BLOGPOST 3: The Undying Quest for Cheating Death

As I was typing the word "Immortality" in Google, I found something that really surprised me. Guess what? Immortality by Celine Dion. Out of curiosity, I listened to it and I found myself holding my breath and taking in each and every word of the song. After listening to it for five consecutive times, I realized that the song is about giving up the one you love in order to follow your dreams. Many who face having to make such a decision may find this difficult because they love that person, yet they want to achieve a specific goal, and therefore they may be reluctant to leave them. But the love they have for that person will never end, just like the word "immortality" itself. 

Moving on to my research, i found a short article entitled "The Quest for Immortality" by Bennett Gordon. I almost ignored that article because of it's length but i didn't know that even a short article could be as "meaty" with information as the long ones.


 "Medically immortal". That's what caught my attention in the said article. According to the article, Biotechnology and Medicine has a notion as well when it comes to immortality.  It is stated there that in 30 years' time, humans could be immune to diseases, unaffected by the devastation of aging and be able to live for like 150 or even 1,000 years long. It is said that Biotechnology and Medicine may soon begin to advance quickly than nature can find ways to kill us. It may be even possible to overpower death. We do take medicines whenever we are sick. The purpose of it is to cure our disease but to some people's cases, prolong lives. What if a medicine is already made to prolong our lives, literally? Too long that it might make us all immortals?

It is also stated in the article that there are only few people who are behind the quests for immortality. Some of them may have died without experiencing their works pay off, or some who are still alive but unable to continue the quest. If the possibility for immortality is proven, the credits will go with nobody else but them. However, there would also be some people who would contradict their works such as those who are a strong believers of Religion. In the article, they are termed "fatalistic" because they are in favor of people dying. 

"Of course, the shift toward immortality is controversial. For one thing, immortality confronts many of the traditions of religion and philosophy. Since most religions are, in some sense, ways to cope with death, the elimination of death could have drastic consequences on the human psyche"

I agree on this statement stated by Bennett Gordon  in the article. It is indeed a huge step for us to be immortals and of course, immortality will violates the law of nature, however, if there is something killing people, such as diseases, it is something that should be prevented. We can't just let people die even though there are some issues when it comes to immortality such as the scarcity of resources and overpopulation. No one has a right to hold up this research and impose their "fatalistic" judgement on the future generation.

 Endless, everlasting, eternal and undying. Those are the words similar to "immortality". As I was pondering those, a question formulated into my mind, "why do we seek immortality? What is it with humanity that pushed us to seek eternal life?". Once again, different opinions would come up. Some would say that "it's because of the fear of death", "to see the changes of the world", "to gain more knowledge" or some would just simply say "because i don't want to leave my love ones yet". There are so many answers to that particular question. We want immortality because we have our own reasons. 

Through further researching, i found an article entitled "Cryonics: in search of Immortality" written by Nick Scott. The article reminded me the fake trailer of Titanic Part 2 that i found in Youtube.com couple of years ago. In the trailer, several years later after the known Ship of Dreams or Titanic sank, Jack Dawson's body was found on the sea floor encased in ice. They brought Jack's body in a laboratory unfreezes it. With its success, Jack Dawson came back to life and only to find out that he's now in a completely new world. Everything he knew several years back are gone even the love of his life that he met on Titanic, Rose Dewitt Bukater.

Based on the said article, that scenario of Titanic 2 is possible because the article talks about Cryonics. Cryonics is known to be the practice of freezing a person who has died of a disease in hopes of restoring life at some future time when a cure for the disease has been developed. In the article, it is stated that there are two major cryonics organizations in America and they are The Alcor Life Extension Foundation and The Cryonics Instituted. Based on the article, the two organizations are already handling more that 200 people and a handful of animals for the experimentation. Those corpses are pumped with a substance called Vitrification which will make their flesh become glass-like when the temperature plummeted. Though no one has ever brought back from the dead by this experiments yet, they are still not giving their hopes up that someday we'll be able to cheat death by cryonics. 

"Cryonicists believe that conquering death is not only possible, but an imminent reality."

There is a part of me that agrees and disagrees on this statement stated by Nick Scott in the article. The part of me that agrees with it says it's indeed possible. No one can ever stop the advancement of science. Just give it a little more time and it might be ready. Immortality through cryonics is now almost in our hands. But the part of me that disagrees with it says that how would they say that if, until now, they haven't brought someone back from the dead yet? And cryonics might indeed make us immortal by preserving our body while we are unconscious, but it doesn't stop us from aging once we are unfrozen. That's not totally the concept of immortality, is it?

Some of us are truly engaged in the in the matter of immortality. There would be some who are willing to take handfuls of medicines just to be immortal or even take an icy bath to preserve our body and wake up in a different era. But there would also be some people who would just turn their noses up when it comes to those ideas. Which of the two do you belong?