A very positive article on the prospect of immortality that presents it in a humanistic manner against the backdrop of a suffering and aged grandfather. It poses the question of how different his life might be had he been born in this generation with the prospect of DNA screening and genetic therapies and all the rest of the developing technologies. It is unique in that it doesn't just recite a litany of advances in life extension like most other articles do.
From artificial wombs to designing children the good side of the technologies are put forward. I especially liked the advice on how to live forever..
Hope for good genes. If your grandparents lived long lives, you have a good chance of doing so as well.
Don't rely on science to bail you out if you don't look after yourself; healthy lifestyle, diet and exercise are still the best way to buy yourself extra years.
Keep healthy to live as long as possible; every year you live takes you a year closer to key scientific breakthroughs. "Even if you have a predisposition to something like breast cancer, you can stave it off with a healthy lifestyle - and that may be the extra year or two science needs to make a life-saving breakthrough in that area," geneticist Joanne Nova says.
"Five years ago you would never hear scientists use the word immortality but that's what's happening now," says Joanne Nova
About Joanne Nova
Joanne Nova: A specialist on anti-aging, genetics and the future of medicine, Joanne has given keynote addresses and dinner speeches at national conferences and launches, for groups like CPA's (Certified Practising Accountants), Transplant Nurses Association, Aged Care Australia, BDS Accouting, The Australian Science Teachers Association, The Australian Science Festival, ACTEW (ACT Electricity and Water), and Amnesty International.
Joanne has also performed for over 50,000 students at high schools and primary schools. Her fast-paced hands-on science shows get rave reviews.
Joanne has worked with a huge range of audiences from remote aboriginal communities to street kids in Melbourne. She's also demonstrated science in senior citizens clubs and schools for the disabled as well as on school of the air. Joanne toured Australia with the Shell Questacon Science Circus.
Joanne's Qualifications
Joanne Nova finished her Bachelor of Science degree with first class honours, A+ grades and prizes (at UWA). She also has a Graduate Certificate in Science Communication from the ANU.
Joanne worked for three years as an Associate Lecturer for the brand new Graduate Diploma in Science Communication program at ANU. ref.
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Mere immortals
August 11, 2003
http://www.theage.co...0454075552.html
Five years ago the question would never have been uttered in scientific circles but it is now. So here goes: Will we ever live forever? Michelle Hamer reports.
If he had been born a few generations later, my 84-year-old grandfather, Ron Casey, could be in the autumn of his life rather than the winter - with perhaps another 35 years of life to fill and the good health to support his whims.
A few of our more radical experts believe that, in the next 50 years, 90-year-olds could look like 30-year-olds and feel as fit as a 45-year-old thanks to an explosion in regenerative medicine, genetic research and biotechnology.
And today's children could live to 120 - or longer. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington predicts that a female born today will have a 40 per cent chance of surviving until she is 150 years old.
In fact, our children may never die.
"Five years ago you would never hear scientists use the word immortality but that's what's happening now," says Joanne Nova, an Australian graduate in molecular biology and former associate lecturer in science at Australia National University.
"We may be the last generation of the mortals."
All of this is good news for Ron's six-year-old great grandson, Darcy, and his generation who are set to witness the trouncing of conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, cancer and other diseases. They may even live to see Superman walk again.
Christopher Reeves's battle to walk after breaking his neck in a riding accident could soon be won, according to scientists at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States. Researchers there have already made paralysed rats walk again and hope to begin human trials within the next five years.
Paralysed rats injected with neural stem cells recovered their ability to walk. The study showed that stem cells produce new neurons to replace the dead ones. The fact that stem cells can find and replace damaged nerves is of enormous importance and could increase the likelihood of potential cures.
And, adding to the stem cell advances, scientists last year discovered a new type of adult stem cell that can be harvested from adult bone marrow and might be as versatile as the embryonic sort, without the ethical dilemma.
The key to immortality may be in our genes. Already in the US a research team has managed to double the life span of a nematode worm by silencing a gene involved in ageing. As we age, the chromosomes in our cells get shorter. At a certain point they stop dividing, our skin sags and muscles and bone weaken. But a US company has developed an enzyme that reverses the ageing process in cells, rebuilding the ends of the chromosomes and restoring them to their youthful length.
Couple stem cell research with chromosome repair, disease eradication and early detection of predisposition to disease and it's easy to see how Darcy's generation may be able the thumb its nose at death.
However, more conservative scientists say such speculation is fanciful. "It's true that this is an extremely exciting time (in science), there's no doubt about that, but we have to be careful not to get too carried away," says Dawn Gleeson, a senior lecturer in genetics at Melbourne University.
"I think it's dangerous to suggest we are anywhere near achieving immortality."
