
In the early 16th century fantasies of waters that could heal someone and make him or her ageless started to become more and more prominent. Later in the 16th century Juan Ponce de Leon was said to have been told by Native Americans about this fountain of youth in 1513. A fountain of youth in context that the Native American's legend describes it has yet to be found. However, this concept of agelessness is not as far fetched as society makes it. Obviously living forever is something that has not been accomplished by anyone at this point in time, however the longevity of life is something that has not only been extended, but is continuing to extend and theories of eternal life are beginning to arise in the scientific community. This arises a very important question, should the longevity of human life be extended? 

In order to comprehend this question completely and make a decision on what he or she believes about life extension one has to have an understanding of a couple things beforehand. The first of which is age and the process of aging. Webster defines age as "the amount of time during which a person or animal has lived". This doesn't turn on any light bulbs over my head so maybe a scientific definition would be a little more articulate. Scientist Matteo Tosato with the Department of Gerontology at Catholic University of Sacred Heart defines aging in an article about the aging process as "the accumulation of diverse deleterious changes occurring in cells and tissues with advancing age that are responsible for the increased risk of disease and death" (Tosato). Essentially this author is saying that due to changes in cells, disease and death eventually happen. This is not saying very much that is not already common sense to the public, but it is beginning to shed some light on what the process of aging may be. Scientist JA Knight with the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine describes aging in this way, "Scientifically, aging is an extremely complex, multifactorial process, and numerous aging theories have been proposed; the most important of these are probably the genomic and free radical theories. Although it is abundantly clear that our genes influence aging and longevity, exactly how this takes place on a chemical level is only partially understood" (Knight). Dr. Knight is able to articulate what the concept of aging is. Scientists understand that is complex and that a person's genetics play a very significant role in the process of aging. This definition begins to bring more light to aging but again is not very precise in its articulation of what aging is. This is the case for most definitions of aging that scientists come up with. This is because aging is a very mysterious phenomenon that has only recently begun to be unpacked in the scientific community. One thing that is undoubtedly agreed upon throughout the scientific community is this: that aging is inevitable, that ageing is undesirable, and that aging always leads to death (Pijnenburg, SOURCE, SOURCE). Regardless of someone's stance on extending the human life span, in order to understand the question of longevity of life and if it is ethical, one has to understand that no one can live forever. This question is: can someone live longer, healthier, and with as little suffering as possible until his or her inevitable death (SOURCE). The second thing that must be understood is what life extension is. Life extension is very similar to what we commonly referred to as life expectancy. Over the course of the past one hundred and fifty years, advanced countries have increased the life expectancy of their inhabitants by roughly forty years. The average person living in a first world country is expected to live eighty years in contrast to the forty years that people lived a century ago and continue to live in poor countries. Even with all these advancements, while the average life expectancy has increased the overall maximum age limit of a person has for the most part remained constant regardless of location or circumstance (Aunan). This fact shows that life extension is already very prominent and exists today. If a person pursues medical advancements, healthy diet, and good sanitation, they are essentially increasing their lifespan and pursuing a longer, higher quality life. So life extension already exists. If a person is walking through an intersection and a bus runs a the red light and is about to hit them they have two choices: The first is to get hit and die a tragic death right there on the street, or jump out of the way. If the person decides to jump out of the way of the bus they have just extended their lifespan, congratulations! The same thinking can be applied to someone who smokes cigarettes regularly. They are drastically increasing the chances of diseases in their body thus changing their longevity of life. This concept of avoiding a bus or not being a smoker is the same as avoiding an unhealthy diet, seeking medical aid when needed, and staying clean to avoid disease. Because of this reality of medicine, diet, and sanitation, which increases the human life span, it is an issue that needs to be narrowed a little before arguments can be made on whether the research of increasing life spans should be pursued. This question has to be focused more on whether or not science should be allowed to genetically change someone's end date regardless of outside circumstances such as diet, access to medicine, or lack of run away buses. With the understanding of what ageing is defined as, and the different forms life extension presents itself as, one can begin to take a stance on the question: Is it ethical to extend the human life span through genetic or unnatural means? All that being said, Mankind should pursue extending the human life span because of the health benefits, the quality of life, and the understanding of age related diseases that could be discovered along the way as scientists pursue the fountain of youth. By educating people on this subject, we would be able to get more and more people to be interested in this type of research thus gaining more funding and more advancements in this specific field of study. 

Aging is something that leads to several types of age related illness, death of cells, pain, and eventually death of the organism. Some of these age related illnesses include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. There are a few primary ways in which damage is brought upon cells which would in turn lead to these age related illnesses. The ways in which the damage comes is by genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, and loss of proteostasis (Aunan). The first is genomic instability; this is instability in DNA that comes from all kinds of outside factors that can damage it such as certain chemicals. This can lead to age related diseases such as neurodegenerative disease, which is the deterioration of nerve cells. The second is telomere attrition. This when the ends of chromosomes, or telomeres, have problems allowing a cell to divide and replicate. This type of damage is often tied to age related dieses and premature aging syndromes. The third is Epigenetic alterations. This is essentially a gene malfunction that leads to the acceleration of aging and is strongly linked to cancer. The final way in which cells have been described to accumulate this damage is by loss of proteostasis. Proteostasis is essentially all of the cellular functions that go into making the protein that our bodies need to survive. If there is a loss of these cellular functions or mechanisms, our cells will begin to die which adds to the aging process and moves an organism closer to death. (Aunan). These are all ways in which cells damage and in turn lead to these age related diseases, but how has science discovered to combat them? 

