Will science extend human lifespan?
The wild thing about this is that they're already working on it. Lifespan extension research has a bunch of different names, but the one I like is biomedical gerontology. Actually, trying to make humans live longer is a controversial subject because of the possible effects on society, including overpopulation. In other words some people want you to die to make room for them. I think Adolph Hitler tried that.
The main object of scientific research into extending human life is to push the maximum lifespan to as far as possible. The longest a human has lived is 122 years. Some have claimed longer, but with no proof of birth date.
There are many current strategies, especially if you watch daytime TV. The ads claim all sorts of drugs, supplements, hormones or exercise regimes that can add years to your life. Unfortunately, these are unproven claims and a waste of money.
So, just what has been proposed to add years to our lives?
The first is anti-aging drugs. Some of these are based on the idea that if you don't eat as much, you'll live longer. They call this calorie restrictive diet and some drugs have been created to help this idea work, namely Rapamycin, Metformin, and Resveratrol. Rapamycin prevents activation of T-cells and B-cells to prevent kidney transplant rejection. The side effects of this include cancer.
Metformin is an anti-diabetic drug that is given for type-2 diabetes. It has the usual side effects of causing diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, etc.
Resveratrol is a heart disease drug that might have possible effects on lifespan.
After this we get into the science fiction ideas.
Nanotechnology has been proposed to deliver medicine that could repair damage due to aging. These tiny mechines could be programmed to work like molecular computers to keep track of bad things happening in our bodies and then dispense the appropriate medicine to take care of it.
Cloning body parts that fail due to aging is another strategy. This is related to stem cell research, which is another controversial subject because stem cells are harvested from aborted fetuses. Quite a bit of work has been done on this idea and it could be the primary way to extend lifespan in the future if they can come up with a way to use stem cells in our own bodies instead of from aborted fetuses.
Another promising future idea would be to use genetic manipulation to prevent aging. This would in effect evolve humans so that they never age or age much slower than present. I believe that this approach would be dangerous. A mistake could result in humans suffering more diseases or genetic abnormalities.
Although lifespan extension is possible, there is no way to control the research. There was a President's Council on Bioethics, formed by George W. Bush, but President Obama dissolved it with the promise to form a body to replace it. A Committee was formed for this purpose in 2009, but critics said it was a ploy to encourage stem cell research. The controversy continues.
I believe that stem cell research will come up with a means of increasing the lifespan of humans, but hopefully this can be done without resorting to using aborted fetuses. I think that researchers will find a way to do with the stem cells that exist in our bodies. That would be a great accomplishment.
Thanks for reading.