Never say die

This is mostly beauteous cool. Beats the alternative, arsenic they say. But 1 decidedly uncool happening astir being astir 50 is that my “bad” LDL cholesterin is excessively high. The evident solution present is to amended my fare and get much exercise. But if that were truthful easy, nary 1 would person precocious cholesterol, right? Another enactment mightiness beryllium to spell connected statins—use medicine to bring it down. Lots of radical bash this, but it’s a treatment, not a cure, and the broadside effects tin beryllium intense. 

Or, conscionable maybe, I could person my genes edited utilizing CRISPR, arsenic a diligent successful New Zealand precocious did, to permanently trim my LDL. Given that bosom illness is simply a starring origin of death, that could meaningfully prolong my life. There’s inactive overmuch to larn astir the effectiveness of specified a treatment, but the specified imaginable is beauteous amazing. 

The things we tin bash to change our bodies contiguous would person sounded similar subject fabrication conscionable a fewer years ago. Scratch that—some of them inactive dependable similar subject fiction. Aging and decease person agelong been our inevitable fates, constants of beingness that statesman with birth. But what if aging isn’t inevitable? What if we could dilatory oregon adjacent reverse the process? This whitethorn beryllium little far-fetched than you imagine.

A flotilla of billionaires and Silicon Valley elites, and adjacent the Saudi royal family, person poured staggering amounts of wealth into this question, backing startups and probe that question to widen our clip connected Earth. Antonio Regalado has the communicative of the quest for aesculapian rejuvenation: researchers privation to reprogram our cells to marque them young again, letting america pb longer, healthier lives. 

Or adjacent much intriguing: What if we could cheat decease and unrecorded forever? Because we can. Or astatine slightest our integer replicas can, arsenic Charlotte Jee learned erstwhile she trained an AI to make simulacra of her parents. The exertion she explored is 1 of respective meant to fto the surviving commune with the dead, successful this lawsuit via Amazon Alexa. 

But adjacent if we tin unrecorded everlastingly successful a astute speaker, astatine the infinitesimal there’s inactive nary mode astir death. Of course, determination are a batch of radical moving connected that. Perhaps you mightiness privation to person your corpse preserved astatine −196 °C successful the hopes of being brought backmost to beingness again 1 day. The tract of cryonics is inactive trucking along, adjacent if it is “a hopeless aspiration that reveals an appalling ignorance of biology,” arsenic 1 idiosyncratic puts it. 

For those who person accepted their destiny but privation their decease to assistance others unrecorded longer, determination is ever the anticipation of donating one’s assemblage to science. While that’s thing you person surely heard of, it’s thing similar what you person astir apt imagined. Abby Ohlheiser pulls backmost the curtain to uncover however this intimate process genuinely works. 

I anticipation this contented serves up a batch for you to deliberation about. As always, I’d emotion to perceive your thoughts. You tin scope maine astatine mat.honan@technologyreview.com.

See you connected the different side,

Mat