On Apr 27, 2005, at 12:22 PM, Patrick Gillam wrote:
> > Stephen Hawking also expects human beings to > become very different from what we are now. He > cites the disconnect in Star Trek, which shows amazing > technologies run by human beings who are (surprise!) > just like us. In fact, he says, we can expect humans > to be as highly engineered as everything else centuries hence. > > At one time, I saw the rise of natural law as our one salvation > against the mechanization of humanity. I don't know where I > stand now. > What's already available is shocking. I don't know if this was talked about here or not, but a while back they discovered the basic mechanism behind the *mortality* of cells, "aglets", which like the the coverings on the ends of shoelaces (aglets) they are a covering on the end of our chromosomes. With each cells division, the aglets shorten, till eventually the cell will not divide any longer. Well we now know if you take a freshly divided cells, a zygote and clone it, the aglets are longer. Clone it again the aglets are even longer, and so on. So we know the technology to make cells (relatively) immortal. In nature there are only one type of cells that are essentially immortal and these are cancer cells. The current direction of this technology is to genetically engineer a retrovirus that doesn't behave like HIV but instead will take the longer aglets and, once infused into the body will replace your short aglet DNA with the long aglet type. The increase in lifespan will jump to about two to six hundred years. The patent has already been awarded on this technology. Lest we think people will not go for this type of thing, consider what we do today: do we lead healthy lifestyles so we look good and age well? No, we take the materialistic way out and use acids to eat the skin off our faces and bodies so we can grow a new "younger" looking skin--all in the name of superficial glamour. Make no mistake, even if we outlaw this technology the rich and well-heeled will have access in off-shore labs that will provide long life or new body parts or whatever. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
