More talk about life extension and physical immortality

"To me, discussing the value of life extension with people uninterested in extending their own lives is a great deal like suicide counseling. I see no easy way of translating my positive attitudes about life into other people having a negative attitude about life. I have come to believe that if a person does not value life, or believes that the value of life has an expiry date, the matter is beyond discussion. And I mean this not in the sense of difficulty of communication, but in the sense that what is of value to me may not be of value for someone else. I like strawberry and she likes vanilla. I want to live to be a thousand years old -- and he doesn't care whether he is alive in five years. Personal choices."

Ben Best, BSc, BBA, President and CEO of the Cryonics Institute

"If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem . . . If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine. We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT."

Ian Pearson, Head of the Futurology Unit at British Telecom, The British telecommunications conglomerate.

(From an article: "2050 - and immortality is within our grasp" by David Smith in the 'Observer' May 22, 2005.)

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"Over half the baby boomers here in America are going to see their hundredth birthday and beyond in excellent health . . . We're looking at life spans for the baby boomers and the generation after the baby boomers of 120 to 150 years of age."

Dr. Ronald Klatz, American Academy of Anti-Aging.

(From an article: "Human Immortality: A Scientific Reality?", by Gary Vey for Viewzone.)

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". . . are there hard physiological barriers on the maximum human life span? . . . if we can change a single genetic letter out of 100 million and double the life span of an organism, it suggests there aren't hard barriers."

Steven N. Austad, PhD, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho.

(From his presentation: "Adding Years to Life: Current Knowledge and Future Prospects", given at the Meeting of The President's Council on Bioethics, December 12, 2002.)

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"One of the assumptions is that life expectancy will rise a bit and then reach a ceiling it cannot go through . . . But people have been assuming that since the 1920's and it hasn't proved to be the case."

Jim Oeppen, senior research associate at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, BBC News, May 9, 2002.

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"Our consciousness depends on our body. If we value life, we should try to cherish and preserve it. Therefore, we should try to cherish and preserve our body for us long as we value life. Since aging and disease harm our bodies, a reverence for life requires that we fight aging and disease. And a continued reverence for life requires an on-going battle against death... or the quest for physical immortality! A reverence for life is, in fact, a central tenet of most major religions. And this expresses itself in a yearning for spiritual immortality. So we see that the scientific and the religious conceptions of immortality are both motivated by the same reverence for life. The scientific insight is that spiritual (mental) immortality requires physical immortality."

Mark Geddes

(From "Towards a Philosophy of Immortality" in "A Journal for Western Man", Issue XXIV, July 22, 2004.)

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