Quest for Immortality

Do you want to live forever? In the fantasy movie "Highlander", Connor MacLeod is an immortal. But the idea of immortality is not just a fantasy. It is possible that, in time, humans could be genetically modified to live forever.

We tend to think of our body as being a single biological unit, but this is just an illusion. The human body is, in fact, a huge collection of cells, a complex machine with billions of separate components all working together. The lifespan of different types of cells in the human body varies. Some lifespans can be measured in days while others, such as bone cells, live up to 25-30 years. When cells die in a normal healthy body they are automatically replaced by new cells.

So if cells can regenerate why do people grow old and die? It is the instructions written into our DNA that tell our cells how to grow and when to regenerate. It is likely that aging is also programmed into our DNA in this way.

The evolutionary process has determined how long humans as a species should live. From an evolutionary point of view, there is no advantage for humans to carry on living to an old age. When we have done our job, produced and raised our offspring, it's time for us to go. We are just getting in the way and using up valuable resources!

It may be possible one day to change the code in our genes so that people don't have to die (until they choose to do so). Read more about the subject of immortality on the Wikipedia website.