There has been an anti-aging movement for some time that aims to eliminate or reverse aging effects, with scientists like Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey exploring technological and biological approaches. Recent research, such as the Mount Sinai's study on reversing aging in blood stem cells, shows promising advancements in this field.
In 2023, Scientists from Harvard Medical School, the University of Maine, and MIT published a groundbreaking study revealing a chemical method to reprogram cells to a more youthful state.
Sounds like the stuff that gives reason for optimism. Who wouldn't want to be forever youthful, right?
But I think they have their priorities mixed up. What they should be figuring out first before they jump into a "cure" for aging, is why there is aging in the first place.
I mean, if we can retain the capacity to adapt and evolve after taking the cure, when we no longer age and die thanks to the efforts of brainy scientists, then there is no problem with this approach.
But there is a problem because being able to evolve and adapt is intricately linked to aging and dying from old age.
Adaptation and aging, as indeed dying from aging, is integral to the survival of the species.
It is necessary phasing out for replacement.
Nature wasn't concerned with our preferences when it chose for phasing out for replacement to be how the species adapts, evolves and survives. It was preoccupied with our survivability as lifeforms in a constantly changing universe.
The only constant in the multiverse is change. It therefore speaks for itself that creatures that don't come equipped to adapt to this reality will ultimately go extinct.
Phasing out for replacement was the best survival strategy that nature selected for all lifeforms, and for it to work there had to be deliberately activated aging and phasing out in place.
That final phase (aging and death from it) cannot include care for our feelings and desires.
Yes, it's not nice to age, but we have to live with it rather than try to cure it, not so much because we have no choice, but because it is necessary for the survival of the species.
Don't say I am cold, because what I am saying is truth by rationalization.
Firstly, old age is not a disease, even when it brings disease aplenty. Old age and death from it is paradoxically what makes it possible for evolution to happen. It's why we all can be here right now.
If you find this reasoning bogus, then imagine we cure aging and old age? There will then be no limit to how long people live. But is this a good thing?
People will only be removed from life through the many ways people die, for instance by road accident.
Think of what will happen 2000 years later if, say, oxygen is thinner in the atmosphere than it is today, let's say as thin as it is higher up in the mountains. Would those of us that took the anti aging "cure" be able to survive the new environment?
Mind you there are ethnicities that are perfectly adapted to life in environments with thinned out oxygen in the air. They got there by adaptation and that only happened through their young.
Because, our children's children's children's children's children's children would have adapted to the changing environment by simply being allowed to be born and adapt to life with less oxygen content in the air. Their bodies would have done the work they can easily do during the developmental stages to make this possible, on a gradual basis, of course.
I am not trying to say there will be no newborns once people start taking the "cure". The scenario I am depicting is one where the bulk of humankind comprises those who took the "cure".
I am sure that that will be the majority in a few generations.
It's really like what they say about old donkeys or horses. You cannot teach them new tricks.
You cannot get bodies that were fully grown 2,000 years ago to change their molecular composition, not to mention their physical structure, to cope with an altered environment 2,000 years later when they stopped growing and were coagulated 2,000 years ago.
They cannot adapt because their bodies no longer know how.
Think about being able to perform human tasks faster, developing a bigger more powerful brain, running faster than Hussain Bolt, being better at chess than Kasparov, and etc. That's all done in stages, no exceptions, and it's all thanks to the fact we age die from it and get replaced with new people with bigger, more capable brains than those of their progenitors.
What about overpopulation?
If we couldn't all get old and die from it as a result, while new ones are still being born, there would soon be too many of us for it to be possible to live without problems of space. The number of people who die from unnatural causes is always too small to offset this situation even now when, on the global average, the majority of us age and die from old age, regardless there are wars and natural disasters.
Even plants have seed dispersal methods that ensure they don't crowd up the places they grow. And FYI they also get old and dry up from it.
For some plants, replacement happens on a yearly or seasonal basis because nature isn't as stupid as the scientists trying hard to find cures for aging are.
It's to hope that this "cure" scientists are saying they have found is just a scam to make huge sums of money. Not that I support scamming but I hope it will never be possible to figure out how to reverse aging permanently because, if this ever happens, the majority will take the "cure"... and we can say goodbye to the new and improved version of us. We can kiss byebye to our species' capacity to evolve and adapt.
This has to speak for itself.
Even when it would be perfectly possible to reverse the process in future so that people start aging and dying from old age again, if we know how we got there in the first place, it would still be advisable to perform a scientific study first, by giving this "cure" to a group that we isolate from the rest, with the rest of us as the control, this being the group without an expiry date because, basically, that's what we'd be putting on ourselves if we succeed to make us all live forever.
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