1st human to live 1000 yrs will be born soon: Brit scientist

London, Jul 5: If a British scientist is to be believed, human race might soon be on its way to eternity or at least for a longer life expectancy rate. The scientist who is also a biomedical gerontologist has said that the first person who will leave to see his or her 150th birthday has already been born.

Aubrey de Grey, the British scientist said above, reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all that is needed to 'cure' aging i.e, banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

In an interview, the British scientist was quoted as saying, "I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I'd call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so."

He added, "And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today."

Grey sees a future where people would be visiting doctors for regular "maintenance," which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.

He said, "The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic."

In the interview, the noted scientist goes on to elaborate how that can be done with a variety of procedures. He talks of the various ailments that act as a hindrance to human longevity and speaks of ways to minimise their effects to prolong anybody's life.

The scientists also said that the first person who will go on to live to 1,000 years is likely to be born less than two decades after the first person to reach 150. He said, "I call it longevity escape velocity - where we have a sufficiently comprehensive panel of therapies to enable us to push back the ill health of old age faster than time is passing. And that way, we buy ourselves enough time to develop more therapies further as time goes on."

And added, "What we can actually predict in terms of how long people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by the risk of death from other causes like accidents. But there really shouldn't be any limit imposed by how long ago you were born. The whole point of maintenance is that it works indefinitely."

OneIndia News