But celebrity scientist and author, Karl Kruszelnicki, disagrees. "Some people living today could be the first generation to live forever, or the last generation to die," he says in the book Flying Lasers, Robofish and Cities of Slime - and other brain-bending science moments.
Kruszelnicki says the human race is facing a genetic revolution of five distinct stages. "(The fourth stage) involves improving parts or systems of the body, so that we could live 'forever', say 1000 years. Practically all the systems of body slowly lose function with time - the skin, the bone, the lens in the eye, the muscles, the kidneys, the heart and blood vessels, the liver, and so on. Once all of these have been rejuvenated, by 'fooling around' with the DNA, we're looking at a healthy body that can tear around like a teenage body for 500 to 5000 years. This could happen maybe 50 years from now."
If this level of regenerative medicine was available today, the damage done to Ron's ageing body through heart disease and emphysema would probably be erased - or may never have happened in the first place. A booster shot of stem cells could repair most of the damage, and scanning at birth would have revealed his predisposition to heart disease. The medical community's move toward prevention-rather-than-cure medicine could then have steered him toward lifestyle changes to avoid the condition.
A gene correction could clear the glaucoma that reduces his vision, the arthritis that limits his movement would be gone (more stem cells and lifestyle tailoring); he would enjoy increased energy through better blood flow from a healthy heart, and could breathe easy with the disease in his lungs cleared.
Not only will science keep us healthy and alive for longer, it will help lay the foundations of healthier generations to come.
When he becomes a parent, Darcy can expect, if he wants, to select the genetic traits of his offspring, opting for eye and hair colour, sex and intelligence level. Naturally these socially engineered children will be
disease-free as scientists flush conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down syndrome out of the gene pool.
These children may be gestated in artificial wombs in laboratories, according to University of Queensland development biologist, associate professor Victor Nurcombe, who predicts that most births will occur outside the body within a few decades.
Ron's generation didn't have such choices. He and his wife lost a child at birth and never really knew why; their three children inherited a random selection of genes from their parents and, like the rest of us, make the best of what they got.
Nurcombe says that within 10 years all babies will be scanned at birth for pre-disposition to disease and genetic disorders to give them a head start in the war against disease and disability.
"Today's six-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 120 and maybe even beyond that," Nurcombe said.
But how will Darcy's generation plan for lives of such length? "Although we may have the scientific ability to extend life, whether the brain will cope with it is another thing," Nurcombe says.
"The prospect of immortality will revolutionise all social contracts," he said. "Will we really want to be married to one person for more than a century?
"For a race that is naturally designed to have children at 12 and be dead by about 18 or 20, the prospect of living beyond a century will require a complete re-think of all our social structures. We are not primed for lives of this length."
Would Ron take 40 more years, with the bonus of good health thrown in, if it were already a possibility?
"Would I ever," he says. "I'd travel to America to meet a friend I've met on the internet, I'd buy every electronic gadget available and get even more into computers."
But if the children and grandchildren of today's generation are to live infinitely, how will governments stretch resources to meet their needs, and is finding the key to immortality humankind's most pressing aim?
Kruszelnicki doesn't think so. He believes fixing existing problems with the planet are more urgent. "The poor countries don't have enough food, health care, doctors, education, clean drinking water and so on. If we can first make sure that everybody on the planet has a reasonable quality of life, then maybe the genetic revolution can further make all our lives better."
How to live forever
Hope for good genes. If your grandparents lived long lives, you have a good chance of doing so as well.
Don't rely on science to bail you out if you don't look after yourself; healthy lifestyle, diet and exercise are still the best way to buy yourself extra years.
Keep healthy to live as long as possible; every year you live takes you a year closer to key scientific breakthroughs. "Even if you have a predisposition to something like breast cancer, you can stave it off with a healthy lifestyle - and that may be the extra year or two science needs to make a life-saving breakthrough in that area," geneticist Joanne Nova says.
Making babies
Scientists say infertility will be beaten once they can take a woman's DNA from a cell in her body, like a skin cell, and put it into another woman's good egg and then remove her DNA. This is already being done, experimentally, in the US.
A US company, Advanced Cell Technology, says scientists will soon be able to add 20 or 30 IQ points to an embryo.
Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel prize-winner, and chief executive of Cancer Research UK, predicts that in 20 years' time, it will be possible to sequence the genome of each new baby. Children could be issued genetic identity cards to provide information on the risk of developing certain diseases. Although this was good for disease prevention, Sir Paul warned it could also lead to a sinister form of separation, with people being dismissed or overlooked by employers and insurers because of genetic defects. If genome sequencing was only available privately to those able to afford it, a genetic underclass could result, he said.
Edited by BJKlein, 24 August 2003 - 08:49 PM.
