NEOCONS Part 7: Coup d’état

Continuing his coup d'e'tat in Washington, Brzezinski proceeded with plans for the radical transformation of America's nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction -- MAD (directed mainly at the Soviet Union) into one of nuclear "war-fighting" with no debate.

British imperialist Cecil Rhodes was the consummate empire builder. The Rhodes Scholarship continues its influence on American thinking to this day. [Public Domaine].

The Sordid History of British Manipulation of American Democracy Series: Read it and weep!

“Brzezinski however couldn’t do much until the death of Dubs. And the death of Dubs removed the last obstacle. Then came Herat… They killed a lot of Russians and the Russians were very upset. But it gave a shot in the arm to the resistance in this country [the U.S.]. That was March of ‘79. So the coincidence of Dubs’ death and the Herat uprising gave Brzezinski control of the policy from then on.”

Interview: Selig Harrison February 18, 1993

The kidnapping and assassination of Ambassador Adolph Dubs on February 14, 1979 at the Kabul Hotel ended any meaningful effort by the U.S. to prevent a Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The death was employed however from that day forward by President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski as the opportunity to increase the level of provocation for luring the Soviets into their own “Vietnam quagmire” and keeping them pinned down for as long as possible. Because of “Spike” Dubs’ death, Zbigniew Brzezinski finally got control of foreign policy; got his hard line neoconservative policy toward the Soviet Union pushed through, ended support for détente once and for all, and put Strategic Arms Limitation on hold. Hafizullah Amin continued to seize power for himself, sew discord throughout the countryside with his education and land reform programs, fracture his political party the PDPA and game the Soviet leadership by asking them to intervene militarily fourteen times, knowing full well they were dead set against a military intervention.

Selig Harrison writes in his 1995 book with Diego Cordovez, Out of Afghanistan, “On the one hand, he [Amin] continued to call upon massive Soviet help in financing his regime, equipping it militarily and providing technical personnel for military operations against rebels. On the other, he resisted Soviet control, brushing aside pressure for a slowdown in reforms and for greater Soviet involvement in running the secret police and the military.”

Continuing his coup d’état in Washington, Brzezinski and his military assistant General William Odom proceeded with plans for the radical transformation of America’s nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction – MAD (directed mainly at the Soviet Union) into one of  nuclear “war-fighting” through a series of Presidential Directives. Most of these directives excluded the State Department in the decision-making and remain in force to this day. Based entirely on the fallacious assumption that the Soviet Union believed they could fight and win a nuclear war, President Carter, Brzezinski and General William Odom set out to win one of their own and build the weapons with which to do it.

Contrary to Jimmy Carter’s glowing public image as a peace-president and future Nobel Peace Prize winner, behind the scenes the former Navy man would embrace Brzezinski’s vision of an inevitable conflict with the Soviet Empire and relish his role as the nuclear war-fighting Commander in Chief fighting it to his last breath.

Author Tim Weiner quotes General Odom in his 1990 exposé, Blank Check, “Carter became the first President to immerse himself in the details of nuclear war-fighting scenarios. The President ‘really got into the procedures, ran through numerous scenarios, and became very comfortable with it,’ Odom told a Harvard seminar in 1980.”  Knowledge of Carter’s dark side has gone unrecognized over the years but despite the end of the Cold War in 1991, the horrifying product of his decision-making has remained intact with each succeeding administration. Presidential Directives (PDs) 53, 58 and 59 didn’t just lower the threshold for nuclear weapons use, they encouraged it; making it appear probable that America’s elites could save themselves in a protracted nuclear war of up to six months, regardless of the consequences to the nation or its population. Based on an invented threat of nuclear annihilation carried into the Carter administration by Brzezinski, PD 59 would form the groundwork of the unnecessary Reagan buildup in the 1980s which would then form the groundwork of the post-Soviet Wolfowitz Doctrine of American imperial supremacy that followed. As Tim Weiner noted with irony in 1990, “The President who vowed to rid the world of warheads wound up signing the first truly significant war-fighting plan since the heyday of Curtis LeMay.”

