A fascinating article on the website "Popular Mechanics"
raises deep questions regarding the future of humanity: are we standing on the brink of a new era in which humans will be able to live forever?
The first time you hear about people living 1,000 years, it sounds to you like a long time, like eternity.
But Joao Pedro de Maglais, an expert on aging, suggests thinking about an even longer time: How about people who live 20,000 years?
De Maglais is a professor of molecular biogerontology at the Institute of Inflammation and Aging of the University of Birmingham in England.
In a conversation with Scientific American, he talks about the tools needed to really affect human aging.
His goal is not to add a few years here or there, but to add thousands of years to a human lifespan.
He believes that all that is required is a new (yet to be created) technology that can eliminate aging at the cellular level, repair DNA and reprogram cells for a drastically different aging process.
"My hypothesis is that we have a very complicated set of computer-like programs in our DNA that make us a mature human," he told Scientific American.
"But maybe some of those programs, when they continue into the rest of life, become harmful."
He suggests that changing these plans may provide an answer.
Continue the article at the link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-old-can-humans-get/
