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Asked by harryboulton to Roy, Rowena, Nicola, Kieren, Kate on 14 Mar 2014.
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Kate Nicholson answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Would we want to?
Genetic engineering so that the copy and replicate protein doesn’t falter (there are some animals that never get cancer because of this) or fail should be enough to extend life. Without the telomer shortening that causes ageing and the copy process flawless so no cancer, then lifespans would be much less limited than they are now. Possibly even doubled. But there would be other challenges , disease, overcrowding, famines, wars, so would it solve the problem?
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Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey reckons we can extend it infinitely. He reckons that the first person to live to 200 is alive today and that what will happen is that as technology allows us to extend our lives a little bit, it will advance faster than the number of years we have extended it by so we will effectively keep getting younger. He sees aging as a disease and extending life by fighting aging as a positive thing – though of course it is a very controversial issue and people have different opinions.
Here is a link to a video of Aubrey de Grey on TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging – he’s a very good speaker so should be a good watch (I haven’t seen this one, but I’ve met him a few times in real life and in general his videos are good).
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Nicola Rogers answered on 15 Mar 2014:
The aging process is due to our DNA – either our genes determine how long we live, or over time our DNA gets damaged, until we can no longer function properly. So lifespan can be extended quite a lot once we fully understand the aging process by genetic engineering or by repairing damaged DNA
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