I have heard about both the supposedly immortal cancer cells that continually grow and are used in medical research and about CRISPR. To be honest, I don't know much about them other than that they exist and may help in solving certain health issues and/or may help provide insights into how to extend human life. — dclements

To me, these are all just pieces of the jigsaw. I think it will take a while yet before we get the first transhuman who lives for 1000 years. You might however be interested in the following:
Copied from the site: https://transhumanity.net/becoming-the-first-transhuman-a-call-for-the-right-stuff/

Sometimes technological congestion in a given field can be cleared with decisive action. For example, the CEO of the gene therapy company BioViva, Liz Parrish, took action to help clear the way for lengthening the human lifespan sooner than would otherwise have occurred. She recognized that the only way to speed up human trials on lengthening telomeres (to enable the potential for longer lifespan and freedom from the diseases of old age) was to undergo gene therapy herself.

So, in September of 2015, Liz Parrish, under the supervision of the noted members of the BioViva Advisory Board, received human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) gene therapy by injection. The telomerase enzyme makes cancers potentially immortal, and mutations in the hTERT gene have been implicated in promoting certain types of cancer. But Liz Parrish will be regularly monitored for her gene therapy results, which will be made public. Mice given telomerase (Tert) therapy by injection did not have an increase in cancer.

As a result of her actions, Liz’ Parrish’s therapy is the first known telomerase lengthening human trial. In 2015, trials were conducted on human cells in culture, but Liz Parish’s experiment is the only in vivo progress of note in the field of telomerase research since 2012. In that year, Dr. María Blasco, of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center, injected mice with just one shot of telomerase each and achieved a 13% increase in longevity in elderly mice and a 24% increase in the younger adult mice. Blasco’s experiment represents the only in vivo progress of note since the 2010 Harvard Medical School experiment, led by Dr. Ronald DePinho, that resulted in dramatic signs of age reversal in elderly genetically-engineered mice: The mice were engineered to age prematurely, but were made clinically young when their telomeres were lengthened through drug intervention. It is hard to understand why no trial has since been set up to determine how long the lifespan of normal mice might be extended through the telomere therapy employed.

Death is the cause, IMO, rather than the effect of aging, regardless of how long the organism lasts. The difference in species longevity it seems is primarily a function of the degree to which biological aging (e.g. cellular senescence) lags behind chronological age. I've speculated for decades that a "fundamental cure for cancer" might be derived from discovering the exact (genetic) mechanisms in cells which switch on or off senescence and thereby allow for tissue / organ specific control of aging. CRISPR might be a plausible technique for such an intervention. TBD.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/655900

Oops, just joking about feeling the effects of Hayflick's Limit.

As Woody Allen said, "I'm not afraid of dying -- I just don't want to br there when it happens." And he, of course, was joking,

Seriously, many people probably experience varying degrees of derangement in the final hour(s). If death isn't swift, there may be successive organ failure and a rapid build-up of toxic substances which amplify the dying process. So yes, it could be pretty unpleasant for a while. But then it is over and the curtain of silent oblivion descends forever.

Rather than focusing on stretching out life, even life without end, an actual attainable goal is to live life in the knowledge that life is short. Make the most of living while one can.

Old age can be a burden, true enough, but I know people (like myself) who are very much engaged in doing what makes life meaningful and interesting to them. One can and should prepare to die with as much serenity as possible, but not dwell on it.

Stem cells? I think they're immortal. Cancer cells are too.

I think Bittercrank may have been onto something regarding the ability of a mortal population to adapt to changing conditions? — Tate

The fact that cancer cells, certain stem cells, etc. are immortal isn't really all that important since it is already a given that single cell organism (such as bacteria) have the means to be able to be able to divide/grow indefinitely without having to deal with the issues of aging, or at least it being a real problem for them. Just as I said before "if" they didn't, they would cease to exist. Many single cell organism have evolved to the point were they have incredible means to deal with various environment hazards such as radiation, vacuum, etc. One strain discovered has been called the "Conan" bacteria.

Deinococcus radiodurans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

Extremophile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile

I apologize that I'm late in replying. My mom had to go to the hospital yesterday so I kind of got a bit distracted from getting back to this thread.

Death is the cause, IMO, rather than the effect of aging, regardless of how long the organism lasts. The difference in species longevity it seems is primarily a function of the degree to which biological aging (e.g. cellular senescence) lags behind chronological age. I've speculated for decades that a "fundamental cure for cancer" might be derived from discovering the exact (genetic) mechanisms in cells which switch on or off senescence and thereby allow for tissue / organ specific control of aging. CRISPR might be a plausible technique for such an intervention. TBD.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/655900 — 180 Proof

I will have to read/review this thread in the upcoming days in order to have a better idea of what it was all about. And again sorry for being late in replying to you post.

