Life-extending technologies are getting more lab time and
investment than ever before, and with experts in the field
proclaiming the knowledge is just a few decades away, you'll want
to be around for it.
Over the past decade, the main areas of research -- brain
emulation, regenerative medicine and cryonics -- have gradually
been departing the realms of science fiction and making a name for
themselves in scientific journals. Back in 2009, when
Avatar suggested that people could one day upload their
brain to an invincible body-double, it seemed like something only
James Cameron could dream up. Then a student in Israel controlled a robot with his mind from 2,000km away. In 2009
Aubrey de Grey announced -- to more than a few raised eyebrows --
that the first person to live to 1,000 thanks to regenerative
medicine was probably already alive -- and by 2012 a four-year old
became the first person to receive a life-saving blood vessel made
from her own cells. And around about the same time the horrendous
1997 film Batman & Robin painted cryonics as a field
best reserved for psychotic villains, Gregory Fahy and William Rall
announced the development of the first cryoprotectant able to
vitrify the human body slowly enough that ice crystals don't form
and cause tissue damage.
Wired.co.uk spoke with leading proponents of each field to find
out if we could be convinced to fork out £50,000 to have our brains
put on ice. (Wired and Tired by Luke
Robert Mason, director of Virtual Futures and advisor to Humanity
Dmitry Itskov, Initiative
"If technologies for transferring
our personalities to another body are developed, it is quite
possible that we will be able to make use of several bodies at
once. For example, we could live in our biological body on Earth,
and in our cybernetic body we could travel into outer
Russia-based Initiative 2045 is not shy about making
predictions. While most in the field of life-preservation are wary
of setting timelines, Itskov and his collection of neurologists,
philosophers, astrophysicists (and one Orthodox archbishop) are
guiding our future with a bold 30-year plan. Through the
advancement of nanotechnology, robotics and cybernetics we can
expect mind-controlled humanoid robots to be as common as cars by
2020, and by 2035 we will be able to transfer our personality to a
"carrier", thus completing the transmission of consciousness and
heralding the beginning of "cybernetic immortality". By 2045, when
nanorobots and hologram avatars become a reality, any form we can
imagine, we can occupy,
"The majority of scientists we have spoken with believe that our
goals are quite attainable by this deadline," says 31-year-old
It's telling, however, that he quotes transhumanist author Ray
Kurzweil -- and his prediction that we will replace organs with artificial
equivalents by 2030 -- rather than a cybernetics professor. He
later compares the future of telepresence to the world portrayed in
the 2009 film Surrogates, suggesting that,
although progress is being made, it is still more appropriate to
cite cultural references than scientific ones.
But the world as Itskov sees it is one anyone would want to be a
part of: illness and suffering have been wiped out; global food or
energy crises are a thing of the past and the planet will become a
"gigantic ecological sanctuary". Humans will enjoy physical freedom
-- with bodies that have enhanced abilities and the capacity to
survive in places typically deemed inhospitable -- and freedom of
consciousness: "The new human will… have super-powers of individual
consciousness". We will start out with bodies that resemble our
biological form, to ease the transition, but eventually we will
aspire to a flexible form that can just as easily run as marathon
as make a detour to the Moon, sans spacesuit.
"Humanity now has the chance to make immortality technologies
open and widely available," says Itskov, speaking, as an ambitious
futurist does, in definitive rather than potential terms. "We
anticipate that war will also lose its meaning; what kind of
threats can be made considering you are surrounded by other
Focusing on the transfer of the human brain and its
consciousness "simplifies the task considerably", he claims. Anyone
with a fondness for his or her memories and own wacky variety of
personality might baulk at this. Mirroring the functions of
billions of neurons firing in an organ that is inherently built to
react and respond to the world around it via nerves and bodily
senses is one thing -- making sure the unique way it perceives that
world is another. In this task, Itskov draws upon the Dalai
"In Buddhist and Hindu texts, practices are discussed which
enable practicing yogis to leave their body, transfer their
consciousness to another body and continue to live in it. To
explain this phenomenon… could become one of the most interesting
scientific tasks in the project."
Itskov's rhetoric is at once spiritual, transhumanist and
futurist, and his philosophical suggestion that our current
biological form is just one "incarnation" warrants a critique.
While humanity did not always take on the form we see now, the
evolution of the species has always been a slow one -- and a
biological one. To throw out millions of years of evolution in
place of a cybernetic incarnation, "without interrupting our life
experience", is a pretty big ask.
