They\u2019re called children. And there are cells in adults that divide indefinitely. They\u2019re called cancer. What if there were a way to genetically re-engineer and chemically reprogram our cells to divide indefinitely like they do in children, and to continue this process throughout adulthood without becoming cancerous? Could we become immortal?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to achieve immortality through my work,\u201d Woody Allen once said, \u201cI want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don\u2019t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.\u201d There are today well-funded groups of scientists who believe we can do just that. If these techno-dreamers succeed, would you want to live for 150 years? 300 years? Or even 500 years? I\u2019m not talking about being brain-dead and bedridden on a morphine drip. I mean living a full, rich physical and mental life for centuries, possibly forever. Would you opt for immortality?<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/quillette.com\/2018\/03\/02\/would-you-opt-for-immortality\/\">http:\/\/quillette.com\/2018\/03\/02\/would-you-opt-for-immortality\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before the 7.6 billion people alive today, demographers estimate that about 100 billion people lived and died. This is the reality of the human condition. Memento mori, as medieval Christians reflected\u2014Remember that you have to die. What if it didn\u2019t have to be this way? There are, in fact, organisms whose bodies steadily and reliably [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,269,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-life-extension","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76575,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76513\/revisions\/76575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}