Why Do We Die?, Can we beat death and live longer?

I know how we die, but I want to know why. Humans have had a longish evolution, and we seem intent on survival, but the body has not evolved to the point where it allows people to live beyond at least 120 years.

Our bodies seem to contain and be able to absorb everything we need to keep our cells from re-generating, and yet there are processes built in to our genes, it would seem, that stop this re-generation from continuing beyond a certain point.

I am also not considering ancient writings that talk about people living for thousands of years, as there is no empirical evidence to support those claims.

I found this link on the subject, and would be interested in why everyone here thinks we die. Is it by design, or purely part of the evolution process.

Guardian Newspaper: We don't have to get sick as we get older.

This article is also very interesting on the subject:

Guardian. Why do we die?

One of the arguments here, is that organisms grow old, because nature does not need them anymore. Once we have procreated, there is less need for older organisms, so they die. Is it fair to say then on this basis, that our evolution and survival has hedged its bets on procreation being the way to continue survival, and not getting old.

If that is the case, can we un-programme ourselves/our bodies to think otherwise? I suppose the difficult question is "is there a benefit to humans for getting very old?". Other than wanting to live longer. If we lived longer, would it benefit the human race in its future survival?

I cannot particularly see a benefit to the broader species as such, but only to myself, but does that mean I am accepting death and therefore I will die at a certain age, or is it all chemical?

I personally have no desire to live forever and am not morbidly thinking about death, I am interested from a scientific point of view as to what contributes to the process.

That theme runs through Robert Heinlein science fiction along with space migration. I listened to a radio interview with Timothy Leary, in the late 70's, on the same subject. He was trying to describe why cells quit regenerating. I can't remember the details. I remember he thought we were close to solving that problem. The space migration was also in the discussion. The IQ of this planet would need to be raised exponentially to overcome the fundamentalist boneheadedness we're stuck with at this point in history. Since that interview the American IQ has dropped significantly. My opinion. Good subject. Hope there is some response.

This post has been edited by brucep on Feb 20 2011, 08:27 PM

There is another thread about this from about a year or two ago. It had good posts.

Tried to find it but couldn't. If anybody else remembers it and wants to try..

I think the real challenge would be in a continuous rebuilding and receiving new atoms etc.

Good topic

It seems to be evident throughout the physical world.
If you build a building as we do when we are born, it reaches a point where it is done and begins to brake down.
Even while using new materials at the start of a large project, the materials are already from the past while you place newer materials on top.

We do have some regenerating features and maybe if we researched this process more,we could find a code that we could begin to follow. It would have to be all inclusive.

If we lived forever we'd have sex with our great-great-grandchildren, and that's just creepy (a.k.a. less than ideal evolutionarily).

Would you want to sleep with your great great grandchild if you were capable and made it to 400? I doubt it. But I think living forever would be a little dreary after awhile.

It is an interesting theory you propose. It is counter beneficial to mankind if he could live forever, because there would be the possibilty of close genetic material mix if you were accidentaly to get your great great grandchild pregnant.

Of course our current evolutionary design, did not stop us from being able to sleep with 1st cousins which also poses a risk of close genetic material mixing, so I doubt that is the reason we do not live longer or forever.

And why do animals around us, have dramatically different lifespans than us. Birds can outlive a man, and a dogs life is much quicker than ours. Is it diet, genetics, design or just random evolution?

It would get pretty crowded it we didn't die. We need to make room for the next generation.

But really, everything has a life cycle. Us, plants and the rest of those that inhabit our planet. Even planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies and yes - the universe itself. Why should we be any different?

After the first 20,000 years or so, are you going to even be able to name all of your 1st cousins? It's hard enough naming all the kings of England and there's only on the order of 1000 years of them.

Christmas would be a REAL bitch....

I can just hear it now, "That's it, next year we do Secret Santa"

LOL

Arthur

I agree, there are cycles everywhere. If one were looking for patterns, that certainly would seem to be one, except there are some exceptions to the cycle amongst earth bound organisms.

I am not really wanting to know if we could live forever, but rather why we humans die within what seems to be a given ammount of time. Scientifically it would seem we should be able to live as long as we feed the body with what it needs, but our cells seem "pre-programmed" to stop generating new healthy cells at a certain point in our lives.

If one looks at the oldest living thing on our planet, which is apparently a creosote bush in the mojave desert, aged at 11 700 years, then why does this plant have such a long life span as opposed to other plants.

Why can some whales live as long as 200 years and other whales not? A jellyfish (turritopsis nutricula) reverts to becoming sexually immature after reproducing and is the one species considered to be biologically immortal.

