On 5 Live on my way home last night, they were talking about the real possibility of people being able to live for 1000 years and that the first person to do so may be alive at the moment. It's all to do with stem cells and 'stuff' and the age that you'll be if you end up living that long, is only 29.
Very interesting program anyway, here's a linky
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stmI watched the documentary about this on channel 4 about a year or so ago, was blinding.
He was a computer technician i think and he got this idea and it took him 3 weeks to get his masters degree in human biology.
complete eccentric and a bit of an alcoholic, they filmed him going to America and he was at the bar in kings cross train station at 10am drinking a couple of Guinness's, to be fair if you walk around with the kind of complexed ideas this guy has in he's head then thats probably the minimum amount of alcohol your gonna need before breakfast.
The science involved on a molecular level was so advanced and intricate the documentary didnt even try to give you a rudimentary understanding of what it entailed giving only the analogy that the human body is like a car and as a car can be maintained by replacing and upgrading the parts so can the human body, not in that organs in themselfs can be perpetually transplanted or upgraded but the cells contained within can undergo a series procedures which disallows the organ from deterioration.
To this guy this is a very real concept which he has fundamentally proven, in pactice however he conceded it would take an army of about 50 of the worlds formost preeminent doctors, surgeon etc and some silly amount of billions of dollars to get started.
The living to 1000 years tag was the same line they had for the documentary however this was not the case as the guy eludes to in the program this concept in theory would allow the human being to live forever.
I would personally not be up for it, i mean 10,000 - 100,000 years later what would you be like, would you remember when you were a child, who your friends were, when you went to school etc, be a bit too weird for me, feels like cheating.
The guy who came up with this has a place at one of those centers in America where they freeze you when you die and bring you back later when medical science can facilitate your resurrection just in case he doesn't implement he's master plan before he kicks it, so it does seem to suggest that he's a tad disposed to cheating death but it doeant really detract from the credibility of the man as a scientist as even the sceptics they interviewed in the documentary who were best positioned to comment on such a radical idea in human biology conceded that the man was undoubtedly a genius.
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