Who doesn't want to live as long as possible, if not forever? Everyone dreams about it! But the majority will only sigh about the unattainability of dreams and put up with the inevitable death - after all, this is the way of nature. However, there are those among us who seriously intend to achieve eternal life on earth - if not for themselves, but for posterity.
Transhumanism and transhumanists
At the end of the 20th century, a philosophical movement and, at the same time, a social movement called transhumanism arose in the world. Its goal is to use the achievements of science and modern technologies to improve health, eliminate disease, aging and death itself. Especially death - after all, according to transhumanists, this is the main limitation of the development of both the individual and the whole of mankind. Despite the seeming utopianism of the idea, there are quite a few transhumanists and their sympathizers in the world: there are several hundred thousand of them in Russia, and many times more in the United States - this country is the leader in the number of people dreaming of immortality. Among these dreamers there are quite serious and influential figures, for example, the first director-general of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, who was at the origin of transhumanism.
In Russia, one of the most prominent figures in the fight against aging is Mikhail Batin, an entrepreneur and politician who founded the Science for Life Extension Foundation in 2008. The fund's team supports scientists working in this field, organized and conducted several scientific conferences on the genetics of longevity, publishes popular materials on the biology of aging, including the book "Futurology" (authors Alexey Turchin and Mikhail Batin).
Recently, commissioned by the foundation, seven possible ways to achieve physical immortality were developed and published on the Internet, based on already existing scientific achievements and discoveries expected in the near future. Conventionally, they can be distinguished in three areas - medicine, the latest technologies and cryonics.
The main thing is not to lose your head
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Official medicine offers many ways to prolong active longevity - this is sports, and special diets, and courses of injections or cleansing enemas … Most of the recommendations are reasonable and effective, but they cannot guarantee eternal life. A more radical approach is needed here.
We are talking about transplanting a head or a separate brain to a donor's, and in the future to a body specially grown for a particular patient (in the future, obviously, such operations will be repeated as the new organism wears out). And this is not a retelling of the plot of the fantastic novel by Alexander Belyaev "The Head of Professor Dowell": two years ago we all almost witnessed a unique surgical experience.
The world's first live human head transplant was to take place in 2017 in China. The Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero was going to carry it out, the patient was a Russian citizen Valery Spiridonov, who suffered from a rare genetic disease that practically immobilized him. However, at the last moment, the Russian refused to participate in the experiment in favor of traditional methods of treatment. As for Serjo, he, together with the Chinese doctor Xiaoping Ren, hones his skills on corpses, according to him, quite successfully. Maybe thanks to this practice, the chances of success for the next volunteers (and they are) will increase.
Means Makropulos
Surgery is certainly not the only branch of medicine on which transhumanists pin their hopes - genetic engineering and nanomedicine are also very promising. However, nothing beats the popularity of the "pill for old age", although no one promises that it will become a "cure for death" at the same time.
Agree, it's nice to get rid of natural aging and all the accompanying troubles, just by eating something, preferably tasty and in a beautiful package. Almost like in the fantastic play by Karel Czapek "Means Makropulos". This work has not lost its popularity for almost a hundred years (the play was written in 1922), as has the very idea of the "magic pill". Last fall, it was even announced that official trials of the "anti-aging drug" (geroprotector) were started by the Buck Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. A drug originally intended for the treatment of diabetes was used as an "elixir of eternal youth".
A year earlier, Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair announced a discovery that would soon allow people to forget "words like lethargy, disability and old age." The main ingredient in his wonderful cocktail is coenzyme (organic non-protein compound), discovered at the beginning of the 20th century by the English chemist Arthur Harden and is responsible for providing the body with energy. The scientist keeps the rest of the components secret, but this did not stop some medical and pharmaceutical companies from putting the discovery into action. For example, private clinics in California offer coenzyme injection courses to patients, and they are in demand.
See you in a thousand years
But what a shame it is to leave this world when, in spite of old age, you feel young! And if you try to postpone the hour of death until the moment when the problem of immortality is successfully resolved? This is what cryonics is betting on (the technology of freezing people and animals for the purpose of further resurrection).
Now in cryochambers of different countries, including Russia, hundreds of bodies are stored, cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-195.5 ° C) and are waiting for the hour of their resurrection.
Unfortunately, there are big doubts that this hour will come. The main problem of freezing (damage to tissues and organs by ice crystals, into which all human biological fluids are transformed) was solved by replacing these fluids with cryoprotectants, but others remained. According to the law, a person's body can be cryopreserved only after physical death, otherwise it will be considered murder, therefore, scientists of the future will have to solve a double task: to return to life the body of not just a frozen person, but one who died from an illness, accident or old age. It is highly doubtful that this will ever be possible. It is also impossible to guarantee that during a long waiting period nothing will happen to a cryopreserved person, and he will not unfreeze ahead of time due to an instrument failure, personnel negligence,funding stops or other reasons that cannot be influenced for obvious reasons. And even in the case of a miraculous return to life, it is not known whether the cryonaut will like the society in which he is going to live, or whether he will feel uncomfortable, like the hero of HG Wells' novel When the Sleeper Wakes up. However, a thirsty for immortality should be prepared for such risks.
Cyborgs are advancing
Today, technologies have penetrated almost all spheres of life, including the field of prosthetics. You will not surprise a modern person with super-prostheses that completely reproduce the missing part of the body (most often an arm or a leg), are covered with plastic, indistinguishable from living skin, and can move, obeying the impulses of the brain. Perhaps the only thing they cannot yet is to provide feedback, that is, to touch an object and send information about it to the brain, like living tissue can. Overcoming this barrier will be the greatest scientific breakthrough.
Hugh Herr, head of the Biomechatronics research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is currently closest to this milestone. Because of his passion for mountaineering, at the age of 17, he lost both legs, but did not lose heart, and, having received the appropriate education, took up bionic prosthetics. Hugh Guerr is currently the owner of the most advanced prostheses in the world, thanks to which he continues to actively engage in rock climbing.
Not only limbs can be prosthetic. In principle, almost any internal organ can be replaced with a high-tech device over time. And since with age, a person refuses one thing or the other, he can gradually turn into a real cyborg. Or he will turn into him quickly - simply by agreeing to the already mentioned head transplant, not to a living, but to a biomechanical body.
Digital immortality
Why does a person need a body at all? Yes, strong arms and fast legs have long been a guarantee of survival, but in the 21st century, living conditions have changed so much that the body began to imperceptibly turn into a burden. Excellent physical shape is no longer a guarantee of high social status and wealth, rather the opposite: a person must work hard with his head in order to invest the funds in his body - to feed and clothe it, entertain, provide a roof over his head, and heal. And it, ungrateful, still gets sick, suffers and, in the end, dies, taking with it into oblivion the most valuable thing a person has - his unique personality. So why not move consciousness from a living case to a more durable and not requiring such intensive care electronic carrier, providing a virtual world as a space for life?
The idea of digitizing a person is much more realistic than the same cryonics. In 2005, the Blue Brain Project was launched by IBM and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to model and create a "digital map" of the brain. In 2011, its participants managed to map a segment of the rat's brain. By 2023, scientists plan to do the same with the human brain. And perhaps the day is not far off when the first settlers in the virtual space will begin to line up …