It's a debate Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute
has engaged in with its own roadmap. The task, it says, is "the logical endpoint of
computational neuroscience's attempts to accurately model neurons
and brain system". However is it also important to understand "what
level of organisation is necessary for intelligent, personal, or
Although many of Itskov's predictions sound unreal now, it could
feasibly be the technology that receives the most funding,
considering the progress that has already been made. In 2012 a
paralysed woman was filmed becoming the first person to manipulate
a physical object using a brain controlled electronic system.
Her obvious joy at being able to complete the task is
poignant, and it is impossible to imagine that results such as
these won't continue to garner interest and investment. The logical
conclusion is that these technologies will give us the ability to
overcome our physical limits and disabilities -- Initiative 2045
will take it from there.
Whole brain emulation has a well-defined goal and it has
had considerable philosophic study by organisations such as The
Future of Humanity Institute. Sometimes, the idea of a Digital
Immortality is not hard to believe when we look around at the
digital detritus we leave on our social networking platforms.
Could back-up copies of your brain really preserve
everything that is individual about you? It is still considered a
radical future possibility and relies on the logical endpoint of
computational neuroscience (where it is possible to accurately
model neurons and brain systems) leading to a digital
Aubrey de Grey,
"I'm not really focused on
longevity at all, I'm focused on health -- I'm just interested in
people not getting sick because sickness causes suffering. And it's
In 2000, de Grey had his eureka moment -- instead of battling
against the ageing process by attempting to rewrite the way our
cells are wired, why not come up with a way to reverse that
process? While many in the field concentrate on tissue engineering
and propose that organ cloning is the path to longevity, de Grey is
taking it down to the molecular level with his seven classes of
ageing. If we can repair the damage caused by these categories, he
says, we can effectively prolong death forever -- or until we get
hit by a forklift truck.
"I realised that repairing the damage of old age was likely to be
a lot easier than pre-empting its creation," he told Wired.co.uk.
"The damage that happens gradually during ageing is a set of
intrinsic side effects of the normal operation of the human body,
and if you want to stop molecular garbage accumulating in cells
[for instance], you have to completely redesign all the ways that
the cell works, which obviously we can't do."
Three of the seven components occur at the cellular level -- cells
dying and not being replaced, cells dividing when they are not
meant to (cancer) and having too many cells when those that are
meant to die, don't -- and four at a molecular level -- mutations
of the mitochondria (which extract nutrients), accumulation of
molecular garbage inside and outside the cell (by-products of
normal activity) and stiffening of the extracellular matrix (the
proteins that hold everything together).
The SENS Foundation, which has received £2.2 million in funding
from former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel (the foundation's funding is
purely philanthropic), was setup specifically to battle these
components. It focuses, de Grey says, "on the most difficult parts"
-- while most are focusing on fields such as tissue regeneration,
SENS is targeting the reversal of degeneration so that we won't
ever need to replace an organ again.
Several recent studies have already proven that modified hair,
eye and heart cells can be reintroduced to mice to prompt
regeneration. These are extremely specific and targeted cases,
however. For instance, the muscle cells reintroduced to the mice
hearts were those irreversibly lost due to damage caused by heart
attacks. The studies are focusing on specific diseases and traumas,
not those related to normal degeneration in ageing. Everything is
helpful, concedes de Grey, but he is looking ahead for a total
solution rather than a series of fixes for individual elements that
break down as time wears on.
The 1,000 year life span he is predicting will be the norm is
explained by a straightforward calculation: "we just look at how
often people in the industrialised world die today of causes that
are not related to ageing -- if you get to the age of 26, your
chances of not getting to 27 is less than one in a thousand."
And how would the planet look with this evergreen, undying
population? de Grey is not too worried about that, and is clearly
incredulous that anyone else would be. For one thing, if the age
women are choosing to have children is already rapidly on the rise,
it stands to reason this trend will continue. Menopause won't be an
issue, neither will natural resources -- by the time we have to
worry about a rapidly-growing population, technology will have
advanced to cope with the factors we battle today. It could come
down to a future universal equivalent of China's one-child policy,
but whatever the solution, de Grey says it is ultimately our
obligation to give humanity the choice.
"I want to make the choice whether I want to live to 100 when
I'm 99, rather than having that choice progressively removed from
me by my declining health."
at SENS, which de Grey calls "very promising", have so far
focused on identifying the causes and processes of cellular
degradation. And, although none of the finds have made headlines,
de Grey predicts there is "a 50 percent chance of developing the
therapies to a level that decisively works in human beings within
the next 20 to 25 years".
