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Asked by doommachine99 to Daniel, Derek, Ian, Phil, Upul on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: General. This question was also asked by rawritsjoe.
Question: why do we have to die?can we stop this happening?
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Derek Mann answered on 21 Jun 2010:
On average we are living longer but the real issue is not length of life it is quality of life. This might sound very boring to you but imagine we can find a way to make you live until you are 200 but you would still develop the age-related conditions like being frail, brittle bones, easily catch flu’s etc. So you would live with pain and lack of comfort for the majority of your life. So what we need to do first is sort out how to prevent these age-related disorders then we can think about how to extend life.
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Ian Sillett answered on 21 Jun 2010:
Dieing is the way of the world, we need to die because without dieing there will be nothing from which to make new life. Would you want to stop it happening? Think about how crowded the world would be? Of course, death is sad and we will inevitably miss people we’ve lost, and of course no-one looks forward to their death, but it is part of life.
“Even if it means oblivion, friends, I’ll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.” Phillip Pullman
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Daniel Mietchen answered on 22 Jun 2010:
Death not involving a predator, disease or harsh environmental conditions is basically a side effect of being composed of more than one cell. The exact mechanisms are not yet entirely understood, but the basic contributors to ageing and, ultimately, death, are the accumulation of damage and waste at the cellular level. Repairing the damage and collecting the waste will at some point require more energy than the body can manage. In principle, these functions could be facilitated by providing suitable external energy supplies, but their design requires a proper understanding of the processes involved, and we are not there yet.
Work of some of my colleagues in the lab, however, has made it possible to determine the age of a person on the basis of brain scans (down to ± 3 or 5 years, depending on the quality of the data). Of course, it is easier to just ask people how old they are, or to look at their ID card, but the point is that if their real age is younger than what the brain age would suggest, then this may be an early hint at diseases like Alzheimer, and the earlier such diseases can be diagnosed, the better the prospects for the patients (and their family).
Even if we could stop death from happening, I am not convinced it would be a good idea, since many people are already bored with the limited time they have. It would also be a very heavy burden on the environment.
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