11-27-2014, 06:44 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-28-2014, 09:57 AM by iancampbell.)
One more thing: A medical technology that would probably cure cancer along with just about every other disease of aging is medical nanotechnology; "simply" reverse the DNA damage that caused the cancer in the first place, while replacing cancerous tissue with healthy and removing excess. I confess to not knowing where in the OA timeline this level of nanotech is available.
Another, rather brute-force technique is "backup and restore" which requires the ability to read and write a complete mindstate, together with the ability to create clones - preferably young clones! It goes like this: Perform a destructive upload of the entire mindstate, download it into a clone with a biological age of 20 or so. One problem with this is that the mindstate has structural components - synapse patterns and the like - which are going to be much harder to duplicate than a software program might be.
Needless to say perhaps, it's rather trivial in either case to remove all other damage as well - including the accumulated damage that manifests itself as aging, but also such things as wound and surgical scars. I suppose restoring the presence of semi-vestigial things such as the appendix might be optional. (Before anyone else points it out, it may well be the case that the appendix has been repurposed in H. sapiens to become part of the immune system and also a reservoir of symbiotic intestinal flora.)
Another, rather brute-force technique is "backup and restore" which requires the ability to read and write a complete mindstate, together with the ability to create clones - preferably young clones! It goes like this: Perform a destructive upload of the entire mindstate, download it into a clone with a biological age of 20 or so. One problem with this is that the mindstate has structural components - synapse patterns and the like - which are going to be much harder to duplicate than a software program might be.
Needless to say perhaps, it's rather trivial in either case to remove all other damage as well - including the accumulated damage that manifests itself as aging, but also such things as wound and surgical scars. I suppose restoring the presence of semi-vestigial things such as the appendix might be optional. (Before anyone else points it out, it may well be the case that the appendix has been repurposed in H. sapiens to become part of the immune system and also a reservoir of symbiotic intestinal flora.)