Replacements

Introduction

Many years ago my friend Craig Richardson said:

"If we could replace worn out body parts before they failed we could live forever"

Unfortunately we lost Craig to cancer.

This is an expansion of that concept, with examples of where we have solutions today, but we are still looking for solutions to illnesses but what if we eliminate body wear and sickness?

I have always believed that bodies are complex machines and doctors are mechanics of the body. There is a joke "What do you call a vet who can only treat one animal? - A doctor". I have to say all the doctors, consultants and surgeons who have looked after me over the last thirty years have been brilliant.

Fixing, Mending And Replacing

One of the biggest life treats is cancer. I always thought cancer was a disease (I know it is) but in his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" Bill Bryson enlightened me as to how it actually works

Today 40 percent of people will get cancer at some point. Cancer is an internal malady, caused by cells in the body turning on us. Cancer cells have six attributes that Bryson lists: dividing without limit, grow without direction or outside influence, tricking the body into giving them a blood supply, disregarding any signals to stop growing, not succumbing to programmed cell death and they metastasize and spread to other parts of the body . The body often fails to detect cancer cells because they appear as normal. Because of this, they can multiply for decades

Our cells should die and be replaced but in the case of cancer, they don't die and keep on growing, eventually resulting in death if not treated.

So cancer is stealthily bulling and killing your body to benefit itself, athough, ironically, when the host dies so does the cancer.

I am a cancer survivor and was successfully treated, which I documented here:

The thing is that things that threaten our bodies can often be successfully removed, and usually leave us in a healthy situation. Then we get on to the situation that Craig posited, so broken body parts can be replaced. Think hip replacement, heart and liver transplants, all of which leave the human body in a better condition that it was before and makes the person's life expectancy increase.

Then this makes me think about teleportation. How the hell has that anything to do with longevity? You might think.

I always wonder if the body that is reassembled at the destination is the same as the body that was teleported from. The new one might have the same memories and construction as the original but can it be considered the same? What if that technology only teleported the good, working bits of the human so that the human at the end was perfect? Could that be a way of extending the lives of people who wanted it?

Another option is nanobots that repair the body when it is damaged, but for that to happen, nanobots would need perfect programming but we know programmed intelligence often fails. This was illustrated in the Doctor Who episode "The Hollow Child" a wartime child is repaired but the anobots think that the gas mask the child is wearing is part of the body, so the child is rebuilt in a horrific fashion.

Then there is the situation when more than one person teleports, could their bodies and minds get mixed up like in the film "The Fly".

Over the years humanity has found new ways of curing diseases, researching and inventing vaccines. On cancer a hundred years ago people just died. I would have done a hundred years ago. Even in the 1960s cancer was a death sentence, my maternal grandad and my mother were victims of it, but when I was diagnosed I was confident I would be treated. My daughter also has had and beaten cancer.

Then there are replacement parts. Remember pirates with wooden legs and hooks for severed hands. Today athletes can run faster with prosthetic leg replacements, but no doubt in the future permanent limb replacements will be invented.

However, I am going to wander out on the nanobot scenario. They could be used to search out and treat any disease. Where we now you drugs, nanobots could destroy anything that was hurtful to the body and rebuild anything that needed rebuilding.

The body actually continually rebuild itself, I found this out when I was hit by ITP. When you eat something, it often lacerates parts of your throat and intestine but your body then repairs it, usually. Problems occur when the body doesn't repair itself.

Imagine in the future that every ill can be repaired by nanobots and the only choice we have to make is when we want to leave this mortal plane. Death becomes a choice rather than an inevitability. If everyone could live as long as they wanted, a lot of people would say that the world would become overcrowded and we could not feed everybody, but the world is a very big place, and food production is continually becoming more efficient.

But if everyone became effectively immortal, there may still be those who covet money and power over life, and that may lead to people being killed.

Then when that happened, they may be revived by the nanobots, effectively creating a zombie subclass, although they would effectively still be human because of the nanobot repairs. Would the revived humans seek revenge and retribution? Who knows.

If humans can always be fixed, some might see a potentially perfect world, I do but I also know there might be those who are not as positive as I am.

Conclusion

I believe that technology and medicine will combine to eventually give us the opportunity to extend our lives for as long as we want it. If we are not careful, the benefits may be wiped out by the possible negatives.

What will happen, we don't know yet.