Death is quite the mystery. No one has ever died and lived to tell the tale. But the tale of life that always ends in death may be rewriting itself.
Increasing life expectancy is nothing new–between 1900 and 2011, the average American life expectancy increased by 29.4 years, which is no small feat. However, that number is nothing compared to what’s coming.
According to scientists, methods to extend human lifespan are advancing so quickly that their compounding effects will soon render us immortal.
“The immortal life could be ours in as little as 25 years,” Cambridge University researcher Aubrey de Grey said.
So the key to living forever? We escape death.
The definition of death is pretty straightforward. When you stop breathing and your heart stops beating forever, you’re biologically dead. When the government realizes you’re gone, they give you an award: a death certificate. Then you’re legally dead. But before you hit this point, there is still hope.
Since the beginning of time, practically every society has created a myth about immortality. The Chinese accidentally invented gunpowder in an attempt to create an elixir for eternal life. The Hindu Rig Veda talks of the drink Soma, which is what the Spanish hoped to find flowing through the fountain of youth. The Egyptians even consumed metals to try to make their bodies similarly permanent and indestructible. Needless to say, these attempts went poorly.
This fixation is because humans are uniquely aware that we’re going to die.
“I would want to live forever to make sure I meet all my goals,” sophomore Alissa Vuillier said.
And most people feel the same way. Now, a combination of science and technology predicts that we can do just that.
Life Expectancy Magazine reported in 2015 that “longevity escape velocity” is the name scientists have given to the point in time “when life expectancy is being extended faster” than the rate at which time is passing. So, in theory, over the course of one year, a person could gain two years of life.
The idea is that in this time, science will figure out how to extend life further and further, until natural death no longer exists.
There are a few ways to extend a human’s lifespan to reach “longevity escape velocity.” First, calorie restriction. Limiting calorie intake can not only make someone healthier, but it can also extend total life span.
The Economist tells the story of Michael Rae, who eats only 1,900 calories a day instead of the recommended 2,500, believing it will make his life 15 years longer.
In 2011, The National Institute on Aging tested this theory on rodents and primates and found that eating 30 percent fewer calories extended their lives by up to 40 percent.
But giving up Chipotle isn’t for everyone, so medicine is coming up with more user-friendly ways to live forever. Calico, a prominent pharmaceutical company, is trying to understand how our biology determines our lifespan and then create medicines to alter the aging process.
The company is currently trying to find new ways to detect, prevent and treat diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer through the use of therapy and stem cell transfers. As these discoveries are made, they will allow us to reach “longevity escape velocity” and render us immortal.
Though medicine still has to advance further before we can be immortal, if our lives can be extended far enough for these advancements to be made, companies like Calico could save us all.
But, as Calico knows all too well, it takes a lot of effort to preserve a body. The second path to immortality is leaving our bodies behind and relying on technology to support our consciousness.
In the book Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence, Anders Sandberg explains whole brain emulation.
“The basic idea is to take a particular brain, scan its structure and construct a software model that is so faithful…it will behave in…the same way as the original brain,” Sandberg said.
However, this technology skips a step: it doesn’t need to understand the human mind before it copies it, so advancements in medicine can be made more quickly.
Once a brain acts naturally on a computer, human consciousness becomes a separate entity from the human body, creating a human-minded robot.
However, immortality has its implications. If people stop dying of natural causes, there would be an astronomical amount of people in the world but no means to support everyone. Our only option to actually maintain immortality is making the majority of the world become robots, launching us into a new form of society.
On a much more personal scale, a robot-ridden world would affect us right here on campus. Imagine if some Trinity students were robots.
They would most likely have photographic memories, so their fantastic grades would belittle our hard work. There would be no way to monitor cheating, and the Grille prices would be forced into decline because a smaller percentage of students actually eat food.
Though this robotic version of Trinity is vastly different from our current school, it is not impossible.
Further, given the extreme cost of immortality, there will be a skewed demographic in the world.
Brown University estimates the cost of a blood stem cell transfer to be between 100,000-250,000 dollars, and the price of immortality-related transfers will undoubtedly be higher.
This cost is not realistic for the majority of the world. Consequently, the people who will be able to live forever will disproportionately be European and North American simply because of their access to money and therefore to life-extending procedures.
As Twilight’s Bella Swan once asked Edward Cullen, “How long have you been 17?” To which he ominously replied, “A while.” Though we won’t all be able to sparkle in the sunlight or compete in a zesty love triangle with a werewolf, Cullen’s immortality is no longer out of reach, and it could change our world. Whether or not that change is for the better, I guess we’ll be around to find out.
