The Quest For Immortality

Our wonderful pastor gave a lecture this past week about immortality and man's desire to live forever.  It made me think a whole lot about the concept of Heaven.  A 'Heaven' I still believe in.

So I did a little online research and found this article about our Quest for immortality I thought I would share:

We begin our journey to the outer limits with a gentle trip down the River Cam, floating by that center of British learning, Cambridge University. Our guide and helmsman: Dr. Aubrey de Grey. He ponders while he punts.

"When I was a student, I bought my own punt, a secondhand one for a few hundred pounds. And I used it in the summer to do what's called chauffeur punting," says de Grey. "People come along, tourists, and you tell them lies for money."

Today he's pondering his favorite premise: eternal youth.

While most scientists talk about increasing longevity by a few years, de Grey says he is talking about the "indefinite extension of longevity."

"Average life spans would be in the region of 1,000 years," he says. "Seriously."

De Grey and his wife Adelaide are fixtures around Cambridge. She's a researcher in genetics; he's an academic maverick. While still in his early 30s he published groundbreaking work in theoretical biology and earned an international reputation. His day job is managing a fruit fly database.

But the work that consumes him involves larger game – humans. And he does his best thinking in the same 17th century pub where Watson and Crick refreshed themselves while unlocking the mysteries of DNA. De Grey believes he has unlocked the mysteries of immortality.

"The aging process is really a buildup of side effects of being alive in the first place," he says.

De Grey has identified the biological processes he thinks are responsible for aging, including the mutations that cause cancer and the gradual buildup of useless, toxic junk.

What does this accumulation of junk within the cells lead to?

"It depends on the tissue. In the eye, there is a type of junk that accumulates in the back of the retina that eventually causes us to go blind. It's called age-related macular degeneration. In the arteries, you have a different type of cell which accumulates a different type of junk that eventually causes arteriosclerosis," he says.

But de Grey has gone way beyond describing the causes of degeneration. In a series of papers he has developed a theory he calls "Engineered Negligible Senescence". Simply put, it says science will soon enable us to grow old without aging.

De Grey says that not all of the conditions that cause our bodies to age can be avoided or prevented…yet. "But I do claim that we have a fighting chance of developing ways to prevent them within the next 25 years or so."

So humans will be just as spry at 500 as we were at 25?

"If you have difficultly imaging this, think about the situation with houses. With moderate maintenance they stay up, they stay intact, inhabitable more or less forever. It's just that we have to do a bit of maintenance to keep them going. And it's going to be the same with us," says de Grey. 


But Dr. Jay Olshansky disputes de Grey's conclusions.

Dr. Olshansky studies longevity and aging at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He says de Grey's predictions are more science fiction than science.

"Currently, life expectancy in the United States is roughly about – well, it's 80 for women, about 75 for men. They're talking about numbers that are simply way beyond comprehension," he says.

Olshanksy goes on to say that humans are simply not built to last.

"From an evolutionary perspective, we're designed to make it, to grow and develop and to reproduce, pass our genes on to the next generation, and ensure the reproductive success of our offspring," says Dr. Olshansky. "So you know, early 60s, one might argue, is where evolution has us surviving optimally. But we go well beyond that, well beyond the end of our reproductive period. So it's no surprise that we see things go wrong with these bodies when we use them beyond their warranty period. And that's exactly what we're doing."

De Grey admits his conclusions about people living to 1,000 are very extreme, "and so the natural reaction is to say, 'Well, this can't possibly be right.' But then if you look at my reasoning, how I get to those conclusions, it becomes very much harder to actually identify anything that I'm saying that is unreasonable," he says.

Would he compare such critics with those who believed that the Earth was flat and continued to believe it even when it was only theoretically proven to be round?

"I think that's a pretty good parallel, yes," says de Grey.

"I have no doubt science will make breakthroughs. But how do you develop a model or a forecast of a life expectancy based on a technology that doesn't exist?" says Olshansky.

But de Grey insists that it will exist soon enough. Our success in mapping the human genome will produce amazingly rapid strides in technology, like smart drugs designed for individuals, gene therapies to cure hereditary disease, and stem cells that rejuvenate organs like the heart and brain. And beyond that, microscopic robots that travel through our bloodstream curing what ails us.

Progress will be such that each generation will keep us one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.

"The first generation will give us maybe 30 extra years of healthy lifespan," says de Grey. "So, beneficiaries of those first therapies will still be around to benefit from improved therapies that will give them another 30 or 50 years and so on. So this is basically staying one step ahead of the problem."

But realistically, who wants to live to age 500 or 1,000?

"What I'm after is not living to 1,000. I'm after letting people avoid death for as long as they want to," he says.

And de Grey acknowledges that immortality will not be cheap. "We are talking about serious expenditure here. We are talking about expenditure in excess of what's being spent on the war in Iraq, for example."

