Neo Files: Talk to us about the "Live Forever" part of the book's subtitle. 1 Is that too big a promise? In other words, even if we beat aging, we still have accidents, weather, violence, ad infinitum. What do we see, beyond the immediate area of health that promises us immortality?
Terry Grossmann: People tend to be frightened by new ideas, but we need to recall that average life expectancy a century ago was only 47 years, but has now increased to 77 years today. This is a 63 per cent increase. The rate of technological progress is accelerating, and it is highly likely that we will see the same type of increase in life expectancy that occurred in the last century (1900-2000) to occur in the first 20 years of the present century (2000-2020).
A 63 per cent increase in life expectancy would mean life spans of over 125 years in the next few years. As the biotechnology revolution begins to unfold (what we refer to as Bridge Two in our book), radical increases in life expectancy will result from several intersecting technologies that are already making their way from the research laboratory to patient care: stem cell therapies (using not only politically sensitive embryonic stem cells, but umbilical cord blood stem cells and even adult stem cells), therapeutic cloning (creation of specific cell types and organs as replacements for defective tissues and organs), bioengineered drugs and gene-based therapies (blocking the expression of harmful genes or their replacement with healthful genes).
This will lead to Bridge Three, which will involve the full flowering of the nanotechnology and artificial intelligence revolutions, now in their infancy. As we proceed into Bridge Three in the 2020's and beyond, a dramatic evolutionary step will occur as humans further engage in a seamless merger of biological and non-biological life. Implantable pacemakers, dialysis machines and even PDAs are early and fairly primitive examples of this merger.
Technological progress tends to follow exponential growth curves, and as humans begin to enter Bridge Three, there should be no upward limit to human life expectancy: in effect, human immortality. There will always be the specter of personal accident (plane explosion) or global catastrophe (thermonuclear war, meteor strike, etc.) that could end an individual's life or all human life entirely. Yet, there are some scenarios that envision mechanisms of avoiding these catastrophic results as well. 2
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1 “Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever” by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman.
2 Dr Terry Grossman is a member of ACAM (The American Academy for Advancement of Medicine), IOMA (The International Oxidative Medicine Association) and A4M (The American
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