Defeating Death
La muerte de la muerte (Spanish) meaning, The Death of Death, is a recently published book in Barcelona, Spain. Jointly authored by José Luis Cordeiro and Cambridge (UK) mathematician David Wood, the book dwells on the subject of longevity, or more precisely immortality, now perceived as a ’scientific possibility.’
According to the authors, in just a matter of, say 27 years, ageing will be reversible and there would be no more natural deaths--only accidental ones. So by the year 2045, man can expect to stay young and live as long as he would desire. They owe this to nanotechnology and ‘genetic manipulation’ that will make it possible to to turn bad genes into good ones and remove dead cells from the human body. Their research says that ageing occurs due to shortening of ‘telomeres’ or DNA tails in chromosomes, and once lengthening of the telomeres is possible, ageing can be reversed.
Well, interesting, isn’t it?
Yet, death is foreordained. This is confirmed not only by human or animal history, but also by cyclic destruction and resurrection of life’s everyday forms and processes of which the only mainstay is evolution. Thus, new replaces the old but not vice versa.
Yes, if the Paleolithic era--or even a much later period of human history were to form a baseline, we have come far-off. And so the average quality of human life may continue to improve in tandem with the technological advancement, by degrees as it always has. But exponentially, as the article seems to profess, carries a question mark.
If one should care, a scenario of marked improvement even otherwise is entirely predictable over a foreseeable future. Given the current rate of progress in medical (and allied) sciences, much can be safely banked on the realm of possibility.
But to surmise that it will continue till the end of time, isn’t to too far-fetched an idea?
For already the history of the world and its civilizations tells us how obliteration and rebirth go hand in hand.
So, death will come in any case. If not largely by (the diminishing?) natural causes, by other umpteen means man has invented for his destruction during the course of human progress.