That money will only be forthcoming when ordinary people become convinced that they have a shot at radical life extension.

"The people who are watching this probably still think about serious life extension in the same way that they think about teleportation. You know, they think it's not really foreseeable and they'll worry about it when it is," says de Grey.

That's where the Methuselah Mouse Prize comes in. It's a multi-million dollar contest designed by de Grey and others to spur anti-aging research. The goal is to demonstrate that radical life extension is possible by producing a so-called 'ageless' mouse within the next 10 years.

"And that is when the real pandemonium is going to happen because people will want to maximize their chance of making the cut," says de Grey. 


Not all mice are created equal – at least not in the laboratory of Dr. Christian Sell, a research scientist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. In a separate facility, his mice come in two sizes – 'regular' and 'midi'. The midi mice are 40 percent smaller than regular mice because one gene has been altered.

The altered gene, one that all mammals including humans have, regulates a hormone called IGF-1 that affects an animal's size. If the gene is active, a lot of the hormone is produced and the animal grows large. A less active gene produces less of the hormone and a smaller animal. Dr. Sell hopes to prove that the gene also affects longevity. If he's right, his smaller mice, with less of the hormone, will live longer than the two- to two-and-a-half year average of their larger cousins.

"Small seems to live longer, within your own species. Across species, small is shorter. Mice live shorter than elephants," says Sell. "But within mice, the smaller mice seem to live longer. Within dogs, smaller dogs live longer."

Could one conclude that this hormone produced by this gene is the longevity hormone?

"Why don't we say it's a longevity gene?" says Dr. Sell, laughing. "Because there's certainly more than that."

Three years into his research, Sell's midi mice are living longer than the control group, but it's too soon to tell if one of them will break the record of almost five years and win the Methuselah prize.

Is the prize stimulating longevity research?

"It's stimulating discussion," says Dr. Sell, "and whether one agrees with the idea that one will be able to intervene to radically extend life span or not, well, that's a good point for discussion."

Dr. Sell doesn't think that a fairly radical change in human longevity is a real possibility in the near term.

But it's human nature to want to live as long as possible in reasonable health, and Olshansky says there are plenty of snake-oil salesmen out to cash in on that desire. For them he has his own prize: the Silver Fleece Award.

"This was a Silver Fleece Award for my favorite product. You know, I have my favorite, and this one was called 'Longevity.' It says here 'it drastically slows the aging process.' The person who invented it and many of the people who were listed as having used it, including John Wayne, Yul Brenner , Anthony Quinn, Russian and German party leaders and many other worldwide dignitaries, all share one common characteristic. They're dead. They have all died," says Olshansky.

So what does Olshansky say about guys like de Grey, legitimate scientists?

"What I like about Aubrey is, he's not selling anything except ideas. He's set forth a series of testable research hypotheses, which is what science is all about, and he said 'test them'. I love that. That is what we should be doing in the world of science," Olshansky says. "I just wouldn't hold out immortality or 5,000-year life expectancies as the end result or the promise of what you're going to get from this."

But what if de Grey's vision really does come to pass? Are we prepared to deal with a whole new set of problems?

"We're talking about saving 100,000 lives a day. And it takes a lot of problems to match that," says de Grey.

De Grey acknowledges that some people will say those 100,000 lives lost a day are just in the nature of things. "But, you know, it didn't stop us from using treatments for infectious diseases when we found out how to develop them," de Grey responds.

What about the social issues, like overpopulation, that would come with longevity?

"Sure, it will be difficult," de Grey says. "All I say is that this is a choice that the society of the future that has these therapies at its disposal is entitled to make for itself."

Genetic Code of World's Oldest Person May Reveal Recipe for Long Life

I love herring. I love the study of genetic science.  I am trying to figure out how I can enrich my life and stay along for a long time in order to bug my children and as many grandchildren as they will give to our family.

As many of my friends know, I try to stay on top of the latest news concerning life enhancement, be it via diet, medicine, genetics, or spiritual dedication.

I know I'm not alone in my desire to live a long life.

In fact Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper wants to live a long life too!

The 115-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who held the title of world's oldest human before she died in 2004, attributed her longevity to eating herring every day. But doctors had a hunch it was a little more than that. After all, everyone and their uncle eats herring in van Andel-Schipper's native country of the Netherlands.

Turns out their hunch was right. It was the herring and a group of coveted genes known to help prevent circulatory disease and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The genes likely led to van Andel-Schipper's remarkable mental clarity at such an advanced age as well as her ability to lick breast cancer . . . at age 100.

Dutch researcher Henne Holstege of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam presented the initial findings from an analysis of van Andel-Schipper’s genes on Oct. 14 at the annual meeting of the International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal.

Herring + good genes - herring = long life

Holstege said she hopes van Andel-Schipper's unique genetic blueprint, called a genome, can serve as a reference for future studies of longevity genes. She compared van Andel-Schipper's genome to a checklist of all that's needed to combat the ravages of aging. No other centenarian has been studied as thoroughly.

