Quest for Immortality

Lately I have been hearing a lot of chatter about immortality and increasing our lifespan. The above image is an 18th Century Painting and calligraphy from a large format Chinese album illustrating stories of Taoist immortals -people who sought or "achieved" immortality. It is titled "A Keepsake from the Cloud Gallery/Yuntai Xianrui". The text concerns a Taoist adept, Wang Qiao. In Taoist practice, a set of procedures and principles meant to prolong human life. Taoists used such methods as "Outer Alchemy", consisted of the chemical production of elixirs that were meant to be swallowed, and "Inner Alchemy", which relied on symbolic meditation to achieve the same end, to acquire immortality.

But it is not only the Chinese or religious people that search for immortality. It seems to be that scientists are looking deeply into ways of minimalising or exterminating the process of decay in human cells, thus enabling us to age slower and ultimately stop aging. It is understood by biomedical gerontologists that this is a possible or highly likely reality that will become perfected over generations to come. They think of it as their duty to look deeper into this project so that our future generations can benefit from it.

So the question is "why immortality?" Is it really going to be beneficial for our future generations to be able to live longer, say 1000 years or more? Or is it just going to increase more issues, such as mass population or environmental consumption and damage? Check out this TED presentation by bio-gerontologist Aubrey de Grey (not to be mistaken with "Gandalf the Grey"... ) on anti-aging.