But the real irony of the Carter presidency wasn’t in his reprise of the mad bomber role from Doctor Strangelove; the real irony was that the greatest success of his presidency – the U.S- Egypt-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 – was not arranged by his skill at diplomacy or his desire for a Middle East peace but by an off the books agency doing Zbigniew Brzezinski’s dirty work in Afghanistan known as the Safari Club. John K. Cooley writes in his 1999 exposé on U.S.-backed terrorism Unholy Wars, “Just before the Afghanistan war began, and because the Safari Club was keeping both Israeli and US intelligence informed of its actions, the Club was able to help bring about President Sadat’s historic peacemaking visit of November 1977 to Jerusalem, leading to the US-Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979… Morocco’s representative in the Safari Club hand-carried Rabin’s letter to Sadat. King Hassan then sponsored the first secret meeting in Morocco…”

Egypt’s Anwar Sadat would play an important role in the upcoming war in Afghanistan, supplying old Soviet weapons to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s so-called Freedom Fighters in an effort to fool the American public and Congress into thinking the weapons came from Soviet and Afghan defectors surrendering to CIA-backed rebels. Sadat would upset his handlers in Washington in September 1981when he spilled the beans on the secret operation and would die by assassination exactly two weeks later, but at that point his usefulness to the Safari Club had ended.

President Carter hadn’t been assassinated as “Spike” Dubs had been and Hafizullah Amin would soon be, but he was served up as an unwitting participant in his own coup d’état before he’d even entered the Oval office. In the wake of the Church Committee hearings and Watergate and with the President’s knowledge and assistance, Zbigniew Brzezinski had rewired authority for covert action from the State Department to the National Security Council in what has been described as “a bureaucratic first strike of the first order”. A Cercle of old European power had then detached the administration, sealed off the CIA in Washington from further damage and run its operations out of the Middle East. The head of French external intelligence, Pinay Cercle member and Safari Club coordinator Alexandre de Marenches had stepped in to fill the breach during the crisis, aided the operation through the Bank of Commerce and Credit International and set the stage for a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that would drag on for nearly 10 years. John K. Cooley writes, “The Safari Club player who probably helped most to draw the US into the Afghan adventure was Count Alexandre de Marenches… He had cooperated actively with the United States in warfare and covert operations since World War II. He believed it to be of advantage to France, as well as to his American friends and allies, to form a group like the Safari Club to protect and advance Western interests in the Third World.”

The death of Ambassador Dubs, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979 doomed Carter’s reelection to failure. Afghanistan was soon to become the self-fulfilling prophecy of Soviet iniquity that the neoconservative, right-wing alliance had been trying to create for decades; a permanent, ongoing crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations which it had precipitated and then claimed to uncover and respond to. Alexandre De Marenches had done his part to put all the pieces in place. Brian Crozier and Robert Moss had written the script and Brzezinski had sold it to the highest levels of the American government. De Marenches had even knowingly tipped off his cousin, Newsweek’s Arnaud de Borchgrave to be in Kabul ahead of the invasion to catch the action; action that the President of the United States (Carter) would later claim he had no foreknowledge of. But without the constant propagandizing of Brian Crozier and his protégé Robert Moss working behind the scenes with their influential colleagues, the sale of a right-wing coup d’état of the U.S. might never have taken off.

1980: THE SPIKE

If anything represented the payoff to the decade of neoconservative/right-wing subversion being worked on the American psyche by the Institute for the Study of Conflict, it was the 1980 publication of the fiction/fantasy/spy-novel The Spike. Whether or not the title was a perverse inside joke or a veiled reference to the death of American Ambassador “Spike” Dubs in Kabul the year before, The Spike would prove to be the Pinay Cercle’s final nail in the coffin of U.S./Soviet relations. Viewed in hindsight The Spike plays out as poorly written paranoid political propaganda masquerading as fact. But viewed from the fevered perspective of the American mass media of 1980 in the run up to the election of Ronald Reagan, the #1 bestselling novel by Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert Moss was nothing less than proof of the KGB’s evil “plot to destroy the U.S., exposed.”

“A humdinger by two of the savviest foreign correspondents in the business.” Wrote William Safire in the New York Times. “A thundering rebuttal to the architects of détente, critics of the CIA and editors of the opinion-forming, powerhouse newspapers from the East.” Wrote the Dallas Morning News.  “A thriller that is several steps ahead of the headlines.” Wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.

