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Genetic science, stem-cell research and extreme caloric restriction are all part of a burgeoning "immortality industry'' that could soon point the way to a fountain of youth with the potential to stretch the human life span to 125 or 150 years, says a sociologist and consultant on future studies.
Michael Zey, the U.S. author of Ageless Nation, will address the issues at the World Future Society's annual conference in Washington today.
Advances such as nanotechnology - the emerging ability to manipulate extremely small structures - could ultimately make it possible to regenerate every cell in the body, he says.
"At that point, we can throw out every idea we have about longevity and even mortality itself.''
The effects of human life-extension will be far-reaching, Zey says, potentially spawning second or third careers in people's extra decades and a society of lifelong students using the gift of more time to continually reinvent themselves with new education.
Longer lives also have the potential to impact families and personal lives, he's written in the World Future Society's magazine, The Futurist. "When the life span exceeds 125, our expectation about living with the same person for a century or more might change,'' he writes, proposing that spouses might "take a 'marriage hiatus' for a year or two to pursue their individual interests.''
Like medical tourism today, these technological springs of immortality will at first only be available to those with the money and knowledge to access them, he forecasts, but they'll eventually become widely accessible in the same way that computers used to be reserved for major corporations but now occupy every desktop and backpack.
The Alcor Life Extension Foundation already offers full-body cryonic freezing for $150,000, while head-only freezing is a relative bargain at $80, 000. The company says most of its 866 members plan to fund the procedure with life insurance, and 86 "patients'' are already preserved at its Arizona headquarters in hopes of someday being thawed out and healed with yet undreamed- of medical science.
The extension of human life will also depend on people's lifestyle, Zey says, and the current obesity epidemic, smoking habits and other unhealthy behaviours indicate they don't always make beneficial choices. People can be "seduced''by breakthroughs they believe will save them from themselves, he says, citing the notion that cholesterol treatment drugs are a licence to dine on lard-laden foods.
"I think there is going to be a tremendous chasm between average life expectancy and life potential,'' Zey says.
The World Future Society is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that tracks technological developments, public policy shifts and social changes in an effort to forecast what tomorrow might bring.
Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service
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