Why do we have the right to partially immortalize ourselves, if it is possible?

Here are three arguments for the pro-pimm activists, in a nutshell. You can decide the order of strength between them, and it depens on the hierarchy of your background assumptions. Later I explore the detailed structure of the arguments.

The first is based on the main premiss that to be alive is better than to be dead in the present circumstances of mankind. This kind of argument could be called the argument for self-sustainment. Seems triviality at the first sight. But there are opinions that reject it.

The second argument is what we called the argument for self-development or self expression, because partial immortalization in this way is the only possibility for a human and mortal individual to fully explore its own individuality, to develop its own capacities, abilities let it be mental, physical, or moral. For me this is the most motivated argument and it is deep-rooted in the history of philosophy.

The third argument is the argument for self-determination, because participating in a regeneration treatment means that this way the individual can choose the date of its death maximally, as much as possible for a member of a species like that of the homo sapiens, which lives under accidental circumstances. As it is in the subtitle of the Immortality Institute: conquering the blight of involuntary death…

Three kinds of arguments were formulated supporting why an individual could choose this treatment: the arguments for self-sustainment, self-development, and self-determination. The source of the first argument is the desire to stay alive as long as we can, the inspiration behind the second argument comes from the desire to develop our abilities as best as we can, and the inclination leading to the third argument is the desire to control the date of our death, as we can.

Next: Mitochondrion, the not so hidden superstar of current biology

The lifestyle of the pimm future: the Kurzweil case

The lifestyle of a partially immortalized individual won't be easy. At the beginning of the technology it takes continuous monitoring and treatment of the body, which equals significant proportion of the lifetime in the regeneration clinic, or at home, if the treatment permits it. Make no mistake: this is the price of pimm. And not the whole. If intuition fails to capture this situation, and it does, then look at the life of Ray Kurzweil, the former successful computer scientist (Stevie Wonder, anyone remembers?), author of the Spiritual Machines book (oh man, I liked that much) who is the leading extreme longevity proponent of our time. In a fascinating interview with Kurzweil by David Jay Brown, called Reprogramming your Biochemistry for Immortality, Kurzweil uncovers his lifestyle: "I take two hundred and fifty supplements a day, and I monitor my body regularly. I’m not just flying without instrumentation. Being an engineer, I like data and I monitor fifty or sixty different blood levels every few months, and I’m constantly fine-tuning my program. All of my blood levels are ideal. My Homocysteine level many years ago was eleven, but now it’s five. My C-reactive protein is 0.1. My cholesterol is 130. My LDL is about 60, and my HDL—which was 28—is now close to sixty. And so on and so forth. …I’ve also taken biological aging tests, which measure things like tactile sensitivity, reaction time, memory, and decision-making speed. There are forty different tests…"

So here is your timetable for the next week:

And here is an argument against those, who reject radical life extension on the ground that to live extremely long would be extremely boring: if you are under a continuous regeneration treatment, it takes a substantial portion of your lifetime, say, 30%, and during treatment time, you won't be bored, because it needs your active participation, in the extremity, so eventually you become your own regenerative physician. Biotech DIY on the highest level.
What we need is a whole new kind of body awareness.
Hey, would-be immortalizers, pimmers! Get ready for the future!

Next: Why do we have the right to partially immortalize ourselves, if it is possible?

Editorial: helpers, glossary, and the Pimm book

In the past years I've been communicating with many smart (mainly Hungarian) people about Pimm and its consequences, so I opened a page (click above) with the title Helpers, where you can find and search them. I hope their numbers will grow.

Now you can find a Glossary, which is under construction. It comprises the basic vocabulary of the Pimm project.

Under the Book page the chapters will be uploaded from the posts and the background sources monthly. For practical and backup reasons I made a new wordpress address:Pimm – The Book or http://pimm.wordpress.com/ which is the ultimate place of the Book. WordPress could function as a very good content management system for static web 1.0 pages too.

In the End (which is about two years from now) on the Book Page the Reader will find the whole beta Book, and I hope that a distinguished Publisher finds me. You know, it is a Niche, Niche World.