Praise from the mass media for The Spike and its two authors reads like an endorsement from Britain’s MI6 and the CIA. But to investigative journalist Fred Landis, who’d served as a consultant for the Subcommittee on CIA Covert Action in Chile of the Church Committee, Moss and de Borchgrave were anything but “two of the savviest foreign correspondents in the business”. To Landis they were coldblooded mercenaries, bought and paid to legitimize the right-wing’s agenda especially when the price was right. Landis writes in Inquiry Magazinethat December, 1980 “Moss and de Borchgrave have built careers out of peddling gossip from right-wing French, Israeli, British and American intelligence agents that conforms to their one-dimensional ‘us versus them’ view of world affairs. The Spike is simply a logical, if paranoid extension of the propaganda they have hitherto seen fit to call fact. The book is thus an elaborate joke—the real disinformation lies between its two covers.”

But the elaborate joke of disinformation perpetrated by Moss and de Borchgrave was just what the neoconservative/right-wing had been using for decades to create their own reality. Thinly disguised fiction acting as fact would put the actor Ronald Reagan in the driver’s seat for eight years, keep the Soviets locked in a war to destabilize Central Asia for ten years and permanently destabilize the Middle East and South Asia with Islamic extremism.

As intended by the right-wing Pinay Cercle agenda, the coup of the century did turn the American government away from détente and peaceful coexistence. In befitting Brian Crozier’s “ultimate sophistication of subversion” it did get candidate Ronald Reagan elected who would complete the neoconservative/right-wing takeover of the American government while accelerating its privatization and politicization begun under Carter. And they would never give it back. The collapse of the Soviet Union did free Zbigniew Brzezinski’s treasured Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation and bring to an end the Soviet Empire. But as the intervening years have shown, ending Soviet Communism was not the end of history as claimed by the neoconservative pundit Francis Fukuyama. In fact, ending the Cold War only returned the world to an earlier and far more dangerous pre-World War I version of relations known as Great Power Competition and opened a Pandora’s box of old and new evils from which world stability is now reeling.

POSTSCRIPT: The lonely imperialist: Afghanistan, Brzezinski and the unintended consequences of Imperial Graveyards.

It’s 2018 and we’ve been here before. The pattern and the profile of events parading across our screens today mirrors the pattern and profile of events set out in the late 1970s by the Carter administration which paralleled the pattern and the profile of late 1940s and the genesis of the original Cold War. Following the death of Ambassador Adolph Dubs in February, 1979 we saw the outline of that pattern emerging in which a new reality centered on Afghanistan was beginning to form.

Our observation drew us personally into the debate over the arms race when we began production of a documentary on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) which we called Arms Race and the Economy: A Delicate Balance. As production preceded numerous experts including Senator Ted Kennedy, SALT negotiator Paul Warnke and economist John Kenneth Galbraith clarified our understanding of the damage that a massive new diversion of tax dollars and capital investment into war spending would represent to the civilian economy, following Vietnam.

On the surface the mainstream media was selling a new arms race on the basis of a neoconservative-invented “Soviet threat” but the reality was very different. Galbraith insisted that accelerated defense spending and renewing the Cold War would ultimately destroy the civilian economy. He was convinced that the Cold War had already helped rigidify the capitalist system by bureaucratizing a large part of production for non-productive uses. He saw America becoming more and more like the Soviet Union, ruled by a military-industrial-academic establishment immune from reality.

That fall, in Washington, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was one of the last holdouts in a sea of hysterical accusations about the Soviet Union.  At the time we didn’t realize that a slow motion coup d’état against détente and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks had been going on since 1976 and was nearly complete. The bureaucracy was in thrall to the neoconservative’s Team B experiment which had discredited the CIA’s professional analysis of the Soviet “threat” and replaced it with an ideological one. Were the Soviets really planning a massive first-strike nuclear attack on the United States as the neoconservatives were predicting? Was SALT II really just a public relations scheme by Moscow to lock in American weakness while it prepared for war?

Looking back we know that these claims were based on the falsified intelligence, outright lies and fabrications of the neoconservatives. But when the Soviets crossed their southern border into Afghanistan it acted like a trance on the system, left and right. Afghanistan was of the lowest level of diplomatic interest to the United States. It was a far off South Asian country bordering the Soviet Union of absolutely no importance and had been relegated to the Soviet Sphere of influence during the Eisenhower administration. Numerous administrations had passed up Afghan requests for military assistance not wishing to disturb the balance of power in the region. Yet, when President Carter labeled the invasion, “the greatest threat to peace since the second World War” he gave the enemies of détente and SALT a new and reinvigorated Cold War and legitimized building the newest weapons with which to fight a nuclear war.

