Science is already on the verge of solving the question of eternal life. Futurologists claim that very soon people will live not even hundreds, but thousands of years.
“There are already fantastic treatments for heart disease, cancer and other neurological diseases based on the idea of reprogramming. These are all examples of how biology is represented as software. These technologies will become 1000 times more powerful in 10 years. And a million times - in 20 (Ray Kurzweil).
Evolutionary inevitability
The director of the British Society for Centenarians, Marios Kyriazis, claims that immortality is a natural evolutionary stage, to which a person will come sooner or later. Even without the help of medicines and technological advances.
Cryonics
Scientists see one of the possible ways to achieve eternal life in the freezing of a person. Cryonics is popular today. More than 200 people have already been frozen in the world (35 of them are in Russia), and the line of applicants continues to grow.
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The cryopreservation process is simple enough, but still very expensive for many people to use the “service”. The average price of "freezing" is $ 200,000. In addition, a significant problem, which has not yet been resolved, is the further "defrosting" of the body and the return of vital functions. Science has not yet reached the technology of "revitalization".
Cyborgs
Another possible way of gaining immortality is a gradual "upgrade" of a person through transplantation.
Boston-based Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology grows synthetic trachea from stem cells from patients. Doris Taylor, director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute, even built "bio-artificial" hearts from rat tissue.
Importantly, modern artificial organs are fully functional. Paralympians are already competing with professional athletes. In the future, we can talk about replacing healthy organs with their cybernetic counterparts to improve athletic performance.
But not everything is so obvious. In 2011, the US National Cancer Institute presented a report that proved the direct dependence of cancer on organ transplantation. Transplant recipients are twice as likely to have cancer as those who escaped.
Brain emulation
Brain emulation is designed to solve the main problem associated with gaining immortality - the problem of information transfer. Transferring the contents of the brain to electronic media will enable digitalization of the human brain in the future. For all its apparent simplicity, in the coming years, "copying" the human brain is unlikely to become possible. With current advances in technology, complete emulation of a single human brain would require at least a soccer field filled with supercomputers.
It is still very far from copying the human brain, but research, during which the emulation of the higher nervous system of rodents is carried out, is already underway within the framework of the Blue brain project. Scientists are fruitfully working on the creation of a computer model of the mouse neocortex.
The idea of brain emulation is attractive for the reason that its implementation will make functional copies of a person. While the "copy" will work and won't get tired, the "original" can spend its time as it pleases. If, of course, the concept of time remains. And will there be a need for a person in principle?
Nanotechnology
Using nanotechnology to achieve immortality is one of the most obvious, but not indisputable ways. Due to their extremely small size, nanosubstances can be very dangerous, as they can penetrate into the human body even through the skin. Therefore, for large-scale nanoproduction, safety parameters must first be developed.
Nevertheless, nanotechnology is the future. Experiments on the use of nanorobots in surgery are underway. In the future, they will be used for operations to replace parts of the body and even the genome. Cryonics founder Robert Etinger is confident that nanorobots will be used to "revive" people when defrosting.
Genetic Engineering
A revolution in the technology of immortality must be expected from the side of genetic engineering. The story of the Japanese woman Sei Shonagon, who began to grow younger at 75 years old, got married and gave birth to a child at 79 years old, gained great fame. Gerontologists discovered in her a gene that is responsible for the formation of cells that destroy their aging counterparts. Now the task of scientists is to understand what was the stimulant of the awakening of the youth gene, and also to make this system work. True, it has not yet been possible to find out what is the cause of the sudden awakening of the youth gene.
Telomerase, an enzyme that allows a chromosome to copy itself, also has great prospects. It was discovered back in 1984 by three American scientists. In the cell, the role of the division counter is played by the telomere - a special process of the chromosome. It should decrease with each division, but with the help of telomerase it is possible to correct the length of telomeres, which means to control the aging process.
Telomerase is blocked in most cells in the human body. The enzyme is active only in stem and germ cells. Unlocking telomerase in the rest of the cells is seen as a potential "recipe for immortality."
Will we live forever?
It can be unambiguously argued that people today live longer than a century ago. In the future, however, life expectancy will only increase. English geneticist and gerontologist Aubrey de Gray (Cambridge) believes that by 2100, ways will be found to extend human life up to 5000 years.
The bold forecast of the Briton is shared by big businessmen investing in the fight against old age, as well as by no less than 300 scientists working on the project "Strategy of projected neglect of aging"
They have already managed to increase the lifespan of laboratory mice to almost five years (on average, rodents live two years). An increase in life can be achieved by medication. Already, rapamacin and resveratrol, both of natural origin, are listed among life-extension drugs.