The Skinny Kid

As long as I can walk around and control my functions, I’m all for it.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Live forever

Now, however, there is a growing band of scientists and philosophers who truly believe that biological boundaries can be pushed back, allowing humans to live to 200, 300, 1,000 and maybe even longer.Calling themselves “transhumanists”, they argue that it is time humans broke free of their “biological chains”.

They want to harness medical, genetic and technological developments to improve the human body and mind - literally to make “better humans” - which will allow us to live longer and longer lives.

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In March this year, a five-day international conference - Tomorrow’s People: The Challenges of Technologies for Life Extension and Enhancement - was held at the James Martin Institute at Oxford University.

Speakers debated questions including: “How will humans re-engineer the human body?” and “What is natural about us and does it matter?”

One of the speakers, Dr Aubrey de Grey - a geneticist at Cambridge University and described as “perhaps the most optimistic” of the scientists who want to lengthen human life - believes that many of us who are fairly young now will live to 120. He told the conference there’s probably someone alive today who will live to be 1,000.