Van Andel-Schipper was robust and didn't enter a nursing home until age 105. Researchers grew intrigued by her mental acuity during her later years. Her performance in mental tests at age 113 was above average for a healthy adult between the ages of 60 and 75. Ultimately van Andel-Schipper died of stomach cancer, which is ironic because this type of cancer is rare today but was common in 1890, the year she was born.

Fortunately, van Andel-Schipper decided to donate her body to medical science when she was just a sweet, young thing at age 82, allowing researchers to look more deeply for the underlying causes of her remarkable longevity.

Upon van Andel-Schipper's death, an autopsy of her brain showed no signs of even minor dementia, previously thought to be inevitable for the elderly. Doctors also found no sign of plaque in her arteries. While it is true that van Andel-Schipper's favorite fish, herring, contains heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, doctors had never seen such a pristine vascular system in the elderly.

Key to living past 100

Holstege and her Dutch and American colleagues are only in the initial stages of van Andel-Schipper's genome analysis, and no results have been published. Doctors hope that a better understanding of longevity genes can lead to medicines that can suppress the genes that cause disease and activate the genes that promote long life.

The late van Andel-Schipper is unique in that she was among the fewer than 30 people in modern times known to live longer than 115 years; and she is also one of only a few hundred people (so far) to have their complete genome analyzed.

Maybe being the world's oldest person isn't the best goal in life. The title usually is short-lived, with some sinister senior in a rocking chair out to take your title away. But at least you know to get there you don't have to eat herring every day. All you need is that magic combination of genes, distributed to roughly 1 in a billion people.

In case you're wondering what I'm going to eat for lunch, you got that right: herring!

Learning from Steve Jobs: How to lead with purpose

Leadership is a choice. Pure and simple.

When you assume a position of authority, either formally as a manager or informally as a team leader, you make the choice to lead. Management is the discipline of getting things done right. Leadership is the art of doing what is right for good of the organization. In other words, management is execution; leadership is inspiration.

Inspiration emerges from purpose, knowing what you do and why you do it. Organizational purpose emerges from the vision, mission and values of an organization.

Apple is fine example of a purposeful organization. Its leadership under Steve Jobs at the helm was focused on producing well-designed products, easy to use as tools of productivity or means of entertainment. Everyone in Apple has been focused on this mission. You could say much the same about the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. Everyone from top to bottom, and that includes maids and wait staff, knows how to deliver a superior guest experience.

Among the ways leaders instill purpose in an organization, according to research conducted my book, Lead With Purpose, Giving Your Organization a Reason to Believe in Itself, is through communicating the vision, tying customer benefits to employee contributions, and linking work to results.

Creating a purposeful organization is not easy. It takes the commitment of senior leaders who hold themselves accountable for delivering on the corporate mission. A fine example of this is Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a global IT services company headquartered in Delhi.

As Nayar wrote in his book, Employees First, Customers Second, "The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel, help them discover their own wisdom, engage themselves entirely in their work, and accept responsibility for making change." Toward that end, Nayar regards himself as a servant of his organization one who holds himself accountable for putting individuals and teams into positions where they can excel.

Purpose is especially necessary in tough times. As Roger Webb, President of the University of Central Oklahoma, told me an in an interview: "If people don't feel the purpose, and don't feel the goal and [know] that they are accomplishing things and moving forward, then depressing news can really bring people down."

While purpose is the spark that sets up the vision -- where an organization is headed -- and defines its mission, it becomes inert if not practiced. So a leader must "connect the dots" between what an employee does and why it matters to the organization.

A key example of this is Ford Motor Company. Under the leadership of CEO Alan Mulally the organization has transformed itself from a struggling company to one that has become the most admired automaker. Key to this has been the One Ford plan, which is the relentless focus on creating cars and trucks that complement the Ford brand globally. The beauty of this imperative is not the words; it's the action steps.

Employees throughout Ford understand the responsibility they have to deliver on One Ford. If you work in manufacturing you understand that decisions and actions you make complement Ford's ability to build world-class products. Or if you work in marketing, you know how your marketing plan for the Focus complement the strategic imperative. Put in other way, purpose becomes personal.

Specificity is critical to purpose. I have developed two questions that managers can ask themselves to ensure that they are using purpose as a lever to effect positive results. The first, is asking oneself if you are teaching your staff about a purpose. Secondly, ask if you are ensuring your staff follow through on the shared purpose.

Answers to these questions will enable the leader to provide his team with a goals. Ways to deliver on this will include briefings from senior management but it will more importantly involve having conversations about what the team is doing and why it matters. Stories about what is working or what is not can greatly contribute to a greater understanding of purpose.

Leadership is a choice for individuals to make, but the leader must provide his or her team with clear direction founded on purpose and understanding.