Re: Historic Moment Missed

Max More (maxmore@primenet.com)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 23:05:14 -0700

At 01:00 PM 7/29/97 +1000, you wrote:
>A few days ago I posted a note to the effect that we are now have the
>technology to alter the human germ line. And in the following days all I
>see are nutso posts or posts that rely on science that won't become
>available for decades if not centuries. Yet here we have a technology that
>would allow us TODAY to create human beings (??) that would have natural
>lifespans of 100s (1000s???) of years (presuming inserting the appropriate
>antioxidant genes into the human genome will work the same as experiments
>like those on fruit flies).

This will be news to the many longevity researchers who still see extending
life as a hard problem! Even Michael Rose (he of the long-lived fruit
flies) doesn't see this as something we can do today. Why, exactly, do you
believe we can TODAY create humans with multi-century lifespans. It seems
to me that the fruit fly research cannot be applied to humans. We have no
idea which genes in humans (if any -- no genetic theory of aging has been
proven) would allow us to live longer.

Max

Max More, Ph.D.
more@extropy.org
http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
President, Extropy Institute: exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org
EXTRO 3 CONFERENCE on the future: http://www.extropy.org/extro3.htm