Karsten Bänder <Karsten.Baender@ivm.de> writes:
> > One word: Nanotechnology
>
> Nanotechnology will help resolving a whole bunch of problems, but might I
> suggest that we do not think of it as a magical artifact capable of
> fulfilling all our dreams?
Exactly. Nanotech is not a panacea. But it might be darn useful.
> I do not think that nanotech alone would be able to solve the problems of
> cell death and brain malfunction. Nanotech could not produce new veins or
> blood cells nor would it be able to rejuvenate the old body cells. Cells
> divide, and in the aging process, this becomes more and more slowly until it
> eventually stops. How would Nanotech be able to alter this?
Why not cell repair machines? The most drastic version would be small devices entering cells, going to the nucleus and (say) lengthen the telomeres or do other genetic modifications needed to extend the cell's viability. Less drastic possibilities would include building scaffoldings around veins to either replace the original walls (rather tricky), or attract epidermal cells (possibly newly cloned and injected) to form a new wall (sounds quite feasible in the short term, even without nanotech).
Nanotech would make it much easier to get the right molecules to the right place than current methods; to get strong life extension we also need to know what aging processes there are and what to do about them (something nanotech will also simplify discovering a lot).
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