Are you ready to live forever?
How would you celebrate your 1000th birthday?
As fanciful as it sounds, many scientists working at the cutting-edge of life-extension medicine and technology believe that milestone is in reach. Some even believe that the first human to live to reach four figures has not only been born, but is already well into middle-age.
Which begs the question, is ageing an inevitable part of life? Or is it just another type of disease, not your divine destiny?
Can ageing, like many other illnesses that used to cut short human lifespan, be cured? Can it be engineered into extinction? Are we really on the cusp on being able to live forever?
Aubrey de Grey thinks so.
A leading figure in biogerontology, the study of the biological basis of ageing and age-related diseases, de Grey has spent his professional life working to show that ageing can be first stopped and then reversed through technology and regenerative medicine.
By systematically identifying and repairing the molecular and cellular damage that accumulates in our bodies, he suggests we can significantly extend not just human lifespan but, far more crucially, our healthspan.
If de Grey is right, it heralds a future where you could live in the prime of your life indefinitely as new technologies and treatments are continuously invented to stop your biological clock from ever ticking even a second forward.
The implications are hard to fathom. Not only for you and your family, but for the entire world. The social, economic and political ramifications and upheaval would change every facet of our current world order practically overnight.
In a fascinating conversation with Unfiltered editor-in-chief Joe Warner, de Grey reveals the latest breakthroughs of anti-ageing research – including the targeted removal of senescent cells to the repair of damaged tissues via stem cell and gene editing tools. These interventions and others, he says, will transform the way we age and live, and force us all to reconsider how we perceive and understand the boundaries of human life.
As we stand on the brink of what would be the most significant medical breakthroughs in human history, Aubrey de Grey provides essential insight for anyone interested in the intersection of health, technology, medicine and ethics.
