Life extension

• Increase in average lifespan

• Biogerontologists• Ethical questions

• Jeanne Calment: 1875 –1997 (122 years 164 days)

• Current world average: 66.12

Strategies

Anti-aging nutrition

• Antioxidant supplements: e.g. vitamin C, E – 30% increase

• Hormones, e.g. Oxytocin• Resveratrol – being tested on

animals. Anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, blood-sugar-lowering.

They can extend mean lifespan

Calorie restriction

• The restriction of energy intake

• Successful with almost every species on which it has been tested

• 40–60% of usual amount of calories

• Experiments with primates

Potential future strategies

Cloning and body part replacement

• replacing aging body parts

• transplanting brains – experiments have failed

• controversial and contentious

“I don’t know who I am. I have a donor heart, a donor kidney, a donor liver, a donor cornea, a donor lung...”

Suspended animation

• slowing of life processes • Temperature inducede.g. draining the blood from

bodies and putting an ice-cold solution instead

Experiments are successful in dogs, pigs and mice

• Chemically induced• Proposed for astronauts

Cryonics

• Low-temperature preservation (−196 °C)

• Plenty of time

• No ice!• Allows to live thousands of

years

SENS

• Reverse the damage called aging

• Possible to live thousands of years

• Stimulation of cell division • Removing senescent cells • “Elixir of life”

Mind uploading

• Transferring the human mind to a computer

• Based on materialism• Computer hardware

will be powerful enough by the 2020s

Conclusion

Currently the only widely recognized method is calorie restriction.

Thank you for listening!

References• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aging• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation