Last year, at a London TEDx symposium, Harvard University post-doctoral scientist Daisy Robinton, proposed considering ageing “a disease in itself”, said the Standard. She described the medical community’s excitement about the discovery of CRISPR/Cas9, a protein that seemingly allow us to target and delete DNA genetic mutations. Robinton said: “Gene editing provides an opportunity to not only cure genetic disease, but also to prevent diseases from ever coming into being.” Silicon Valley, however, is where more radical advances seem likely, the Evening Standard added, such as the work of Dmitry Itskov, the Russian billionaire founder of the life-extension non-profit 2045 Initiative, who pays scientists to map the human brain “so our minds can be decanted into a
reported in July, adding that: “He intends to divert trillions of dollars into life-extending technologies – robotic hearts, artificial exoskeletons, genetic editing, bionic limbs and so on – in the hope that each Californian man, woman and AI (artificial intelligence) will eventually be able to upload their consciousness to the Cloud and experience digital eternity”. Finally, the best known element of the immortality industry is cryogenic freezing. Despite having a reputation “as the last resort of wealthy cranks”, cryogenic freezing remains in business, said The Evening Standard. At Alcor Life Extension Foundation’s Arizona facility, 149 corpses have already been preserved in liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C, since the company was founded in 1972. Worldwide, thousands of people have signed up for cryogenics
“If you actually exist as software you have a lot of options. I do enjoy having a physical body but why have just one when you could have lots of different ones?” computer and either downloaded to a robot body or synced with a hologram”. Then there is Joon Yun, a physician and hedge fund manager who in March proclaimed at an anti-ageing symposium of the California elite – including reportedly Google co-founder Sergey Brin and actor Goldie Hawn – that ageing is simply a programming error encoded in our DNA. He said: “If something is encoded, you can crack the code … we can end ageing forever”. The immortality quest has even entered politics. Californian entrepreneur Zoltan Istvan has launched his bid to become the 2018 Libertarian governor of California on a platform that includes “eliminating death”, The Times
services, including Alcor’s 28 UK clients. The service isn’t cheap – full-body freezing costs £165,000 ($282,345 AUD), while having just your head frozen is about £60,000 ($102,657 AUD). Dr Anders Sandberg, a researcher at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, who is one of Alcor’s clients, said: “It’s a gamble, but it’s still much better than being dead”. He envisages a world in which the brain is paramount, so when his is revived, it can be transformed into a sort of computer program containing all of his memories. Sandberg said: “If you actually exist as software you have a lot of options. I do enjoy having a physical body but why have just one when you could have lots of different ones?” Staff writers with Emily Hill / Evening Standard; Richard Godwin / The Times; Mark Bridge / The Times; and The Interview People.
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September–October 2017 western nurse |
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