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Science & Technology

Will it soon be possible to live to 1,000 ?

By T.K. Randall
May 2, 2016 · Comment icon 62 comments

How long is it possible to stay young and healthy ? Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 Mike Baird
Dr Aubrey de Grey maintains that the first person to live for hundreds of years has already been born.
A Cambridge-educated biomedical theorist, Dr de Grey, who has dedicated his life to finding ways to extend the human lifespan, is certainly no stranger to the science behind the ageing process.

A firm believer in the idea that humans will eventually be able to live indefinitely, de Grey now claims that the first person to live for 1,000 years has probably already been born.

"You know, people have this crazy concept that ageing is natural and inevitable, and I have to keep explaining that it is not," he said. "The human body is a machine with moving parts and like a car or an aeroplane, it accumulates damage throughout life as a consequence of normal operation."

His research team is currently working on new types of regenerative therapies that have already received substantial financial support from key figures at companies such as Google and PayPal.
"By reconstructing the structured order of the living machinery of our tissues, these rejuvenation biotechnologies will restore the normal functioning of the body's cells and essential biomolecules, returning ageing tissues to health and bringing back the body's youthful vigor," the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Research Foundation claims.

Not everyone is convinced however that de Grey's predictions of 1,000-year lifespans are correct.

"No one in the future could be genetically modified for a human to live longer than say 120 years," said Dr Tilo Kunath of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

"You couldn't even do it through diet or medicine, no not within the next 100 years."

Source: Mail Online | Comments (62)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #53 Posted by XenoFish 8 years ago
Well after the first 1000 years it starts to get really boring. I wouldn't want to do that again.
Comment icon #54 Posted by psyche101 8 years ago
But, what about accidents? You'd eventually die violently, somehow. Have a look at the video I posted in post #30. Adam Savage gets a new set of lungs grown from his own stem cells when he destroys them in a motorbike accident - it kicks of the show.
Comment icon #55 Posted by RabidMongoose 8 years ago
http://www.express.c...ity-IS-possible Myself, I'd like to live forever. Or at least as long as the end of the world... Judgement Day. There is so much to do that I cannot really see getting bored. The key will be if we can remain active all that time. There isn't any point in being immortal if you become incapacitated before reaching 100. When we read the Bible, or historical tablets from past civilizations, or even go and look at the headstones in old graveyards we find people that lived way beyond the official record of 124 years. Yet there is a trend of discrediting all claims that aren't ... [More]
Comment icon #56 Posted by Habitat 8 years ago
When we read the Bible, or historical tablets from past civilizations, or even go and look at the headstones in old graveyards we find people that lived way beyond the official record of 124 years. Yet there is a trend of discrediting all claims that aren't supported by an original birth certificate despite the fact they have only been issued for the last 100 - 150 years (and some countries even less). In animal models (like the immortal jellyfish) it is shown that injuring or starving them triggers cellular transdifferentiation resulting in the reversing of aging. What that means is that horm... [More]
Comment icon #57 Posted by DieChecker 8 years ago
When we read the Bible, or historical tablets from past civilizations, or even go and look at the headstones in old graveyards we find people that lived way beyond the official record of 124 years. Yet there is a trend of discrediting all claims that aren't supported by an original birth certificate despite the fact they have only been issued for the last 100 - 150 years (and some countries even less). In animal models (like the immortal jellyfish) it is shown that injuring or starving them triggers cellular transdifferentiation resulting in the reversing of aging. What that means is that horm... [More]
Comment icon #58 Posted by RabidMongoose 8 years ago
I thought aging had very little to do with what you ate, other then if you get free radicals into you from your food, then you age quicker. The actual aging is a result of the ends of our DNA being damaged, and when it replicates those broken bits don't get fixed. A fix to the DNA damage is the only thing that will let us live vastly extended lifespans, that I know of. Supposedly our brains actually start to break down when we reach around 100, so we can replace our entire body, and unless we fix the DNA ends of our brain tissue, we're still going to die of old age with a perfect body. Stem ce... [More]
Comment icon #59 Posted by DieChecker 8 years ago
Stem cells (and cancer cells) do not age. This is why scientists believe they can take a tissue sample from you, turn the cells into stem cells, grow them, specialise them into an organ and transplant that brand new organ back into you. And by doing such pit-stops whenever something breaks down they could get you to be 1000+ years old. This process is just mimicked transdifferentiation done by a group of scientists and surgeons. Yet for all we know there may be circumstances where this occurs in humans naturally waiting to be discovered. If you think about it an ancient human being losing a le... [More]
Comment icon #60 Posted by RabidMongoose 8 years ago
If they took stem cells from a 50 year old man, wouldn't the DNA always remain that of a 50 year old man? The DNA would already be damaged, even if turned into Stem Cells. As far as growing a new leg, or new whatever, I think we'd see some modern examples of that, as there are many places were malnourishment is common. Also wouldn't we see that in the fossil record? Regardless, we'll likely soon have the methods to rebuild the DNA strands back to childhood levels and not have to worry about it. Cells have a set number of divisions they can go through called their hay-flick limit. Most DNA dama... [More]
Comment icon #61 Posted by DieChecker 8 years ago
Cells have a set number of divisions they can go through called their hay-flick limit. Most DNA damage gets repaired but those times it cannot be the cell destroys itself, gets replaced and the new cell is one step closer to its hay-flick limit. It is only senescent cells (those at their hay-flick limit) which keep DNA damage and you cannot turn those into stem cells. The reason being is you need to give them extra cell divisions to get them back to stem cells and the moment you do that its accumulated DNA damage either gets repaired or the cell destroys itself. I'll have to read up on that. A... [More]
Comment icon #62 Posted by Zalmoxis 8 years ago
I really don't believe this but you know, if there was an explanation on what should be altered in a human's genetic structure to extend their life or reverse their ageing then perhaps I would be willing to listen but this story is told without any scientific support.


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