We now know that the decision to trap the Soviets in Afghanistan had already been decided long before their “surprise” invasion of December 27, 1979. The President’s reaction was political theatre. But at the time no one concerned about preserving SALT or détente inside the bureaucracy protested what they knew was really a politicized overreaction. Afghanistan had changed everything. By the time our program aired that winter, the argument was no longer whether our government should call a halt to the nuclear arms race and reinvest in the civilian economy. The U.S. had stepped through the mirror back to 1947 and the debate refocused not on whether, but on how much was to be spent to counter Soviet aggression.

As the first Americans to gain access to Kabul after the Soviet invasion for an American TV crew in 1981 we got a close-up look at the American narrative supporting President Carter’s new anti-Soviet agenda and it simply didn’t hold up. What had been presented within days of the December 1979 invasion as an open and shut case of Soviet expansion toward the Persian Gulf by Harvard Professor and Team B Project leader Richard Pipes on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour could just as easily have been defined as a defensive action well within the Soviets’ legitimate sphere of influence. Three years earlier, Pipes’ Team B Strategic Objectives Panel on the CIA’s estimate of the Soviet threat had been accused of subverting the very process of making national security estimates by inventing threats where they didn’t exist and intentionally skewing its findings along ideological lines. Now those invented threats were being presented as facts by America’s Public Broadcasting System.

In 1983 we returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation Project Director Roger Fisher for ABC’s Nightline. Our aim was to establish once and for all the credibility of the American claims. We discovered first hand from high level Soviet officials that they wanted desperately to abandon the war but the Reagan administration simply refused to take their requests seriously. From the moment they entered office, the Reagan administration had taken a conflicting position, demanding on the one hand that the Soviets withdraw their forces, while at the same time keeping them pinned down through covert action with the intention of holding them there. This hypocritical campaign, though lacking in a foundation of facts and dripping in right-wing ideology, was embraced by the entire Washington political spectrum and left willfully-unexamined by America’s mainstream media.

The final blow to Roger Fisher’s efforts came when he offered the New York Times a detailed article describing his belief that a negotiated settlement could be quickly achieved. The Times’ editor responded that Roger could write the article but it wouldn’t necessarily be published.

At a conference conducted by the Nobel Institute in Lysebu Norway in 1995, a high level group of former U.S., European and Soviet officials faced off over the question: Why did the Soviets invade Afghanistan? Former National Security Council staff member Dr. Gary Sick established that the U.S. had resigned Afghanistan to the Soviet sphere of influence years before the invasion. So why had the U.S. chosen to overreact the way it did?

To Jimmy Carter’s veteran CIA Director Stansfield Turner, responsibility could only be located in the personality of one very specific individual who ironically wasn’t present. “Brzezinski’s name comes up here every five minutes; but nobody has as yet mentioned that he is a Pole.” Turner said. “This is an important part of the equation, it seems to me. None of us can escape our individual backgrounds; but in this case, the fact that Brzezinski is a Pole, it seems to me was terribly important.”

What Turner meant was that Zbigniew Brzezinski had punched an ethical hole into U.S. policy by infusing his old world ethnic hatred of Russia, into U.S.-Soviet relations. U.S. officials were not supposed to bring racist beliefs into the public policy-making-process. But anybody who knew Brzezinski at the time knew full well that is exactly what he was doing.

In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brzezinski ironically grew wary of America’s global overreach, much of which he had made possible with his actions as Carter’s National Security Advisor.

Although he had felt justified at using his imperial hubris to draw the Soviets into their own Vietnam and destroy Afghanistan in the process, he did not expect to see the same imperial process at work undoing the United States and in the same way he had undone the Soviet Union.

A year before he died in 2017, the architect of America’s use of Imperial power to attain global dominance made a startling about face in an article titled “Toward a Global Realignment” warning that “the United States is still the world’s politically, economically, and militarily most powerful entity, but given complex geopolitical shifts in regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power.”

Brzezinski warned that the time for conflict among nations had come to an end because “During the rest of this century, humanity will also have to be increasingly preoccupied with survival,” a survival that could only be addressed “in a setting of increased international accommodation.”

Had Zbigniew Brzezinski used his powerful influence on American policymakers to be more accommodating to the Soviet Union over Afghanistan instead of using it as the bait to lure them to their destruction during the 1970s, the world and the United States today would, no doubt be in a very different and a much better place.

