Post on 22-Aug-2015
Life extension
• Increase in average lifespan
• Biogerontologists• Ethical questions
• Jeanne Calment: 1875 –1997 (122 years 164 days)
• Current world average: 66.12
Strategies
Anti-aging nutrition
• Antioxidant supplements: e.g. vitamin C, E – 30% increase
• Hormones, e.g. Oxytocin• Resveratrol – being tested on
animals. Anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, blood-sugar-lowering.
They can extend mean lifespan
Calorie restriction
• The restriction of energy intake
• Successful with almost every species on which it has been tested
• 40–60% of usual amount of calories
• Experiments with primates
Potential future strategies
Cloning and body part replacement
• replacing aging body parts
• transplanting brains – experiments have failed
• controversial and contentious
“I don’t know who I am. I have a donor heart, a donor kidney, a donor liver, a donor cornea, a donor lung...”
Suspended animation
• slowing of life processes • Temperature inducede.g. draining the blood from
bodies and putting an ice-cold solution instead
Experiments are successful in dogs, pigs and mice
• Chemically induced• Proposed for astronauts
Cryonics
• Low-temperature preservation (−196 °C)
• Plenty of time
• No ice!• Allows to live thousands of
years
SENS
• Reverse the damage called aging
• Possible to live thousands of years
• Stimulation of cell division • Removing senescent cells • “Elixir of life”
Mind uploading
• Transferring the human mind to a computer
• Based on materialism• Computer hardware
will be powerful enough by the 2020s
Conclusion
Currently the only widely recognized method is calorie restriction.
Thank you for listening!
References• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aging• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation