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Immortality has been the dream of man ever since he realized that his stay on this planet was temporary. He began to try and obtain it by casting spells and saying special prayers to who ever the gods were at the time. Some people thought, for some reason, that evil in the form of a devil or demon could grant immortality. Alchemy became very popular and besides trying to change base metals into precious ones, the search for eternal life continued at a quickened pace. When we talk of Alchemy we are not just talking about crack pots. Many famous and brilliant people throughout history practiced this art. Some people thought that there were certain places that contained magic fountains or streams, that when drunk from would give eternal life. One of the most famous of these people was Ponce de Leon the famous Spanish explorer who believed that there was a fountain of youth somewhere in Florida. With all the older people going to Florida today you would think that he was right. Some people even believe that there are those of us, an extreme few, that may have found the secret of eternal life and they base this upon old photos that look exactly like people alive today. As ridiculous as this sounds this is a fact. The problem with this method is that there are many people who look exactly like their fathers or mothers at a certain age. Some even look exactly like an ancestor. Are we to believe this is the same person?

The truth of the matter is that man didn't have a shot at eternal life in the past. Even increasing the life span had to take place over hundreds of years. Better food and living habits did eventually help but when we are talking about eternal life, increasing the life span by 30 years is a drop in the bucket. We are getting a lot more educated. Notice I didn't say smarter, since I believe man's intelligence hasn't really increased much but his technology has. It seems like we learn progressively more as time goes by. We now have machines that can do calculations in minutes that would have taken a hundred years. As we enable scientific discovery to take place more and more within the lifetime of the researchers the more we discover. Part of this discovery is a better understanding of the human body and all its workings. I am not saying that we are on the verge of immortality but I am saying that we could find the key to it, if we are allowed to, within the next 100 years or sooner. But will governments allow this to happen? This would require doing away with all old age support programs or countries would go bankrupt as the population grows. Of course the future might bring an Orwellian society where pregnancy is against the law in order to keep the population constant and where only those that die from other causes are replaced. I would hope that something like this never happens but who knows?

The discoveries seem to be coming faster and faster. We now realize that our chromosomes get damaged at their ends by the ravages of time and eventually we just wear out. This is the natural way of things. But maybe this doesn't have to be and strange as this sounds, maybe the answer has been in front of us for years and we didn't notice. No, I am not loosing my mind. I am talking about cancer cells. This deadly disease may also give us the answer to protecting our chromosomes. It has been observed that some cancer cells actually live forever. This type of cancer cell has the ends of its chromosomes capped which prevents damage. This little caps cover the ends and keep the cells youthful. Imagine if we could apply this technique to our healthy cells. This may be one way to find the fountain of youth, figuratively speaking.

There are other methods that are being explored by science. Scientists have found that by tweaking certain genes and hormones they have enabled a round worm to live to the equivalent of 500 human years. While this is not eternal life yet, it certainly would allow a person to live long enough to take advantage of all those scientific discoveries that would follow in that time, so he or she might get the secret of eternal life during that period of time. But this has not been applied to humans yet. The method used was limiting the body's insulin signaling among other things. But there was a danger here, limit the signals too much and you increase longevity but the animal becomes lethargic. As they say, what good would long life be if you don't feel well? Another problem was to increase the life span to the maximum the reproductive systems of the animals had to be removed.

Some animals live much longer than humans do but we really don't understand why. The giant tortoise is known to have lived for over 152 years. Box turtles reach an age over 100 years quite frequently. Look at the Turkey Buzzard, which attains the age of 118 years and the Swan who breaks the 100 year barrier. But the common mouse is stuck with only a 4 year life span. Right now we just don't understand why this is, but we are working on it and soon we may have the answer. When we do find the answer than we may be able to make adjustments to our bodies to increase longevity. There are some organizations that have this as their stated goals and they are visible on the internet. One such organization is called the Immortality Institute, another is Immortality Inc.

So the question is not if there will ever be immortality for the human race but rather when it will happen? If science keeps advancing at the pace it is now or even increases its pace, I would have to say that the human race will be capable of a dramatic increase in life span or even immortality itself, within the next 100 years as I mentioned previously. Will this be a good thing or not? I don't think that there is any way to answer this question right now, there are too many unknowns. Unless something is done about overpopulation, this could be a disaster. The world's population is growing too fast now, imagine how fast it would grow if suddenly there were only deaths from accidents. There may be a good reason after all that nature provided for all of us to wear out.