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Sep. 25th, 2009 10:11 amAbout twenty years ago, I read an article in Scientific American about restricted calorie diets and how effective they were at prolonging lifespan. Mice fed on a diet with 10-25% fewer calories than normal lived up to twice as long (up to 3 years as opposed to 18 months), although the article didn't mention how happy the mice looked about this.
The researchers postulated that humans using the same sort of calorie-restricted diet would, they estimated, prolong their lives for the same reasons as the mice - going out on a limb a bit, the report suggested that it might be possible to push the human lifespan up as high as 150 by doing so. A remarkable age, or so it seemed at the time.
You see, a few years ago I started reading estimates that thanks to advances in medical technology 'The first 500 year old person has now been born." My reaction to this was So long as it's me I'm fine with that, but 500 year lifespans now look a bit old hat thanks to the prediction I saw the other day that effective immortality would be possible within twenty years.
Now, all this talk of 'thanks to the miracle of nanotechnology' stuff sounds to me a bit like the articles written back in the 1950s about how nuclear power would given everyone free electricity by the distant future year of 2000, and everyone would live in a robot house.
Even so, the question of possible immortality is an interesting one; like the old saying goes Nobody wants to die, but everybody wants to go to heaven. A world with available immortality would rapdly become a Malthusian nightmare. Nobody would die but there's no chance of creating a heaven when you've got population growth like is predicted this century combined with nobody dying. Immortality is only attractive when you don't think of the implications.
But, with that in mind, a poll:
[Poll #1462328]
The researchers postulated that humans using the same sort of calorie-restricted diet would, they estimated, prolong their lives for the same reasons as the mice - going out on a limb a bit, the report suggested that it might be possible to push the human lifespan up as high as 150 by doing so. A remarkable age, or so it seemed at the time.
You see, a few years ago I started reading estimates that thanks to advances in medical technology 'The first 500 year old person has now been born." My reaction to this was So long as it's me I'm fine with that, but 500 year lifespans now look a bit old hat thanks to the prediction I saw the other day that effective immortality would be possible within twenty years.
Now, all this talk of 'thanks to the miracle of nanotechnology' stuff sounds to me a bit like the articles written back in the 1950s about how nuclear power would given everyone free electricity by the distant future year of 2000, and everyone would live in a robot house.
Even so, the question of possible immortality is an interesting one; like the old saying goes Nobody wants to die, but everybody wants to go to heaven. A world with available immortality would rapdly become a Malthusian nightmare. Nobody would die but there's no chance of creating a heaven when you've got population growth like is predicted this century combined with nobody dying. Immortality is only attractive when you don't think of the implications.
But, with that in mind, a poll:
[Poll #1462328]