Next: The lifestyle of the pimm future: the Kurzweil case

The parameters of a partially immortalized individual

According to the pimm script the parameters of a partially immortalized individual are:

-the individual is continuously and voluntarily under regeneration treatment, its own body parts are partially regenerated.

- the individual could quit out of the regeneration treatment voluntarily at any stadium without harming his health, and can choose normal (evolutionary made and fixed) ageing and today’s expected lifetime and death.

- the biological age of the individual is constant, he is not aging because of the treatment, his metabolism and energy household is normal.

- the individual’s body could not be harmed in an irreversible way, because it could be repaired, replaced and regenerated except in case of a sudden death.

- the individual could die in all the known forms of death (external) except the internal cause of death through ageing and chronic diseases. For example, one could die in a car accident, could be stabbed by a knife, or shot by a gun, a nuclear weapon …and he could commit suicide with these means. He could also die in an acute disease, in hepatitis, virus infection, kidney failure, liver cyrhosis, or a stroke.

Sunday: Editorial: Helpers, Book, Glossary

Monday: The lifestyle of the pimm future: the Kurzweil case

Maximum and/or radical life extension?

A crucial terminological and conceptual point, which came into my mind, when I read this old Fight Aging! post:

When experts, even the most comitted proponents are talking about radical life extension, they usually mention only a few hundreds or thousands years, and then put the enigmatic "more" tag at the end, but they are not very clear what this "more" could mean. In contrast, partial immortalization refers to maximum life extension, which equals to unlimited lifespan, because theoretically if all tissues and organs of an adult body were regenerated once, then it could be regenerated two and eventually n times. So pimm falls under the category of radical life extension, and forms the upper limit of that.

Why this "unlimitedness" will be so important throughout our journey?

If you would like to take into consideration all the expected an unexpected effets of a present or future technology to society in general, you have to figure out the putative and possible endpoint of that technology, and form your conception from that endpoint of view. In the case of life extension this is the possibility of unlimited lifespan, to eliminate the internal causes of death, which is partial immortalization, not just some thousand years and on the other side, not whole immortalization, i.e. to eliminate the external causes of death, and not complete rejuvenation.

The meaning of this unlimitedness in the pimm construct is philosophical and somewhat ethical. If I would like to think about life extension in a philosophical way, then I have to construct the broadest conceptual frame which is conceivable, and that is pimm.

On the other hand this unlimitedness bears some ethical burden: I, as a stem cell researcher and a philosopher have to be honest about what this technological endpoint of any life extension could be. And that is not some thousand years.

Next: The parameters of a partially immortalized individual

Why is partial immortalization theoretically and technologically possible?

There are two main arguments supporting our modal statement:
i., negative: there is not any particular natural law, neither biological, nor physical which excludes this possibility.

ii., positive: we could extrapolate the technological draft of a regeneration treatment of the whole human body from the present results and methods of regenerative medicine.

Concerning the first argument, the impossibility proof of something which is not based on an outright logical contradicition, is very hard. But the argument does not say nothing about the realisation of pimm, it just opens some place in the possibility space. What if opposition considers, that entropy, in the statistical "disorder" sense, could cause a problem, say: the second law of thermodynamics necessarily excludes the possibility of pimm, because the total entropy of the human body increases over time and approaching a maximum value? Now the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. One point, where this metaphorical counterargument goes wrong is "isolated system". In thermodynamics, an isolated system is a physical system that does not interact with its surroundings. The human body is not an isolated, and not even a closed system, because it can exchange heat, work, i.e. energy and matter with its environment. I am pleased to announce that the human body is an open system.

Another source of objection could be based on evolution, but I discuss the connection between pimm, evolution and ageing later.

The second, positive argument is a macroargument, and the technological part of the pimm book tries to explicate this draft. An assertive quote:

”The promise of scientifically verified immortality has gained credibility with every successful organ transplant.” Frank Pasquale: Two concepts of immortality. Yale Journal of Law & the Humaities

Next: Maximum or radical life extension?

