So it developed that living organisms are programmed to death... and at the same time on that in every way to avoid it. This conflict in many respects — one of the defining lines of person per se. We the only beings in the world understanding that will die. Sooner or later this understanding which is called "existential horror" comes to everyone. And first of all there is naive, but absolutely natural question: "And unless it is impossible somehow differently?" Thinkers of all eras, from ancient philosophers to modern writers tried to answer it, but only in the 20-21st centuries the answer began to change slowly.
Eternal life — a utopia or reality?
In recent years in consciousness of mankind quietly and imperceptibly there was the real revolution. The adherents of philosophy under the name "transhumanity" supporting any expansion of human opportunities by means of science — up to eternal life — considered odd fellows earlier. Now the similar ideas regularly flash in news feeds of quite serious editions. To fight against death gradually begin to treat not as a pipe dream and as a technical task: many do not think any more whether there will be a person immortal, and only ask the question "when". Yes, the organism at us is incredibly difficult and fragile, and consciousness is even more difficult so, perhaps, scientists need couple more of centuries. Offensively, of course, to be one of the last mortal generations, but nevertheless this already essentially new relation to a question of eternal life.
For example, a few years ago scientists from Biomedical institute of Rice found genetic "knife switch" which right after puberty switches off protective mechanisms of cages in one species of worms and by that starts aging process. During the experiments this switch managed to be blocked, and tissues of a worm immediately ceased to grow decrepit.
Other team of researchers from the University of California said that it learned to strengthen an organism of old mice by means of blood transfusion from young individuals — that is especially ironic as the first bad experiences on fight against age aging began with this method in the 17th century, and approximately once a century got back to this idea again. At last, among animals there are also natural long-livers. For example, the jellyfish of Turritopsis Dohrnii is considered at all immortal as is able to sink in literal sense into dotage and to anew pass life cycle.
What for an animal such — a telomere?
One of the most perspective directions — work with the telomeres, special fragments of DNA located on the ends of chromosomes. They are spent at each cell fission, and if the telomere does not remain, the organism will not be able to be updated any more. Researchers from Stanford University already learned to extend telomeres in vitro and if this technology sometime manages to be applied to the living person, then in the theory it in a stock will have about fifty more years of life.
But it is not necessary to think that everything is so cloudless. Even having prolonged life for an indefinite term, we will face a problem of continuous developing of cancer tumors. Already now people learned to live so long that cancer seriously joined in fight for the first place among the reasons of a natural death. Besides, there is also a brain problem — it, generally speaking, is evolutionarily not calculated on so long and intense operation. The longer there live people, the higher them chances to fall into weak-mindedness or to receive some dangerous mental deviation. The brain is so difficult that to a question of the consciousness nature the science even still plainly was not risen. Therefore here only time — the eternal judge — will sort things out.