Life Extension

Good fantasy or science fiction stories often involve people on a quest for immortality and eternal youth. Explorers throughout our real history have sought a way to remain eternally young and healthy. Juan Ponce de Leon thought he had found the Fountain of Eternal Youth in Florida and some modern retirees agree with him in jest.

In the modern age, most people laugh at the idea of immortality and eternal youth. However, extreme life extension advocates see how technology and science has lengthened each generation's maximum lifespan over time and believe wholeheartedly in the human potential for unlocking the secret of staving off old age and even death.

There are a number of life extension practices and principles with which most anyone can agree, such as the ideas of exercising regularly and eating a well-balanced diet enriched with vitamins, minerals, and nutrient supplements. Or how about the work of life extension scientists who seek to treat and prevent diseases?

Extreme life extension, on the other hand, means to seek a maximum human lifespan that can last for centuries and to radically slow the process of aging so that people on average are healthy and active well into their hundreds.

The calorie restriction diet-the only scientifically proven (extreme) life extension theory-is sometimes thought of as an extreme life extension practice; it takes a disciplined and committed person to eat a diet low on calories but still sufficiently healthy for the body to function.

Although not as extreme a life extension practice as some, the fact that calorie restriction might work in prolonging the healthy years of a creature's life by putting the body's cells on an active, constant "defensive" mode may seem extreme to most people.

Transhumanism is an extreme life extension practice, the goals of which are to improve the human body as a whole, not just add a few years onto human life. Extreme life extension in transhumanism opens the possibilities to a longer life filled with healthier years or even to an increased capacity for intelligence in the human population.

The extreme life extension practice of transhumanism involves the study of stem cells, nanotechnology, and other biological and artificial ways to replace and repair degenerating cells, organs, and tissues.

Extreme life extension with transhumanism aims to provide for not only the disabled to regain function, but for the human population as a whole to be enhanced at a cellular level. Cells that are stronger, more resilient, and lead to a greater capacity for intelligence, function, and energy are essential to living beyond current life expectancy.

Cryonics is perhaps the most extreme life extension practice. Extreme life extension supporters recognize that current technology and science are not up to the task of allowing for immortal, eternally youthful human life. However, they steadfastly believe that future scientists will uncover the secret to extreme life extension.

Thus, many extreme life extension advocates arrange to have their bodies frozen and preserved shortly after death in the belief that future extreme life extension scientists will be able to revive them and cure any disease from which they might have suffered in modern life. This draws the skepticism of many in the general scientific community.

What would happen in a future in which extreme life extension is commonplace? Would the Earth be faced with more people than there are resources? Would the extreme life extension human populace be more intelligent and able to solve that problem? Questions like these make the debate on extreme life extension a lively if, at least for the moment, theoretical deliberation.