Stem cells and regenerative medicine (very short introduction)

The exact definition of stem cell is sometimes cloudy, but we do know 2 generally accepted criteria: stem cells are able to renew themselves and could differentiate into other type of cells. First, they are unspecialized, mitotic cells that renew themselves for any (i.e. long) periods through series of cell divisions, which result in similar unspecialized stem cells. This is the so called and overstated "immortality" characteristics. The other side of the stem cell coin is that under certain physiologic or experimental conditions (know it's vague a bit), they can be induced to become differentiated cells with special functions such as the contractile cells of the striatal muscle or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. So stem cells are those cells, which give rise to an identical, undifferentiated, mitotic stem cell and a more specialised cell with another phenotype through an asymmetric cell division. The resulting progenitor cells mature into functional, specialised cells of the organism. What kind of cells they could be, is partly the function of the developmental potential of the cells and the local environment, where these cells anchor.
Regenerative medicine is the science and technology built around stem cells’ regenerative capacity. This is a whole new concept compared to the traditional medicine: the aim is to facilitate and amplify or replace the native regenerative potential of the organism, the targeted tissue or organ based on the results of developmental biology and biotechnology. Classical medicine focuses on the patomechanism of the illness, the elimination of cell death, and tissue protection, while regenerative research does not care about the causes of the injury, and its aim is not to eliminate the harmful effects of the injury, but to replace, and renew the damaged function. Here, in the NIH Glossary, you can acquire the basic language of stem cell biology.

Human stem cells in a relative harmony. Nuclei stained with Hoechst (blue), which bind to DNA. Author's shot.

Coming soon: Why is pimm theoretically and technologically possible? Two arguments.

Editorial: The raw content of the Pimm book

Now you can skim the rough content of the book on a new page, just click at the right side.

What is (and is not) partial immortalization?

The aim of regenerative medicine is to regenerate all tissues and organs of the human body with the help of stem cells’ regenerative potential. Theoretically if all tissues and organs of an adult body were regenerated once, then it could be regenerated two and eventually n times. (Think of the scheme of a Proof by Induction.) This technological possibility is called partial immortalization.

The main thought behind partial immortalization is quite simple. Every tissue and every organ of the whole human body could be replaced and regenerated with the help of stem cells and additional molecular, chemical factors. If an adult body was regenerated once, then it could be regenerated n times. Constant and continuous iteration of this process leads to unlimited lifespan.
Leaving aside the scientific and technological details, the main statement of our thought experiment is: partial immortalization is possible with the help of regenerative medicine. An important restriction should be that partial immortalization means that an adult human organism does not age because of continuous regeneration, and so, lacks age-associated changes and diseases (cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases), the impairment of bioenergetic function and the decreased ability to respond to stress, and generally lacks the internal causes of death. But this does not mean that the immortalized person could not die in a car accident, through acute diseases, war or generally the external causes of death, or could be revived, reanimated after his death. This possibility would be immortalization in the strong or whole sense, which equals literal immortality. Briefly, partial immortalization would eliminate problems concerning ageing (ageing related physiological problems), while whole immortalization would eliminate death related problems.

Next: stem cells and regenerative medicine.

Let’s write a book about partial immortalization now online!

Hi, I am Attila Chordash, a last year PhD student, a trained molecular biologist and biotechnologist, and my topic is stem cell biology, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine. I got a master's degree in philosophy too.

My plan here is to write an online book (bloog, blook) about Partial immortalization with the help of you, dear readers, commenters, participators. A good example for such an effort is The Long Tail which is the coming book of Wired's editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson.

The subtitle of this ongoing book presumably will be: the philosophical problems of human biotechnology and regenerative medicine.

Though our main topic is a technological possibility, we got a chance to stand in the intersection of science, technology, philosophy, economics, religion, politics, and culture.

Partial immortalization is an extrapolated technology with which humans can reach an unlimited lifespan.

Throughout this blog I promise you an intellectual but exciting journey, a journey which helps us to think over the main problems and meanings of our human lives.

That's why we don't have to be cool, hip or whatever. We have to be concentrated, and overuse our imagination. That's all.

The topic of the next post will be: What is partial immortalization.