ben bova

 

 

Bova, Ben. (1998). Immortality: How science is extending your life span – and changing the world. New York: Avon Books, Inc.

 

 

(18) The fourth era of medicine is just beginning. With the knowledge so painstakingly gained of how the cells of our bodies work and how the DNA-based genes within those cells operate, biogerontologists (the scientists who study human aging) are starting to examine the question of life extension. . . . Whether they realize it or not, today's researchers are reaching toward human immortality: the end of death as the unavoidable end of life.

(194) Resuscitating a patient whose heart has stopped may be "playing God" the first few times it is done; afterward it becomes a standard part of emergency medical treatment, and we take if for granted.

 

(196) Opponents of immortality – or vastly extended human life spans – have already voiced the opinion that only megalomaniacs will want to live forever. . . .

We are dealing with life and death quite literally here. The ultimate horror, the transcendent fear, death in all its finality may be avoidable. The prospect threatens our most fundamental beliefs, shatters our basic understanding of life and its fragility . . .

(199) This is not selfishness, or greed, or any other manifestation of moral degradation. It is nothing less than what we should expect. Life seeks life. Living organisms strive to continue living. They do not ordinarily go gentle into that good night.

(232) The search for immortality began far back in the mists of prehistory, when early humans first realized that they would die.

During the Ice Ages, Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers and jewelry to adorn their bodies. Egyptian pharaohs and Chinese emperors had themselves entombed with all the wealth and servants they would need for another life. This quest for a life beyond death has given rise to great literature, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh. It has also been a key factor in the development of religion. Christianity swept the Roman Empire in large part because it specifically promised its believers life beyond death.

Today the quest for immortality is taking place in research laboratories around the world. Gene therapy, human growth hormone treatments, hormone replacement therapy, telomerase, antioxidants, tissue regeneration, nanotechnology, and a host of other investigative avenues are being pursued by dedicated men and women. (233) Most of them do not realize that the end product of their researches will be human immortality, any more than Rutherford and Einstein realized that one result of their studies of the atom would be Hiroshima.

Gradually, at first, the work now taking place in research labs will teach physicians how to extend human span. The old limit of 120 years will be surpassed; not by much, at first. The Guinness Book of Records will be rewritten once, twice, and then just about every year. New breakthroughs will stop the ravaging effects of aging and then begin to reverse them. People will be physically young as long as they live, and they will live for centuries.

What biomedical discoveries will be made in the next fifty years? The next hundred? The next few centuries? You may very well live to see them – and benefit from them.

If today's research is allowed to continue. And if the results of such research are made available to all. Those are gigantic ifs.

We face three possible futures, as far as life extension and immortality are concerned. In one, the researches now under way are suppressed. In the second, they are controlled by an elite group. In the third, they are shared with the entire world.

(234) Many people fear new knowledge. They succumb to the catchphrase that scientists are attempting to "play God." Actually, the fear of new knowledge is often based in the fear that those who possess the new knowledge will gain unwarranted power over those who do not possess it.

The easiest thing to do when faced with a new situation is to ignore it. If you can't ignore it, then perhaps you can get rid of lt. As the American writer Wallace Kaufman put it, "Except when in real danger, most people prefer what they know to what they must learn."

(236) If all research that might lead to extending human life span is stopped, then virtually all the biomedical research under way today will be banned. If the restrictions on research are interpreted very strictly, hardly any research program now in existence will be safe. . . .

In truth, many people will prefer this future. It is exactly like the past, and most people prefer the devil they know over the devil they have yet to meet. After all, society has been going along for thousands of years with the Biblical three or four score years as our best hope. Why change? Why reach for forbidden fruit?

(241) Writing in 1954, the anthropologist Carleton S. Coon summarized humankind's prospects for the future in these words: “a half-million years of experience in outwitting beasts on mountains and plains, in heat and cold, in light and darkness, gave our ancestors the equipment that we still desperately need if we are to . . . live happily ever after in the deer-filled glades of a world in which everyone is young and beautiful forever.” That future world awaits us if we are, as Coon believed, smart enough to earn it.

(250) Considering all that has been accomplished in the past half-century and the fact that scientific knowledge appears to be growing exponentially, the next half-century should see human life spans extended to centuries – indefinitely, in point of fact. For all practical purposes, aging will be a thing of the past, and death will be an option rather than an inescapable end to life.

The stage has been set for a new era of human accomplishment. This new age will not come painlessly. No fundamentally new era does. But it will come.

Two hundred years ago the French mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet wrote, "Human institutions. . . [are] capable of improvement as we be­come enlightened. . . nature has placed no limits to our hopes." He was hardly naive; he wrote his treatise on the perfectibility of humankind while being hunted by agents of the French Revolution who wanted to execute him.

Yet he firmly believed that we can move toward perfection. History has shown that despite the wars and slaughters of past and present, his optimism is not unjustified.

The first immortals are already living among us. You might be one of them.

 

Nothing is too wonderful to be true. - Michael Faraday

We may learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labor and double its produce; all diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of old age, and our lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian standard. – Benjamin Franklin, letter to the scientist Joseph Priestly in 1780

It is the great glory and also the great threat of science that anything which is possible in principle – which does not flout a bedrock law of physics – can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute and long-sustained. – Peter Medawar

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. - Thomas Jefferson

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. - Franklin D. Roosevelt