On Immortality, or Why STEM is Important

Liver’s shot? No problem. Soon you’ll be growing a backup liver in the Petri dish under the sink.

Scientists are already growing human tissue for transplant, including skin, appendages, and bone. It’s only a matter of time before we can do such things at home.

Who knows? Maybe the alcoholic of tomorrow will change his liver like an oil filter.

Now put this together with the coming ability to predict future illnesses like heart disease and cancer, as well as the possibility of eliminating scores of other causes of death through preventative life-style changes, and how far off can immortality be?

Consider this: You are scheduled for surgery. In addition to the usual preparation and sterilization techniques, hospital staff create a full body clone, and then conduct a thorough brain backup before you are spirited away for the operation. Should something go wrong your flesh will be re-grown, and your memories and DNA saved on a hard drive until your new body is ready.

Once you recover, all you have to decide is how to dispose of your old body.

When (not if) this comes to pass, it will be possible to be “scientifically immortal”, meaning you are kept alive through a combination of manufactured means (machines, tissue re-growth, and brain storage).

But what of human immortality? Saving our brains to Windows Explorer and growing new body parts is one thing. How will science someday preserve that which makes us human? And what does it mean to be immortal?

Those more romantically-inclined might say that living on in another’s thoughts is itself a form of immortality. As long as someone remembers you or your contributions to the world, you never die. This is why people write memoirs, and take the time to pass down stories and mementos from one generation to the next. As long as my grandfather is in my thoughts, whether it is the picture on my bureau, or the memory in my head, he is “alive”.

It is tempting to label this kind of thinking as simplistic, particularly in light of today’s technological capabilities. Yet there is far too much evidence suggesting the opposite to be true.

The research on social networks is clear; humans need to know each other. Indeed we are so fascinated with one another it is only a matter of time before scientists discover a way to let one person experience another person’s thoughts. So we cannot rule out the idea that immortality may someday be achieved using the thoughts of others, much like using the DNA of an extinct dinosaur to clone a new one.

Imagine being inside someone else’s head. Their thoughts, indeed their very thought processes, are your thoughts? What do they actually hear when listening to music? What imagery and thoughts go through their mind? Do they think in pictures, or words? Are they presenting themselves as they are, or as they are expected to be? Throughout it all, their memories become your memories. You feel what they feel. And when it’s over, the experience remains in your mind like any other.

Now consider the effects on society if everyone were able to do this just once in their life and, just like that, another framework for immortality is born.

Paul G. Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, has committed $300 million over the next 10 years to build a center for basic neuroscience investigation. From there it is not difficult to imagine an algorithm that could access brain storage to use the collective knowledge of others to arrive at complex solutions to the problems of the day.

How would Lincoln have handled the Occupy Wall Street protesters? How might Steve Jobs have designed the car of the future? 

More practically speaking, what if instead of bringing your car to your local mechanic, you could access her thoughts on repairing brakes from your own driveway and walk yourself through the process? (For a “brain access” fee of course).

As much as it sounds like a copout, every scientific advance humans make raises more questions than answers. 

How do we “capture”, or possibly even create, that spark of consciousness that makes us human? Flesh can be grown, information can be stored, but how does one continue being self-aware in anything but the original vessel, the human body and brain? Despite this, in the end we are back to the original question: what does it mean to be human?

Philosophers and ethicists better be at the ready. We are at lift-off, and it is amazing.

For more information, check out NOVA's "Pursuit of Immortality".