Considerable developments in medical technologies make this
seem a viable possibility. It requires organisations such as SENS
to develop populist debate. New technologies developed with the aim
of defeating ageing in the future could, in the short term, have a
radical impact on improving health today.
The social, economic and political impact of dramatically
longer life spans are still unknown. Regulations on new drugs and
medical procedures make it seem unlikely that we will be benefiting
from technologies that could end ageing anytime soon.
Max More, philosopher,
transhumanist and Alcor CEO
"Pretty early on I formed a very
strong idea that death was a bad thing and that just because
something was natural -- just because our bodies have evolved to
pass on our genes without really caring how long we'd last --
there's no reason to go along with that. We should fight against
If de Grey and Itskov are the architects of a new future, More
is the insurance salesman making sure we get to reap the benefits
of that future. "Actually, it's really death insurance," he laughs.
He is well aware that perceptions of cryonics have been slow to
change, despite advances being made all the time. The fact is, it's
a big ask to hand over a large chunk of cash for something that
could never prove successful. It helps, says More, that generally
trusted figures like Larry King
have spoken about their desire to be cryogenically preserved -- not
all that surprising, considering his wives keep getting younger --
and More would love to see Stephen Hawking become an advocate. In
the meantime, the key is to convince people to think about cryonics
as just another extension of the medical field.
"If your heart stops beating in the street, we don't just go, 'oh
she's dead, let's bury her' -- we get emergency people along and
they do CPR or defibrillation. There's all kinds of things we can
do so that we couldn't 50 years ago, and our view is you're not
really dead until the information that makes up your personality,
that's included in your neurons and their connections, is destroyed
beyond possibility of repair."
The timeframe here is a contentious issue. Alcor has been
improving its cryoprotectant -- what More describes for us layman
as medical grade anti-freeze used to replace blood and fluids --
and bodies are now vitrified until they become thick like a block
of glass, to reduce damage. However, the point at which this
exercise becomes futile is not definitively known. An ideal
cryonics case was that of Fred Chamberlain, the Alcor co-founder who recently died with a
team of cryonics experts on hand ready to step in, but generally
the team has about 24 hours to recover a body.
Patients are placed in ice baths as soon as possible and an
airway is introduced -- a heart-lung resuscitator keeps the blood
pumping and simulates breathing to avoid further damage to the
brain. Various medications such as anticoagulants are then
introduced and the individual is put on cardiopulmonary bypass,
which also cools the body to a few degrees above water's freezing
point. Cryoprotectants are introduced and the body is cooled to
-124 degrees Celsius by fans circulating nitrogen gas.
Potential brain cell damage during this process, says More, is a
bit of a misconception -- as proven by the various stories of
individuals trapped in ice or snow later being revived with no
injury (tales he describes as "proof of principle" for
"It's due to reperfusion injury, it's not that the brain cells
are dying off -- it's that when the metabolism stops and you
restart it, that causes a whole chemical cascade that does a lot of
A good proportion of Alcor's members opt to only have their
brains preserved -- the argument being, once technology is advanced
enough to effectively revive the 100 billion neurons that make up
the organ, piecing a body together (whether through regeneration or
robotics) will seem easy by comparison.
We cannot now know, however, what damage is being doing to the
brain during the cooling process.
"You just have to see how a very simple trauma can affect
somebody's personality, and we're talking about preserving the
brain en masse here," Mark Morrison, CEO of Glasgow's Institute of
Nanotechnology, told the Metro.
Considering recent studies, such as Rice University's find that the introduction of specially engineered
nanoparticles to injured brains can reverse damage, nanotechnology
could be the key to regenerating brain activity -- but there are no
guarantees an individual would come back the same. As such, Alcor
is looking into storing its client's Facebook pages to help revived individuals reconstruct
By his own admission, More thought we'd already be well on our
way to de Grey's 1,000-year mark -- but progress has been too slow,
so cryonics must be considered. The oldest person to have ever
Calment, only made it to 122 -- and that was in 1997. An
impressive feat, but not how More wants to go down.
Cryonics is the most viable possibility to extend life
available today. One of the most significant developments in this
field has been vitrification, where a cryoprotectant was developed
that dramatically reduced freezing damage in patients.
The outcome of Cryonics procedures are still unknown. Its real
success relies heavily on future technologies that are capable
of repairing cellular damage in cryonics patients. But I
suppose if you have a spare £125,000 for full body lying
around, it's worth a go.