Can Google Solve Death?

Recently, the Times Magazine has published an article titled "Can Google solve death?" The theme of the article basically talks about the new company that Google is going to create, called Calico (California Life Company), and which is going to try to investigate if death is something not inevitable.

From what commentators say, this new company is going to have a different focus than other life-extension research companies; it is going to try to combat death by focusing on aging itself, rather than focusing on finding cures for single diseases, such a cancer, alzheimer, or others. This is the key, as many biologists single out.

As a new company, and without any further information about how it is going to work, many different reporters have discussed on which technologies and therapies Calico is going to focus on order to solve this question that has pursued humans since the very start. Some of these methods include the following: cryonics, cryotherapy, self-healing worms and telomeres, cloning and body part replacement and nanotechnology.

Cryonics

This technique is based on freezing your body, sometimes only ones head, in order to have your body preserved after death. This method is somewhat similar to what the famous Walt Disney did. The hope of this technique is that the body will be preserved until a future in which nanotechnology and further developments will be able to revive the patient by changing organs and tissues.


Cryotherapy


The use of cryotherapy is very typical in athletics, and many sports are starting to use this technique. It consists in submitting ones body to freezing cold temperatures for a short period of time, which makes the body recover quicker.


Self-healing worms and telomeres

A group of scientists at Nottingham University discovered a species of flatworm, the Planarian worm that can divide potentially forever, and this has caused that this may be a key to alleviate aging in human cells. Human cells undergo aging when stem cells divide to heal wounds, during reproduction
or for growth. The key to stop this aging process may lie in the telomeres, the ends of a chromosome that protect cells against degradation; if scientists can find a way to preserve telomeres, then this can be a huge step towards defeating aging.


Cloning and body part replacement 

This area of investigation has to do with the organ creation and replacement. A replacement of lab-grown kidneys has already been done to rats, and if this can be replicated for humans, it could mean a significant way of fighting age.


Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is what many consider to be the science of the future. One example of how this could fight against aging is by deploying tiny robots (nanorobots) in the body which would help overcome problems of incorrect DNA replication, which is one of the central causes of aging.







In my opinion, although this is something that we would all apparently like, there are many motives to which I personally doubt this can either be impossible in the next 50 years, or that it would be detrimental for human society as we know it. I believe that by solving the problem of death, somewhat life would lose the exhilarating moments and all those moments one those in order to enjoy life to its optimum point. If one knows that he/she can life forever, then there is no meaning in trying to walk through life doing the things you enjoy or even living life to its fullest, since you are going to live forever. As well, how would this affect society, and not only that, the Earth. Considering that this would increase dramatically the Earth's population because nobody is dying while people are always being born, then sooner that we would think the Earth would reach its famous biological limit. The consequences on society can be so great that it would be too long to write now, but the structure of society and how we know humankind would change completely. People would be reckless all the time, for example. Therefore, although this science might be thought as a good idea, I would doubt whether it is a good or bad idea due to all of the consequences it can have.



Source for writing this article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/03/tech/innovation/google-calico-aging-death/