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Asked by abbley to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 13 Mar 2012.
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Karen Masters answered on 13 Mar 2012:
I don’t know. My Great Auntie Gertie recently died at age 102, and I know that more and more people are passing 100, so that’s not even that unusual anymore. I don’t think she much enjoyed the last few years of her life though, so I don’t think she’d have wanted it extended much further….
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Adam Stevens answered on 13 Mar 2012:
A lot of different groups of scientists are working on this. I read a book by a guy called Aubrey de Grey, who has some interesting ideas about how we could stop ageing (he looks pretty weird though!)
A lot of his work is trying to work out how we can clean up all the waste that our cells make over their lives, which is a large part of ageing.
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Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:
To be able to overcome aging and extend life indeifinitely, you need to put a stop to Aubrey de Grey’s ‘7 Deadly Things’:
1, Cancer causing mutations in cells
2, Mutations to the energy producing machinery in our cells
3, Junk molecules accumulating in the cells
4, Junk molecules accumulating outside the cells
5, Loss of unreplaceable cells (like brain cells)
6, Cell cementing – basically the old cells don’t die, but they don’t let other cells divide because they’re still in place.
7, Cell binding – if too many cells get bound together by protein, the tissue becomes hard and doesn’t function.Dear old Aubrey doesn’t think we can solve all of these at once, but has come up with the idea of ‘death escape velocity’ where a years worth of research can make someone live for more than one extra year, so that the next year, research can help them live an extra couple of years, and so on! He reckons that the first person to live to 1000 is alive today.
But then again, most scientists think Aubrey’s a nutter! :p
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