The Death of Death

The Death of Death

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

In August a meeting of the Christian Association of Transhumanism was held, if, from the outset, the title of that association sounds strange, and what this association seeks could be even more strange, a profound conversation between religion and technology, not everything is QR codes to be scanned outside the church to have the missal in our smartphone, it is also about finding a new narrative that seeks to combine both worlds in a congruent way, determine the implications to arise at the moment in which Artificial Intelligence, the Genetic Engineering, Deep Space Exploration and the Remote Brain Connection become a constant (and an obvious threat that could replace religion), this in addition to the disruptive statements of the University of Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey, who affirmed during the meeting about the possible birth of the first immortal person in our present days.

Free radicals are a fundamental part of Gray's transhumanist theory, the possibility of treating aging as a disease in order to combat it and achieve eradication of death by natural causes, for de Grey, the key lies in the damage suffered by our mitochondria throughout our lives by being continuously exposed to certain aggressive agents, Grey's theory is not so complicated and has been addressed in other ways and basically recognizes previous studies on the wear and tear of the body, but takes them more in deep, trying to find a new approach and developing really powerful tools not only to contain (something that de Grey disqualifies as a way to "hypnotize" people only making them believe that they are not aging), but to definitively eradicate the damage through new techniques such as Bioinformatics and Engineering in order not only to prevent, but actually to defeat to aging in the same way that a disease is defeated.

For de Grey a change of balance between certain types of cells is essential, being able to exchange those short-lived cells and rapid degradation by long-lived, almost immortal cells would be the key to stopping the aging process, applying two surprising techniques described as the Robust Human Rejuvenation, which consists of extraordinarily strengthening the process of human regeneration and allowing reconnect the phenomenon of growth to a person over 60 years, and the Speed ​​of Escape from Longevity, the most abstract and relativistic moment of his theory, which would imply that a person of 200 years in the future will be younger than a person of 100 years now, the Holy Grail of eternal life, life of more quality and longer duration.

For de Grey, this is no more than a continuation of the current medical science, some surgery to remove certain areas to be potentially affected and the injection of cells with long life and little wear that will print more quality life to the organism, to a certain extent a frontal clash with current theories that indicate that death "gives meaning to life" or that it approaches the type of actions that challenge the conception of something that is only in the hands of God, according to certain types of religious thought that accuse de Grey, a doctor transcending into engineering field, trying to "hack" the human being through misunderstood biotechnology, it is worth mentioning here an important point, the possibility that such a technology is left in a few hands, or bodies, and that like a trip to the Moon, is only accessible to a few ones, thus creating a new elite of immortals capable of extending their lives indefinitely, super rich able to live forever and try to continue to amass immense fortunes (here, death seems to be a natural instrument of distribution of the wealth), a new race, a new elite, certainly de Grey playing here with really disruptive elements, in a time when the world is aging and birth rates are decreasing, the search for de Grey could become "The Next Big Thing"