Monday, December 11, 2006

Immortality? No thanks! I'd rather die...

Up North in the Arctic Circle, near Alaska and Canada, lives the Arctic wood frog... What is so interesting about this tiny 2-6 cm creature is the way it hibernates during winter... Since temperatures can reach sub-zero conditions up there, it is entirely crucial that metabolism rates are brought down low... The way this frog performs this is by letting the entire body freeze. When spring comes, the frog thaws out and then hops around as if nothing happened! What allows this is a simple monosaccharide (sugar) that is found in ALL vertebrae... However, the cryoprotectant (anti-freeze) is activated by a certain gene... Right now, scientists are researching on how to activated the cryoprotectant in all of us... The answer for this is simple--immortality... Humans can simply freeze and 'live' forever... Nowadays, many people are concerned about global warming and the greenhouse effect.. They are afraid that Earth's temperature is rising to the extent of inhabitability... I'm sad to say that these folks cannot be any more wrong... It is true that recently, global temperature has been rising but if we extrapolate global temperatures for the past 3-5 centuries, we'd realise that Earth's temperature is actually dropping... It is only ocean temperatures that are on the rise due to increase in volcanic activity... as such, more water is evaporating and this will lead to greater rainfall and snowing therefore lowering global temperature... Ladies and gentlemen, the next ice age is nearing... it is not a matter of 'if', only a matter of time... I highly doubt that at our current state, we are able to survive the next ice age... Which is why the Arctic wood frog's natural cryoprotectant is gonna be a boon for all of us... We can cryogenically freeze ourselves in preparation for the ice age and when the ice naturally melts, we will all 'revive' too... ready to rebuild (and re-destroy) planet Earth...

Speaking of immortality... I've realised lately that it is not something i want... In Harry Potter, there is talk of the Philosopher's Stone, elixirs and so on... Whether or not there is a way to gain eternal life... I feel that God made us perfectly... We are only meant to live our 80 years or so... only a select few ever cross the 100-year barrier... Maybe that's why immortality is so difficult to attain in the first place.. maybe it's not meant to be... Even if immortality were to be achievable, i'd rather not... This is because eternal life does not necessarily mean eternal youth... French scholar and writer once said "If youth knew, if age could"... this means that youths have the ability to do what they want to do but they don't do what is important... On the other hand, the older people have more experience and so know what to do with their bodies but are unable to due to their physical limitations... What good is it being old and immortal if you can't do what you want to do? Moreover, it is virtually impossible to keep all our muscles, nerves and bones in working condition forever... Friction and other normal wear and tear will definitely wear them out... Stem cell research allows us to grow our own nerves and organs but we certainly cannot grow EVERYTHING in our body and them replace them slowly... Furthermore, we cannot grow a brain and have a brain transplant... we'll turn out to be different people... Scientists, stop looking for a way to immortality and start looking for ways to feed the hungry and heal the sick... I'm ready to embrace my own death as it lurks closer day by day... Are you?