I was recently very surprised and shocked when I read this. A scientist by the name of Aubrey de Grey claims to have identified the seven causes of human aging, and says a "cure" could be as little as 20 years away for humans. He currently heads a project at Cambridge University that seeks to greatly slow aging on mice. Scientifically, nothing has come up against him, although his technology, known as SENS, is still quite a ways from the practical stage.
I am mostly perturbed by the questionable morals of it. To me, it is a completely unnatural technology and very much in the vein of Oryx and Crake. The line needs to drawn somewhere, and extending our lives through so dramatically (up to 1,000 years!) seems far beyond it. Yet, Grey (and others) argue that aging is just another disease and that we wouldn't be playing God ("it's unnatural for us to accept the world as we find it").
Anyway, here's an very well-done video on the subject that presents pros and cons to Grey's argument. It is in 8 parts, if you're inspired to watch it all.
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What's wrong with something being unnatural? All modern medicine is unnatural. Computers are unnatural.
Nature is cruel. 100 000 people die every day from aging. That's what's natural. In fact, the one thing nature got right was evolving humankind in such a way as we are empowered to continually improve on our circumstances. Were DeGrey and his team to succeed (he's not from Cambridge University by the way - he has his own foundation) it would be a powerful human victory over the brutality of nature. Curing aging is a moral necessity.
In my eyes, the research that DeGrey is doing is by far the most speculative research being done today. He definitely does seem passionate enough and determined to make anti-aging a reality. The question though, doesn't lay with him, it is whether or not anti-aging should be enacted if it were to become possible. I look at this in two different ways. Yes, at first, being young and healthy for a longer time than I would've previously lived sounds great but also seems kind of selfish. People have to look at this on a broader spectrum. There's a reason the life cycle is set the way it is; people are born, people die. At one point in time or another we have to die because we have to make room for the babies that are being born. If not, our world will become overcrowded and bad to live in (let alone live forever). Another important aspect to look at is the progression of technology throughout history. All of the important inventors and influential people have come from different generations. In order to have these unique people such as Einstein or Mozart come to the plate, we have to let people keep naturally experiencing life and death and let the natural cycle of life cleanse the system and open up new opportunities.
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