The "culprit" in all this, seems to be evolution. All species (and even sub-species) have randomly evolved in certain directions. Our environment certainly plays a role in our evolution, but I suspect, that that which governs our life spans, is an ancient part of our evolution, buried deep inside our DNA.

The most recognised theory on cell replication (as far as I can find) is what is termed the "Hayflick limit". In essence, this is what it means:

Wikipedia Haflick limit

It seems that if we can extend the telomere length we will be able to extend our lives.

This brings me to another question. Is it morally wrong to tamper with our DNA? I do not see anything morally wrong with it, and to me it would be a continuation of our evolution, this time with us directly invloved in the process. Is it wise to do so? Only time can answer that question, I think.

Although this seems true (although I dot think we have the answer yet to the life span of the universe, which may be immortal), nothing ever technically dies, it is transformed into another form. We break down into our base elements once we die, but those elements are never destroyed.

Our biggest hinderance to living forever, is that our planet certainly seems to have a limited life span, as does our sun and galaxy in its current form. Time to start planet hopping!

A very informative post fredinjeddah. I remember reading a sci-fi story titled the eternal man. Unfortunately it lacked the bolts-and-nuts of a good science fiction. This piece was conspicuously missing.

As GAG rightly state - everything has a life-cycle.

I like to think that everything exist because of repetition - the very concept of existence is being based upon the principle that the constituents of an object re-configure its pattern (scale-wise arranged - and in a way that any constituent is a composite particle in next following scale) - so it is fundamentally about the accuracy by which such repeating re-configurations can be made - what is the grade of sliding from one configuration to the next following. How accurately can the next following be molded on the foregoing serving as its scaffold.

Life-cycle of any object is being defined out from degree of complexity of said object (in the observed scale) and degree of accuracy in each repetition.

So fundamentally I see everything as being of different degrees of complexion (in observed scale) - and some complexions are more stable than others - i.e. stable complexions are being re-configured more accurately and can therefore be re-configured more times (longer period) before they loose their fundamental properties, and stable complexions are generally less complex.

That isotopes are short-lived as compared to their sisters, is not because of higher complexion - but because of less accurate re-configuration.

Human is an integrated part of Universe - made of the same stuff and following same rules. Living stuff (self-replicating by some special mechanisms) is generally more complex than so-called dead stuff - and therefore generally show shorter life-spans.

All objects "die" in the sense that they sooner or later loose their fundamental characteristics, electron is long-lived imaginary particles are short-lived, human is about 100 years-lived. It is an interesting question how and when so-called living organism dies - exactly what is the definition of dead as compared to alive, when is the point of no return being reached - but this is another discussion.

The question about incest as a consequence of immortality, IMO is not well thought, because children's grand-grand-grand---- children will as a rule in the same way get "incested", because earth is too small to prevent this.

It has been awhile since I’ve watched this video. I believe that Michio Haku asked people if they would drink an elixir (fountain of youth) in this video. I thought about it for a while and wondered how longevity would change the world. I never thought about the odd aspect of incest, as rpenner did, but I was curious about the how the legal system would change.

Immortality and Sentencing Law

I was also curious about the economy, over population, and human behavior. Would we want immortality? How long would we want to live? Would life seem less precious? Would our perception of time itself change? Would we get bored and die from risk taking adventures? Many centenarians when asked, say they “have lived long enough”, but is this only because they feel the pain of aging?

I also found the Medawar Theory interesting. When a multicellular organisms are produced, genetic activators guide cells with gene regulation. However, when we reproduce and pass on our genetic information, we can only pass down a genetic manual with instructions for regulation of gene expression, up to the point of our reproductive age. After this we have no instruction and we begin to age.

Peter Medawar had the idea of longevity selection with use of people with selectively increased longevity. You know, by telling all the short-lived teenagers that they can’t have sex, and allowing only genetic super-centenarians to reproduce. Good luck with that, eh?

Peter Medawar

Additional information:

ARE TELOMERES THE KEY TO AGING AND CANCER?

Tiny roundworm's telomeres help scientists to tease apart different types of aging

"The thrifty telomere hypothesis and notes on potential adaptive paternal effects."
An evolutionary review of human telomere biology

Effects of Aging in Stem Cells

Stem cell experiment reverses aging in rare disease

That explanation is one of the most appealing I've heard.

Personally, I think that an organism accumulates trauma, in a very wide definition of the term that can include cellular death. The "will to live", duration potential, or resistance to entropy of an entire organism is finite and ultimately overcome by such trauma. Each building block can resist only so much trauma, so even though the body regenerates these building blocks, its overall resistance is gradually broken down. Its longevity is built up by its degree of complex succession of resistant components.

& how does sleep figure in?