In an article written by Krista Conger published with the Stanford Medicine news center a very plausible way in which some of the cell malfunctions from above can be combated is through Telomere extension. I gave a little information on what Telomere's where but I'm going to give a quick overview. Telomeres are the ends of DNA that are inside of cells chromosomes during cell division. Every time a cell divides it loses a small portion of the telomere from the end of the chromosome. This happens repetitively as the cell divides until it runs out of Telomere. When a cell runs out of telomere the cell will die because it no longer has the genetic material to divide and replace dead cells. Krista Conger cites a Professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford, and this is what Dr. Helen Blau said: "Now we have found a way to lengthen human telomeres by as much as 1,000 nucleotides, turning back the internal clock in these cells by the equivalent of many years of human life" (Conger). This is done by adding a very specific type of gene that produces a protein called telomerase, which lengthens these telomeres. So what does this mean to us? Well longer telomeres means more cell divisions, which means longer life (Conger). This is obviously a temporary fix seeing as there is a limit to the added length to the cells telomeres that this has been accomplished with. So how can this kind of discovery be applied to someone who has an age related diseases or is prone to get one because there family is? Conger uses the example of young boys with muscular dystrophy as to why this discovery is important. Boys with muscular dystrophy have a lack or undeveloped amount of muscle. When boys with this disease where compared to boys without it, the boys without the disease had much longer telomeres then the boys with the diseases. The researchers in this article are now working on testing other cells in order to see if this is something that could one day be used as a type of cell therapy that can combat age enhancing diseases (Conger). 

Another possible way in which this deterioration of cells is wanted to be combated is through not simply extending someone's life, but extending someone's youth. One issue that is run into in the theory's of extending t human life span is that when you extend the good years, you are inadvertently extending the undesirable years as well. This almost defeats the purpose because now one has to suffer for a longer period of time because they where able to live longer (SOURCE). So what does it mean to extend someone's youth rather then life? An example of an organism that does this is the American lobster. The American lobster lives close to eighty years and does not age hardly at all from when it is first born other than changing in size. They show very little observable traits that would key into something similar to humans age related dieses by the time they die of old age (Foddy). Scientists have begun to look into this in hopes of understanding why this happens and how the lobsters DNA is able to slow the aging process as lobsters get older. (Foddy). This is what I would like to see happen with life extension research. Not that people would be able to live for hundreds of years, but that they would be able to live eighty years healthy, doing the things they love and not fighting cancer or Alzheimer's for ten years of their life before they eventually die. 

This type of advancement would bring immense amounts of community and joy to families who are living with members who have these age related illnesses. But some people however do not agree with my stance on life extension and think that it should be left alone. 

There are several arguments against researchers trying to extend the human life span, and it seems that there are two prominent oppositions. The first is that of the ethics of extending someone's life beyond the usual bonds. Authors Pijnenburd and Leget with the Department of Ethics at Radbound University Nigmegen Medicle Centre, describe three essential !!!ideas!!! with the ethics of extending the human life span. These !!!ideas!!! are: Justice, Relational dimension, and the meaning of life. The first argument is that of justice. Life expectancy is already drastically higher in rich countries over poor countries; in fact it is double what 3rd world countries experience. The argument is that if this type of research is pursued, then the rich will get more life and the poor will remain at the life expectancy they have. So now science would be giving more life, to beings that already live a higher quality of life by certain standards (Pijnenburg). If we dig into why the life expectancy is higher in rich countries I think we can begin to un-pack this argument. Due to advancements in medicine, nutrition, and sanitation the life expectancy in rich countries is drastically higher. From earlier in my essay you can see how these outside influence cannot really be valid for why we should not pursue life extension research. For the same reason someone decides to jump out of the way of a bus, decides not to smoke, or decides to go to the doctor because they have an illness, they are essentially deciding to extend their life. Rich countries provide aid and medicine to poor countries as humanitarian acts all the time. It would be ridiculous to say that they wouldn't do this with medical discoveries fond during this kind of research. The second argument that the article presents is that of Relational dimension. This is the idea that we are relational beings and if a single person had a drastic change in their lifespan then they would be miserable as their loved ones around them come and go (Pijnenburg). This argument doesn't match up because hypothetically, if this type of discovery were to be  made, it would not be given to one person but odds are if one person has been given the treatment then the people around them received it as well. The last is the argument of the meaning of life. This argument focuses that this kind of research is all about self-sustainment, that it is a selfish pursuit for man to avoid dying and to self-flourish (Pijnenburg). This argument misses the entire point and overlooks the positive outcomes of this research while only focusing on the end goal. I agree that it would be a selfish pursuit to try and find a eternal life drug. However, this kind of research can shed light on illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer's, these dieses bring people away from their family and friends. Pursuing this research and the possibility of the discoveries is not selfish, but is quite the opposite. This research could be used to help others even more so then simply yourself. Something about all three of these arguments is that they are all ideas. No of them can really be proven unless there is an actual change in life extension and predictions actually happen. As for the life extension research, it has actually seen results and has hard facts to back it up. *

In conclusion, I believe that the pursuit of extending the human life span should be researched and as many discoveries as possible made. The amount of understanding that can be gained about the aging process and age-related illnesses can be cure to increasing the quality of life and even one day the longevity of it. Time is a valuble thing, the more of it someone has, the more possibilities they have. While more time is important, the quality of that time spent is most important of all. Paracelsus said this "Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?" (Habyarimana) We may never fully understand age, why we age, and what it means to live longer or more quality lives, however failure to pursue these questions would be a crime against science and humanity. 

