• Question: Will there ever be an invention to make a person live longer/forever?

    Asked by gigi123 to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Yes, there will. When we age it’s because of accumulated genetic damage. Every time a cell divides, it doesn’t make a perfect copy. There is padding around the DNA called telomeres. When we get very old, this gets eaten into as it gets less and less as the cells get copied over and over again, so there is a finite number of times a cell can divide. Scientists are working on many things – two of them are correcting genetic errors, and other is adding new “padding” by extening the telomeres.

    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Probably – science is an amazing thing.

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      We have already created things that help us live longer, doctors help people live longer every day through medicine and operations. Perhaps something will be discovered that will stop people from aging but I doubt it would be put to real use, imagine the over crowding, lack of jobs, houses, food if no one died. Death is a necessay thing.

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