Science Could Prolong Aging: A Modern Day Fountain of Youth

A) Not too long ago Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge in an article for BBC News

Stated "I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already." I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure aging.

It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time. He also further completely explains the science behind my idea below:

I personally think this is a great step forward for us in the state and current human condition for us to find out this information at this time. For thousands of years men have traveled the world to far-flung places in search of a mythical fountain with water with the healing powers and the ability to turn back the tides of time and ravages of old age. However, no one that we can actually verify ever found the fountain of youth, and if it ever did exist, I am sure it is too polluted to work now or has dried up completely due to extensive global warming that is affecting the world. But it's not the fountain of youth that we normally think of that is going to save us but rather a new form created not by nature but by a team of scientists inside a clean sterile environment.

Scientists have identified the gene responsible for aging in mammals. Right now they are making a small DNA alteration on several species with astonishing results to say the least. They have been able to increase the life of a common worm that normally has a mayfly type existence, here today and gone tomorrow, but not anymore they are living 10 fold what they once did through this manipulation. It is also being tested in mice with absolutely amazing results the mice are living longer and the best thing is they are actually staying younger longer as well. Which is a real plus for us humans also. Now keep in mind this science is still in its infancy, however I am positive within my life span that we will see this newly discover Fountain Of Youth will actually begin being applied to humans in many forms as well.

b) In the TV show I watched on The Science Channel called "Beyond Tomorrow" about this new discovery and featured Dr. Aubrey de Gray and his theory. It told of the implications and the things that this could mean for us in particular. One thing they could do is reverse the aging process in the elderly. Say if you were in your 60's and the science was applied instead of aging forward you would age backward at 2x as fast. so in 10 years instead of being 70 you would actually be 40 biologically speaking. You would look as if you were 40, organs and all but your age would be 70. As soon as you were as young as you wanted then they could reverse the process and then apply the slower aging process which would let us age at about 1/10th the rate we do now. This has astronomical implication to us and to the scientific community at large. Say that you had the 1/10th rate applied to you what would happen is that it would take your body 10 years to simply age one year, this means that when you are at 100 years old you would be about 10 in real life and unless you befell an illness or some accident then it would really be possible for us to live to be 1000 years old which in my mind is more than enough for anyone in the world. I know some people say "well if we all live to be that old then we would be overpopulating the earth". This is true but there's an answer to this that I came up with on my own.

In the future we are undoubtedly going to have to colonize other planets and also go on life long deep space explorations. That is where this science will come into play again and help us discover what is well beyond our reach now because we can't live long enough. If we started a huge mission into space with a fully self contained mega ship that would have several families on board equipped with the slow aging technology then we could explore into the cosmos thousands and thousands and thousands of years, as one person dies another would take over and after they have discovered another habitable or mineral or oil based planet they can send back the coordinates to us and set up a base camp there with the equipment brought along. This would be a new age for discovery and the places we could go are only limited by our willingness to go into the unknown and never return, to be as the first settlers were in founding America, searching for Earth 2.

These are just some of the applications that this science is going to bring to us in the next few decades it will also be applied to the world of botany as well. We can make our trees grow faster and live longer to try and reverse some of the damage we have done. I know one thing for sure it is going to be an amazing time to be living in and I would myself love to take the procedure. I mean the Elixir of immortality, the Fountain of Youth is once again not merely a myth but within reach of the scientific world and us.

Dr Aubrey de Grey
University of Cambridge
BBC News UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4003063.stm

Dr. Aubrey de Grey
Science Channel "Beyond Tomorrow"