Seriously, many people probably experience varying degrees of derangement in the final hour(s). If death isn't swift, there may be successive organ failure and a rapid build-up of toxic substances which amplify the dying process. So yes, it could be pretty unpleasant for a while. But then it is over and the curtain of silent oblivion descends forever.

Rather than focusing on stretching out life, even life without end, an actual attainable goal is to live life in the knowledge that life is short. Make the most of living while one can.

Old age can be a burden, true enough, but I know people (like myself) who are very much engaged in doing what makes life meaningful and interesting to them. One can and should prepare to die with as much serenity as possible, but not dwell on it. — Bitter Crank

I know it may sound like a stupid position to have but I believe that extending peoples lives serves a larger purpose than merely giving the people the luxury of living longer.

The system that we have now where children spend close to twenty to twenty five years growing up and trying to lean enough that they can be productive for about just another twenty five to thirty years which at that point they are in such decline that they are less useful then they where when they were younger.

It is not exactly a one to one ratio. but for every year of growing up/learning one can only spend about one year of said investment to be able to work and try to better the community around them. This cost is just something we have come to be something we expect to have to deal with in the modern world but it is also something that can be said to be costly and wasteful and it requires those that DO WORK to often have to work in unsatisfactory conditions because they have to do more work for those that are unable to be productive.

A large part of my argument is that "IF" we were able to extend peoples lives it is likely that either many or most of these people could work longer, work conditions might improve, and society might be able to improve due to the extra idea/input from these people that are contributing to society instead of them just wasting away in nursing homes in their later years.

There is an old saying I heard once "Youth is wasted on the young". While this is more or less true today, does it have to be in the near future?

No problem!

True enough, it takes time to grow up, and having grown up, to put adulthood to good use. Personally, I'd assign a little more time to productive adulthood--so age 25 to 70. For physically hard work, less productive time applies.

Longevity will be of no value to people who will be stuck in dead-end and life-sucking jobs until they are 100. One of the reasons people long to stop working is that their jobs are highly unrewarding. We can't all be like Anthony Fauci, still going strong at 81, and ready to move on to something else. I'll take that back: Many of us could be like Tony, still going strong at 81 -- but not under the current circumstances.

Life can be more enjoyable than it tends to be. Work can be more satisfying than it usually is. This can not happen within the existing economic arrangement, even if we lived to be 200.

A large part of my argument is that "IF" we were able to extend peoples lives it is likely that either many or most of these people could work longer, work conditions might improve, and society might be able to improve due to the extra idea/input from these people that are contributing to society instead of them just wasting away in nursing homes in their later years. — dclements

My impression is, based on observation, reading, and experience is that most people have their most creative and productive years between by age 40, age 50 at the latest. I'm not thinking of "creative professions" here -- rather, people who can create, innovate, invent, and implement effective solutions to social or technical problems. The two decades following brain maturation (around age 25) seem to be our most mentally productive periods.

It's a very good question why this period of high productivity doesn't last longer (for most people). At age 50 I was past my peak in creativity. Intellectually, I might be reaching my peak at age 75. Time will tell. Too bad I wasn't functioning at 25 the way I function at 75. "I could have been a contender."

There are 100 year old people who remain intellectually and emotionally engaged, but they are really few in number.

The point I am trying to get at is that there is something... existential, not biological that brings our periods of productive creativity to a peak, and then diminishment. You know, Kant said that nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind. The fact is, we keep running into our species deep, built in imitations. It wears us out.

Sometimes technological congestion in a given field can be cleared with decisive action. For example, the CEO of the gene therapy company BioViva, Liz Parrish, took action to help clear the way for lengthening the human lifespan sooner than would otherwise have occurred. — universeness

I searched for some updates on Liz Parrish and found a few articles including the one below from Quora. I always like to find both sides of a claim, especially since Liz represents a company who is no doubt in pursuit of profit.

