I saw on Headline News on June 5th, 1998 i.c.c. (I think. It may have been a day or two before or after. As usual, it was a busy week for me) a story about someone finding a drug through longevity research that'll remove the bad stuff out of cells in mice making them live a lot longer. It sounds like this would make people live almost forever or at least a few hundred years! It might possibly even make the body more resistant on its own to diseases without having to rely upon drugs and would make it heal injuries faster too.I remember reading something like this 'cell cleaning' in a sci-fi book by Larry Niven called A World Out of Time (ISBN 0-345-25750-2. Library of Congress (I wonder if I can get a job there? Heh, heh. Probably wouldn't get any work done. Putting me in a library that big would be like putting a little kid in a candy store!) Catalogue Card Number: 76-3373). Yeah, I've got a lot of books here at home! Except in the book, it was something they had learned they could build after they invented teleportation. The guy stepped into a teleportation booth, pressed the only button that was there (there were number pads like in a phone booth in the other ones that you just pressed the number, and you're instantly there) and he saw some dust form in the glass booth with no door on it that was beside the one he was in. A few days later, his gray hair started turning dark at the roots and the rest of his body got younger too. He figured it out later.
Anyway, I waited for the next half-hour to watch that segment again since they repeat a story over and over again, but it wasn't there. Hmm... Interesting in the extreme! Is this just one more item of repressed technology like the sleep sets that've been around since at least 1905 that would cure insomnia and would've allowed people to get 8 hours worth of sleep in only a single hour? (More info on my Repressed Technology page.) Are they repressing technology that would help people live longer and making people die of old age and diseases because they feel it would change things too much like people investing more money in stocks and bonds and buying more property or because it would drastically lower business in the life insurance businesses, graveyards, funeral parlors, medical providers, drug companies, et cetera? Hmm... Am I thinking too paranoid are just not enough? The story was obviously pulled by someone for some reason but there wasn't even an explanation offered. That makes me think bad things for some odd reason. :-( I hate it when there are snubbed news stories that sound good.
Wouldn't it be great if we were all able to live forever young? :-) :-) :-) Imagine it. You can study as much as you want to (or that they'll allow you access to anyway. This alone is worth it in my book! Can you imagine how much more a scientist that can keep going for a few centuries more can discover?), enjoy many more decades of life instead of working for 47 or more years (from 18 years of age up to 65 for those not following the math here) and then retiring when you're no longer able to enjoy life to its fullest? Too bad we're not allowed to do that. :-( Hey, if the politicians really wanted to save the Social Security system like they're trying to convince us that they are (instead of 'borrowing' money from it, that they never intend to pay back, then, claim that it's going to fail) they'd allow this stuff to be used by people and then raise the retirement age up a few hundred years (depending on the upper age limit the drug can keep you young) of when people can start collecting Social Security benefits. More than likely people would keep working for as long as they can to keep making money and boosting up their benefit amounts. I think it might also lower the number of people on disability too. Okay, so I'm a dreamer. I'll admit it. It sounds like fun. :-)
If this technology is being repressed by businesses that would lose their income if it was used, then maybe if a person discovered something this good, they should publish their findings on the Web and also send out e-mails to everyone they know and encourage others to make copies of it and send it to others. That way, even if they remove the original Web page, it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to find everyone who got a copy of the data.
January 15th, 2013: Read a news story on Brooke Greenberg, who is 20 years old, but, is still a "toddler" in mind and body. So, it is possible to halt the aging process, and, by studying her DNA, we could find ways to cure Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, and other health problems. The 'experts' call what she has "Syndrome X", which, essentially, means that they're totally clueless. LOL
Another interesting case, is that of Nicky Freeman, who seems to only age one year for every four years of his life. Although he was born over 40 years ago, he looks like a 10 year old boy.
Other things which may help achieve eternal youth or help you live forever young include: SIRT1, cellular regeneration, SR9009 (which had produced more leaner and muscular mice in the lab), RAD140, MSPs (Micelle Sequestrant Polymers) and studying the Turritopsis nutricula jellyfish in the hopes that by using some form of biomimicry, a way can be found to make older people young again.
Personally, I would want to be 18 years old forever, both biologically and mentally. But, not in some kind of mental loop where what I learned or experienced couldn't be remembered shortly afterwards, like the character Homer Green in a short science-fiction story called "Invariant" by John Pierce.
However . . . If eternal youth was available to everyone, there would need to be some serious birth control system, like a shot every ten years or so, preferably for both genders to prevent them from having a baby. After the population falls through accident, murder, suicide (assisted suicide with organ donation?) and falls to 1 percent of what it is now, or even less, people could earn the right to have a baby by making a significant contribution to the world, such as inventing faster than light travel, stable wormholes, long distance teleportation, et cetera. The latter, long distance teleportation, if it were similar to the one in Robert A. Heinlein's book "Tunnel in the Sky", could be used for instantaneous travel to other planets capable of supporting life, which would help to clear out some of the people from Sol III AKA 'earth' which would help to conserve resources. There could also be lotteries, if governments needed more money, although that might lead to some who are desperate to have children gambling a lot of their money on it. So, not overly fond of that idea, unless there was a way to limit what they could spend on it. The same with awarding a baby license to someone who never got a cavity, or had cancer in his genetic line, and so on. That path leads to eugenics, which I'm not too hip about, either.
While slowing the birth rate, and, eventually, lowering the world population through accidents and what-not, may not be liked by everyone, the alternative is an out-of-control increase in population. The population of the world in 2013 is already over 7 billion people. The planet cannot sustain those numbers for very long, and, it will only get worse as the population soars even higher. Or, as Nostradamus said it in Century II, Quatrain 75, "So high will the bushel of wheat rise, that man will be eating his fellow man." So . . . I'm hoping people would prefer a lower world population to cannibalism and even more wars with far higher casualties, as governments and corporations fight for dwindling resources. But, you know how humans are . . . They'd likely cut down the last tree, and kill the last cow, for another burger. Or, to put it another way, they would burn this planet to the ground if it means just one more cheeseburger.
As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of humans . . . I've read too much of their history and lived through a good chunk of it, as well. Their primary motivations are greed and power, and they are capable of truly monstrous acts of sadism whenever they think they have a chance to get away with it. Some think of humans as humane. I believe otherwise. Some know of my experience with humans which formed the way I think the way I do about them, and I have the scars to remind me of it every day. Like the scar on my arm where I had the bone in my arm put back in after an 'accident' caused by a driver. Because I had good health insurance at the time, I thought I would do a good deed, and told the cop that the driver didn't hit me. The driver, upon hearing this, said "Oh, good. My insurance won't go up, then." So, don't talk to me about human kindness and how humane they are. With most of them, and, I'm talking 99.999 percent of them, unless they can get something out of it or P.R. for themselves or their organization, they won't do anything to help others, whereas I almost always give my spare change when I see a donation box and try to tip people whenever I can. Want to prove me wrong? Go here, and click on the links to help others around the world for free:
If you scrolled down instead of clicking on it, you just proved me right. Just too predictable, and you're likely one of those very same people who wonder why the world is such a terrible place when you can't even click a single link to make it better. The answer is left as an exercise for the student . . .