Immoratility Within a Decade

The old rusty Nail

AN E-JOURNAL FOR OLD PEOPLE

IMMORTALITY WITHIN A DECADE    

Russell Burton, an Old Person

I bet the title got your attention.  It surely got mine when I read it on the cover of the 2012 October Discover magazine. Wow, at my age immortality is a concept worth considering. Well, I quickly went right to it on page 60 to read ‘Recipe for Immortality’ by George Church and Ed Regis.  Checking Church’s credentials I read that he is professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical Center and Ed Regis is a science writer.

 

I should have known that if we are looking for immortality within a decade we had better be looking at something clinically adaptable not ideas from the budding science of genes and DNA.  Well was I wrong for they proposed taking DNA from insects, primitive animals and cells that live-long lives or some even blessed with immortality and somehow get them into human cells.  So, on paper you clone an immortal human. Wow, I clearly see all of this possibly happening within the next 500 years - certainly not within a decade.  You noticed I wrote possibly not probably.

 

But the article did get me thinking about immortality.  Never dying is an interesting concept.  Now, I guess that religious people believe that they will not die but will reside forever in a place called Heaven.  So, for them immortality is no big deal, although I have a feeling that they just might take a chance on living forever over going to Heaven.  Sometimes I think religious people are not really sure about going to Heaven.  I believe that because after a catastrophe that kills many people the religious survivors thank God for saving them.  If Heaven is waiting for them why not get out of here as soon as possible.

 

Living forever at first blush does sound great for crossing that finish line of life for me means, well the end.  Oh yes, my relatives and friends will keep me in their thoughts – for awhile. So in a sense I will live on, at least their remembrance of me what ever that might be.  Since my relationship with each person is different, I suppose I would ‘live on’ as many different people.  But, of course this is not immortality for a couple of generations pass and you are forgotten.  I remember my grandparents but certainly my children can not remember them because they never met them.

 

Certain celebrities seem to live on forever as do some politicians.  For instance, George Washington will not soon be forgotten as long as the United States exists.  But, of course even our country will not endure forever.  Other countries will emerge become great and pass us by, leaving us in the dust of history. Then George will become a less known leader of a less known country.

 

Getting back to living forever is a concept that is hard to grasp, still an interesting one. Of course the birth rate for people would have to be reduced drastically to something like zero. No more babies or young people growing up.  Just adults, not growing old, just facing each day at a time knowing that there will always be a tomorrow.

 

Now knowing that my tomorrows are limited does cause me to do some things that I want to do before I die. And, the older you get the fewer tomorrows you have. If you live forever, then I suppose you would put off doing lots of things because what’s the hurry for I will be around tomorrow and the next day and the next day.

 

Always being around tomorrow makes for some interesting thoughts.  Obviously no one would age.  That is a person looks the same forever.  Life imprisonment would be a very long time, for sure.  Getting married ‘until death do you part’ means a very long marriage.  Would it be possible to live with someone for many centuries?  Good question.  You see all of these immortal biological entities from which we are going to get DNA are very primitive animals without any social structure.

 

Of course immortality means working for a very long time.  Retirement now, which I am enjoying, makes sense because I am not expected to live for very long.  That is a minimal burden to society.  And, I am a burden because I am producing very little that could be considered something of value.  Yep, working forever does not sound all that much fun unless you had a job that you really enjoyed.  I had such a job.  I could not wait to get to work each morning, still after a couple hundred years of the same thing, it might get tiring just a little bit.  Did I hear the word ‘boring’?

 

I wonder if a professional football player could continue in that game forever.  You know the crowds cheering him on and reading his stats each day in the Sports Section of the local newspaper.  One thing for sure he would certainly be traded a lot of times and play for all of the football teams.  “Here I am playing for the Dallas Cowboys again.  I remember playing with the Cowboys a couple of hundred years ago.”

 

Even our conversation would be different.  You know the line, “Hey Bill you look just as young as you did the last time I saw you two hundred years ago”.  Of course everybody would look the same because we wouldn’t age.  How boring can that be?

 

I suppose some people would die because of serious accidents, so a few babies could be born to keep the population constant.  But how would society decide who would have the opportunity to have a baby and raise it to maturity?  That child would be terribly lonely for there would be so few in the world.  I suppose once this child reached maturity it would stop aging and remain looking like someone in their twenties forever.  I assume after this youngster gets over acne.

 

I suppose when this immortality thing gets started, only the very rich people will be able to get it.  Now that is not fair.  And, being fair is an important part of our DNA.  So, there would immediately be considerable conflict among those who are mortal and those who are immortal.  Certainly being biologically immortal does not shield a person from death by murder.

 

Suicides would increase I am quite sure.  Certainly being immortal does not prevent unhappiness nor depression.

 

Finally would the FDA approve such a concept and how would they decide which criteria to use for its approval?  Certainly, this agency would have to look at more than its safety because of all of the far-reaching effects that immortality would cause.   

 

This word ‘forever’ is beginning to bug me. Immortality on this Earth will not work for lots of reasons.  So, let’s hope that the authors of that article are wrong and immortality never occurs - not in a decade not ever.