I asked Dr. Hiromitsu Nakauchi PhD a world renowned geneticist that question. Here is his answer,
I am the head of the Nakauchi Lab of Stem Cell Therapy at Stanford University working my entire life in genetics uncovering new diseases, elucidating the causes of disease, and developing therapeutic modalities by connecting the knowledge and methodology of basic science including immunology, molecular biology, cell biology, and developmental engineering with clinical medicine. Our ultimate goal is to contribute to establishing new frontiers of stem cell therapy and to make clinical applications of stem cells a reality. There is no scientific evidence that Ms. Parrish has lengthened her life by a single moment. There is also no scientific evidence her health has improved. Working outside the rigorous scientific method and attempting unapproved FDA, HHS or CDC regulations for authorization is ludicrous and what Ms. Parrish has attempted is a new low in pseudoscientific quackery. Altering the genetic makeup of humans by lengthening telomeres is dangerous, as the ageing process is poorly understood. The telomeres' function is to restrict the number of times a cell can divide thereby multiplying to suppress cancer. Meddling with a fundamentally important tumor-suppressive mechanism that has evolved in long-lived species like ours is not a particularly good idea.

If any species didn't have these line of cells to counter -effect the aging process, they would immediately die out in a generation or too. Because of this I think it is safe to say that all organic beings have some means to create a similar kind of redundancy — dclements

It isn’t a back up mechanism. Life started off immortal. Bacteria don’t have a programmed death. They just keep dividing until accident overtakes them.

But death was evolved as a way to sharpen up the evolutionary process once life became multicellular. There was a division of the body into its immortal germline - the genetic information being transmitted generation to generation - and the mortal disposable soma.

Every generation then becomes a clean test of the genetic fitness. You don’t have all these ancient remnants hanging around with their out of date DNA.

Bacteria don’t even have proper sex but just share DNA fragments so can pick up the latest useful bits of genetic kit at any time.

But life has evolved to be ever more digital, or counterfactual, in how it likes to expose single individuals to the competition of life.

Complex organisms are a complex package of interacting gene programs. Nature had to make sharper judgements at the level of a whole body. Hence the immortal germline got tucked away safely in the gonads and the body was made disposable - built to have an expiry date and so make the ticking over of generations a thing.

Given death is a designed in feature of complex biology, this likely makes dreams of bio hacking immortality a more difficult task than folk realise.

It's a very good question why this period of high productivity doesn't last longer (for most people). At age 50 I was past my peak in creativity. Intellectually, I might be reaching my peak at age 75. Time will tell. — Bitter Crank

There is a natural arc of development that shows its logic at all levels of biology from ecology to neurobiology. Life logically follows the three stages of immaturity, maturity and senescence.

To be alive is to become well adapted to living in your environment.

A new born has a lot to learn. But also it is fast growing and so can recover fast from making mistakes. It is set up to learn by trial and error and so throws itself into things in a reckless “immature” way.

Then comes quite logically the next stage of having learnt a fair bit about how to succeed in the world. If you have survived 30 years, you can call on that much personal experience in dealing with the kind of challenges your environment is likely to chuck at you. You will be “mature” in having a more optimised balance when making risk/reward decisions. You can still afford mistakes as you still have the ability to recover - repair body damage - but also you are positioned to gain more by investing effort in what you already know works.

What must follow that is senescence, where the balance changes again. After you have lived a long time, you get so smart and well adapted that coping with the everyday becomes an overlearnt routine. You are now wise. You can act out of efficient habit.

But there is a cost to being super adapted. Your recovery powers wane - if you are super adapted, there is no need to change your ways. But that means you are becoming brittle. Live long enough and the unexpected is eventually going to trip you up. Something breaks and it is time for you to be recycled.

So it is all the simple logic of a developmental trajectory where you swap youthful reckless freedom for the unthinking mastery of old age.

Ecologies follow this path of succession as the steps from weeds to scrubland to ancient forest. Brains do it from fast learning infancy to smart maturity to wise old age.

Entropy. And this is not exactly a ‘philosophical’ question.

In philosophical terms we ‘die’ because we are alive. Not dying = not living.

But that isn’t enough of an answer as life is negentropic structure that self-organises on an entropic gradient. So life on earth lives (mostly) off the steady energy flow of the Sun. Thus there is no requirement that life dies due to an accumulation of entropy within its own material body. With efficient material recycling, the transacting of the solar flux could continue as long as the Sun lasts. The same body could be rebuilt endlessly.

Death had to be evolved as a planned life stage as it became too important just to leave to random environmental accident. Negentropy can only persist if it has the semiotic machinery to keep separating signal from noise. Or in other words, ensure a species remains evolvable because the entropy of DNA corruption gets fixed, the cancers get suppressed.

So life arose as negentropy feeding off entropy flux. To do that, it had to first avoid just being entropified by that energetic environment. And having mastered its negentropic existence by building up the elaborate mechanisms necessary, it started to face the new problem of needing planned obsolescence. It had to add to add back death as another level of negentropic regulatory feedback.

Whatever … there is no philosophical question in the OP.

I don't know why we die, but I do know how we die.

Like dogs of course! :snicker: