Human Immortality: Can science rescue us from death?

Human Immortality: Can science rescue us from death?

As science continues to explore the mysteries of the human body and life expectancy continues to increase, one important question arises: could humans one day become immortal?

Death is the ultimate price of being born in this beautiful world. It is merely the result of a natural phenomenon - the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy, that states about the ultimate demise of all systems, from the sun and humans to the universe itself. But the desire to live forever and the dread of dying are the two primary forces propelling mankind's search for immortality.

We are, quite possibly, living in the most amazing period of human history, the transition between the last mortal generation and the first immortal generation. The invertebrate Hydra have already attained mysterious immortality. They are predominantly made up of stem cells that constantly divide to produce new cells while shedding their older cells. This structural peculiarly enables hydra to remain eternally young. Humans, on the other hand, possess stem cells that can repair and even regenerate body components such as the liver, but unlike hydra, the human body is not composed nearly entirely of these cells. We cannot discard our older cells like hydra do because our neurons store and transmit information; if we were able to do so, we would lose all of our memories.

However, scientists have undertaken the objective of extending the human lifespan to hundreds, thousands, and potentially even beyond. This might sounds over-ambitious, but the current three longevity research projects, including singularity, virtual immortality, and nanotechnology, have generated excellent outcomes.

Regarding singularity, prominent technologists and researchers are working on designing artificial super intelligence (ASI) that is intelligent enough to redesign itself. It will become progressively more innovative until it significantly surpasses human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil, the prophet of the singularity, believes that the nonbiological intelligence generated in 2045 will be one billion times more powerful than human intelligence and capable of replacing biological functions.

In virtual immortality, we can have our brain scanned, and the pattern of information that represents our thoughts and memories, as recorded in the connectome of the brain, will be transferred by scientists onto a computer and stored in the cloud. The brain connections of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans have already been mapped by scientists. In the OpenWorm project, they replicated the neuronal connections of the roundworm's brain in software and coded this software to control a robot. The robot then exhibited behavior resembling that of a roundworm. However, developments in artificial intelligence may help

us map the connections of the human brain, which is highly complex and contains almost 86 billion neurons, while roundworms have only 302 neurons.

Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence are collaborating to overcome some of the most challenging problems our bodies confront, including viral and age-related degenerative diseases. Nanotechnology employs designed, minuscule particles created to accomplish a specific function under the supervision of artificial intelligence. Cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, and diabetes are currently the focus of ongoing projects. However, the future of nanotechnology will nonetheless involve more ambitious objectives. The nanobots will locate damaged cells and then repair them. These continual efforts for lifespan would herald the beginning of a transhuman era.

The term human immortality is crucially dependent on how you define it. If by "immortality" you mean living forever and being immune to death, like a superhero in a Hollywood movie, then that's an implausible goal. But with the exponential progress of technology, we can surpass our biological limit and reach insignificant senescence. Evolution has already chosen for this in some species, like the tortoise, demonstrating that insignificant senescence is conceivable in the real world.

In the Guinness Book of World Records, a French woman named Jeanne Calment holds the record for the longest certified human longevity of 122 years and 164 days. And Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) report says Bangladesh's life expectancy at birth climbed from 46.59 years in 1971 to 73.29 years in 2022, with an average yearly growth rate of 0.39%.

The development of medicine has contributed significantly to people living longer, and future medical progress promises to push that figure even higher, allowing us to outlive our biological constraints. The fact that our demise seems hard-wired into every cell, organ, and system in our bodies means that achieving immortality will necessitate the simultaneous resolution of a large number of problems of varying degrees of complexity. Instead of trying to achieve immortality all at once, aiming for a lifespan of, say, 150 or 200 years while still feeling young at heart is a much more worthwhile goal. The argument is only about the time frame for when this vision can be achieved rather than if it can be.

Arefin Sadat
President, Chandpur Medical College Debating Club

Intern Doctor, Chandpur Medical College & Hospital