Today my mother is 80. As you can see she is still active, in fact she still goes dancing, something she has enjoyed all her life. On the news today, also, was a piece about a woman of 103 who has had an operation. The doctor treating her said he had performed the operation because there was not much wrong with her in spite of her age. The operation was to relieve pain and was considered worth doing because she should live for some years yet.Since having my heart attack I have become quite interested in life expectancy and amused my friends and family by suggesting that once my body is stabilised there is no reason why I should not live for another 40 years, which would mean I would die at the age of 96.
We are certainly on the verge of some remarkable medical achievements. Various forms of cancer, for example, are now mainly diseases of old age and with experiments in the area of stem cell treatments it may be that a whole new world of genetic therapies will see total mastery over cell manipulation. Also, there is news that statin treatment for heart conditions can also reverse damage, leading to speculation that some heart conditions can be prevented altogether.
One of the articles I read recently suggested that the first person to live to 150 has probably already been born. Others have suggested that immortality is just a matter of time (pardon the pun).
The social consequences of immortality do not bear thinking about and even the trend is having a marked effect on society. A few years ago we had an unfortunate tendency to write off anyone considered too old to be of any value. Now they are such a dominant force, in sheer numbers, that the elderly perspective cannot be written off. I just hope this will stop the throw away fad that has gripped us for so long. An attack of 'old is beautiful' would be very nice, thank you.
Alas, in the scheme of things, extending life is one thing. Immortality is quite another. Personally, I believe everything has a beginning, a middle and an end and it is inevitable that all things pass on. I say 'pass on' because it does seem that matter is neither created nor destroyed even if it does dramatically change its structure, nature's recycling plant. I can accept that most of me will end up as a cloud, being 80% water and little bits will contribute to other natural phenomena, mainly as nutrients for other life forms. As to whether 'life' and 'physical restructuring' are the same is another thing altogether. I must say I have difficulty thinking of conscious experience as essentially a physical thing and even greater trouble working out where it goes to in the process of bodily recycling. There has to be more to it than this. However, just as we are nowhere towards understanding the origins of the universe (see earlier article) I do not believe we have much of a clue about the nature and purpose of life itself. In which case how do we decide what is the appropriate way to live our lives?
