\nMICHELLE HAMER<\/a><\/div>\n
![\"Live](\"http:\/\/1v1d1e1lmiki1lgcvx32p49h8fe.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/image\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/wel_shu_110214_brain.jpg?w=740&h=385&zc=1&q=90&a=c\")
Scientists are working to stop the ageing process, and extend the living\u2026\u00a0Photo: Shutterstock<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nanobots in your blood stream, backing up your brain to a computer, swapping your fallible human form for a sophisticated holographic avatar \u2013 it might sound like science fiction, but these are just some of the ways that science is hoping to extend human life and inch us closer to living forever.<\/p>\n US futurist, inventor and Google\u2019s head of engineering, Ray Kurzweil has predicted that by the end of the century humans and machines will merge to create super humans who may never face the prospect of death.\u00a0And Kurzweil, 65, hopes to be among those kicking mortality to the curb.<\/p>\n Ray Kurzweil: Working to bring an end to death.\u00a0Photo: Getty<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTwenty years from now, we will be adding more time than is going by to your remaining life expectancy,\u201d Kurzweil told Forbes Magazine. \u201cWe\u2019ve quadrupled life expectancy in the past 1000 years and doubled it in the past 200 years. We\u2019re now able to reprogram health and medicine as software, and so that pace is only going to continue to accelerate.\u201d<\/p>\n Kurzweil is no slouch when it comes to accurate predictions. In the 1980s he predicted the incredible rise of the internet, foresaw the fall of the Soviet Union and identified the year when computers would beat humans at chess.<\/p>\n His next predictions include the programming of nanobots to work from within the body to augment the immune system and fight pathogens. By 2045 he sees us backing up our minds to the cloud and downloading ourselves into robotic forms.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s not the only scientist hoping to blow out hundreds of candles in the future.<\/p>\n British gerontologist Aubrey de Grey believes achieving human immortality is inevitable. Last October de Grey told the audience at a US technology conference that they could expect to live 1000 years, maybe longer.<\/p>\n Ageing, he says, is a simple case of bad engineering, and once the human body\u2019s kinks are ironed out we\u2019ll be able to reverse its effects and put death on the back burner.<\/p>\n \u201cMy approach is to start from the straightforward principle that our body is a machine. A very complicated machine, but nonetheless a machine, and it can be subjected to maintenance and repair in the same way as a simple machine, like a car,\u201d de Grey has said.\u00a0\u201cWhat I\u2019m after is not living to 1000. I\u2019m after letting people avoid death for as long as they want to.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a goal that even tech giant Google thinks is worth pursuing.<\/p>\n When Google entered the anti-ageing business last year, with the launch of its new biotechnology company Calico, it brought a new level of interest, respectability and crucially \u2013 funding \u2013 to the field.<\/p>\n Calico has poached some of the leading anti-ageing researchers from across the world to work on the challenge of extending life.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that if Google succeeds, this would be their greatest gift to humanity,\u201d said David Sinclair, an Australian professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n Professor Sinclair led a research team which last year announced it had reversed muscle ageing in mice, the results of which exceeded his expectations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want immortality so badly that we\u2019re always ready to be swept away into unthinkingness \u2026 Half in love with the impossible we\u2019ve always wanted to conquer death.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been studying ageing at the molecular level now for nearly 20 years and I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d see a day when ageing could be reversed. I thought we\u2019d be lucky to slow it down a little bit,\u201d he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s clearly much more work to be done here, but if those results stand, then aging may be a reversible condition, if it is caught early,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The research involved improving communication between a cell\u2019s mitochondria and nucleus. Mitochondria are like a battery within a cell, powering important biological functions. When communication breaks down between this and the nucleus, the effects of ageing accelerate.<\/p>\n Human trials of the groundbreaking process are expected to start this year.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the sort of breakthrough that can\u2019t come soon enough for several\u00a0 billionaires across the globe who are pouring their fortunes and hopes into immortality research.<\/p>\n Russian entrepreneur, Dmitry Itskov founded the 2045 Initiative in 2011 with the aim of thwarting human death within three decades. Itskov envisages \u2018neo-humans\u2019 who will relinquish clunky human forms and adopt sophisticated machine bodies. He claims humans will eventually download their minds into artificial brains, which will then be connected to humanoid robots he calls Avatars.<\/p>\n According to 2045.com: \u201cSubstance independent minds will receive new bodies with capabilities far exceeding those of ordinary humans \u2026 Humanity will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species.\u201d<\/p>\n PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel donated $US3.5 million to Aubrey de Grey\u2019s not-for-profit research foundation, telling the\u00a0New Yorker<\/i>\u00a0at the time that: \u201cProbably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead\u201d.<\/p>\n Clearly Thiel would prefer to remain among the living and he\u2019s prepared to pay for his pitch at immortality, most recently making a large donation to the Singularity Institute, which focuses on creating artificial intelligence that could see the rise of cyborgs (merged humans and machines).<\/p>\n US entrepreneur turned science innovator, David Kekich, dedicated his life and impressive bank balance to reversing ageing after he was paralysed from a spinal cord injury in 1978. Kekich initially raised money for paralysis research but then switched to anti-ageing research. He founded the Maximum Life Foundation in 1999 and aims to reverse human ageing by 2033.<\/p>\n On his website<\/a>\u00a0Kekich writes: \u201cWe are moving from an era in which nothing could be done to defeat ageing into an era in which advancing biotechnology will give us the tools to do overcome it \u2026 Now, at the dawn of the biotechnology era, the inevitable is no longer inevitable. The research establishment \u2013 if sufficiently funded and motivated \u2013 could make spectacular inroads into repairing and preventing the root causes of ageing within our lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n But given that there are yet to be any proven means for extending human life, these billionaires may be motivated more by ego than altruism.<\/p>\n As US author Adam Leith Gollner writes in\u00a0The Book of Immortality: the Science Belief and Magic Behind Living Forever\u00a0<\/i>(Sribner 2013):\u00a0\u201cWe want immortality so badly that we\u2019re always ready to be swept away into unthinkingness \u2026 Half in love with the impossible we\u2019ve always wanted to conquer death.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet he says all humans can really do to live longer is to eat well and exercise.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all have to go \u2026 whether dying in battle, tumbling off a horse, succumbing to pneumonia or being shivved by a lover. Maybe one day we just don\u2019t wake up. However it happens, we enter the mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Terrific summary of the state of play. British gerontologist Aubrey de Grey believes achieving human immortality is inevitable. Last October de Grey told the audience at a US technology conference that they could expect to live 1000 years, maybe longer. http:\/\/thenewdaily.com.au\/life\/2014\/02\/11\/medical-science-close-curing-death\/ Could medical science be close to curing death? 8:49pm, Feb 11 MICHELLE HAMER … Continue reading Google gunning for the end of death…<\/span> ![\"Ray](\"http:\/\/1v1d1e1lmiki1lgcvx32p49h8fe.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/newdaily_110214ray_kurzweil.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nImmortality: Not if, when<\/h3>\n
Google is on board<\/h3>\n
Buying life<\/b><\/h3>\n
Maximising life, minimising death<\/h3>\n