Talk of The Villages Florida - Why do we get old and die?

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Don't worry be happy

　
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Short list for longevity

Mortality, morbidity, popularity, anti-aging formulas and every lasting peace all have two things in common they are huge money makers, until they are not then pulled off the market for a time to be recycled for the next generation. Barnum was right.

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Originally Posted by Carl in Tampa (Post 912279)

Genesis Chapter 3

2 The woman said to the serpent, �We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, �You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.��

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

17 To Adam he said, �Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, �You must not eat from it,�

�Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground,since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return.�

THAT'S why we die. No amount of science is going to change that.

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This is correct

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Originally Posted by Carl in Tampa (Post 912196)

Trying to achieve "immortality" or significantly longer lives through science is an interesting subject.

However, living to an extremely old age has its down side, which was a subtle subtext to the movie The Green Mile, in which various characters were murdered, and legally executed.

The principal character, a jail guard, was shown to live to an age where all of his contemporary friends and acquaintances died, and generations of his new friends had died as well. These losses were painful to him. He appeared to long for death himself rather than experience more of these painful losses.

This causes one to reflect on how long a life is desirable. I have already outlived almost all of the roughly seventy-five deputy sheriffs who I worked with in the 1960s.

I had not caught that subtle subtext in the movie The Green Mile or do not remember it having seen too many vampire movies that cover the same idea. I did read the Stephen King books as they came out much of that time spent near Palo Alto house-sitting and mixing with Stanford students, driving cross country from SF to Tampa, and settling in FL in Palm Harbor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Mile_(novel)

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Originally Posted by kittygilchrist (Post 912709)

If the created could tell the creator how they should made, we could call the shots on immortality.
Just saying, the creator offers eternal life in a plan intended to confound those who think they are wise. It's a good and timely question.

It could be that we have been working on immortality for a long time and it was just called something else. When antibiotics were first developed I'm sure they didn't say that it put us one step closer to immortality. Every medical discovery that came along was just praised as something to improve life. No one gave it a thought that, at some point in the future, all these discoveries combined might add up to immortality.

Almost every known disease is being worked on by scientists who are trying to find a cure. Did anyone ever stop to think what would happen if, one by one, they were all successful? What if they find a cure for Alzheimer's? I suppose everyone would be very happy about it, as long as they were sure that we would only live a little longer and then die from some other disease, like cancer.

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Originally Posted by CFrance (Post 913252)

My doctor says 88 for women and 83 for men. That doesn't make me very happy. I surely do not want to outlive my very best friend on this earth.

When I was age 44 my first husband age 49 died suddenly from a massive heart attack. Even if my husband died at age 89 instead of 49 I would have still said I wish we had more time together :(

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By Villages PL: Yes, indeed, it won't be easy. I posted a list of seven deadly things that need to be worked on. Aubrey de Grey, who was written about in the book on immortality, found theoretical solutions to the first six rather quickly. The seventh was cancer which took a lot longer but he finally came up with a possible solution. Some may gasp when they here this.

I'll try to explain this as best I can from memory: First, he thinks it's necessary to get rid of all the telomerase in the human body because that's what makes cancer cells immortal. How could that be done? According to him, it would require the removal of a single gene that's responsible for supplying telomerase enzyme. Then, once that gene is removed, a person would need perhaps months of a very long and harsh chemotherapy treatment to make sure their system is "clean" (free of telomerase and any stray cancer cells that might be in their system).

Then to enable all the other cells to keep dividing (without telomerase to keep telomeres lengthened) he calls for laboratory engineered stem-cells to be injected into the body. And this would need to be done periodically, perhaps once every ten years or so. And there was something else about a bone marrow transplant that might have had something to do with producing the stem cells.

None of the above procedures have been developed yet but he estimates that they could become a reality in about 10 to 20 years. Aubrey is the idea man behind the book and he himself does not really believe in immortality. But he says that man might be able to live for about 1,000 years.

The drawbacks: 1) It could be very expensive and 2) who wants to be dependent on these procedures?

As I kept reading the book, I eventually found a whole chapter on what the drawbacks might be to living a long life (like 1,000 years). Basically, it was mostly one thing: Boredom!!! Stop and think what you would do if you could live 1,000 years. You can only be interested in something for so long. You would run out of hobbies that interest you. How long could you be interested in one marriage partner? You might remarry a dozen times or more. Your looooooooong term investments would give you a net worth of 500 billion and you would have bought everything that you ever wanted, and you would be bored with that too. You would have read all the classics until there were no more to read. Despite all those warnings, Aubrey de Gray says he would never get bored with life.

One thing I wonder about: The author devoted a whole chapter to how life on earth would get boring but never mentioned any such thing about eternal life in heaven. There's no such thing as immortality because one would eventually die in an accident or die from salmonella poisoning, or some such thing. But eternity in heaven is,.... well, ....eternity, and that's a heck of a long time. What will we do when we get there? How will we keep things interesting for a never ending period of time?

Men have dreamed of a Utopia since the beginning of time. To wit the Garden of Eden. This story first, repeated orally from one generation to the next until it could be recorded for posterity. Did it rationalize, for early man, why he died? and where he went?

In modern times Shang ri la. To me this is a good thing because it lay the foundation for hope and it carried with it a vision, a goal, a mission for mankind. and despite all the craziness that continues in this world of ours we always come back to this hope this vision this promise to ourselves of a long lasting, happier and better life for our children and our children's children

Eat well, exercise regularly, die anyway..

As with all living things man also has a lifespan, some longer than others but there has not been nor will there ever be even one that will escape the death of the carnal body. The eternal hope for mankind is that the spirit of every man will live on in a new body whether it be in heaven or hell.

JOB 14:
1 Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.

2 He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

It's one thing to ask why we get old and die, which, given the inevitability of death poses a philosophical question, and it's another to ask how does getting old and dying look under a microscope, and hurray for science and medical advances.

I am eternal. My body is mortal. It's not always preferable to extend breathing in a body. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Death where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?

"Can't take life seriously as you won't get out of it alive". Red Skelton

We will all die a physical death, but the soul will remain immortal, for those that believe.

When we die our soul goes to heaven to live for an eternity.

Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end. - Woody Allen

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Originally Posted by Carl in Tampa (Post 912279)

In number 6 above you used the word "husband". Were Adam and Eve married at the time or just living together?

Also, notice that God put them in a garden. There were no fast foods or processed junk foods. Manufactured foods came about much later when man thought he knew better.