Copyright © 2018 Fitzgerald & Gould All rights reserve

The Sordid History of British Manipulation of American Democracy Series

Part 1: MI6 intelligence has always been an anti-Soviet/Russian “Rumor Factory”

Part 2: America’s “Soviet problem” is the old “Russia problem” that European Imperialists have been facing since Napoleon’s disastrous march on Moscow in 1812

Part 3: How U.S. foreign policy came to be directed by a diabolical, London-backed, privately funded, neoconservative/right-wing alliance

Part 4: How the Safari Club became the real CIA

Part 5: Brzezinski‘s Safari Club “Friends” Did the Dirty Work Behind the Scenes

Part 6: The Death of Adolph Dubs – Cui bono?  ‘To whom is it a benefit?’

Part 7: The Coup d’état –

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice. Visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk.com

IMMORTALITY: CAN WE LIVE FOREVER? 

A lifetime in the blink of an eye: Incredible gifs capture the impact the passing years have on a face

Often the impact of the passing years are too subtle to notice Photographer took portraits of ten people all aged over 100 Compared them to what they looked like in their younger years Subjects had jobs as carpenters, musicians, bankers and soldiers Our faces are constantly transforming and ageing everyday, but often the impact of the passing years are often too subtle to notice. To illustrate the profound changes over a lifetime, a photographer took portraits of ten people all aged over 100 to compare against what they looked like in their younger years. They were then transformed into fascinating gifs showing in the blink of an eye the transformation a face undergoes in a lifetime.    / Smooth, plump skin is replaced with worn and creased lines, while thick and vibrant hair becomes thinner and greying. With eyesight failing some of the subjects now wear glasses, although many retain a similar smile to their younger years, their faces wrinkled with laughter lines. But many viewers who have studied the photographs have commented that in all photos, the subjects' ears and nose are seem to have grown bigger.     Unlike bones and muscle, our ears, nose and feet continue to grow as we get older. The ears are made up of cartilage, a flexible connective tissue which, unlike bones, continues to grow until we die. Cartilage also becomes thinner with age, causing the skin to stretch and sag, so the ears stretch down and the tip of the nose lengthens and droops. Meanwhile, our feet become longer and wider with age, as the tendons and ligaments that link the many tiny bones lose elasticity.       This allows the toes to spread out and the arch of the foot to flatten. Some over-40s can gain as much as one shoe size every ten years. Some of the subjects have softer features around their mouth and jaw areas - just as skin loses elasticity and plumpness, the tissue in our gums lose bulk and volume. This causes gums to shrink back - gum recession can increase the length of the teeth by up to a quarter of an inch, a phenomenon known as tombstone teeth. Our gums start to deteriorate from the age of 40, exposing the dentine that makes up the root of the tooth. Many of the younger years photos show the subjects in formal wear as their portrait would have be needed for a passport or a work permit - between them they had jobs as carpenters, musicians, bankers, soldiers and housewives.

Russian research project offers 'immortality' to billionaires - by transplanting their brains into robot bodies

Contacted list of world's richest to offer immortality Will personally oversee brain transplant into robot body Entrepreneur claims to have 30 scientists working on project Aims to 'transplant' human mind into robot body in 10 years Claims 'next stage' of science is to create a 'new human body' 'This project is leading to immortality,' says Dmitry Itskov A Russian entrepreneur who heads a hi-tech research project called 'Avatar' has contacted billionaires to offer them immortality. Itskov claims he will personally oversee their immortality process, in exchange for an undisclosed fee. Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal - and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years. 'You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it's not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime,' says Itskov in a letter delivered to billionaires listed in Forbes magazine. Eternal life? Iskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal - and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years. He has contacted a list of billionaires with a proposal for funding his quest for immortality - which Itskov refers to as 'cybernetic immortality' and the 'artificial body'. The initiative is opening its San Francisco office this summer, and will be launching a social media project connecting scientists around the world. 'The 2045 team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality,' says Itskov's official site.

'Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death.'

'For anyone interested, but skeptical, I am ready to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality by arranging an expert discussion with a team of the world's leading scientist working in this field. 'I will also be willing to coordinate your personal immortality project entirely free of charge for the sake of speeding up the development of these technologies,' Itskov, a 31-year-old media entrepreneur, says that he aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years. He says his technology will be of interest at first to the 'disabled and close to dying' 'This project is leading down the road to immortality,' says Itskov. 'A person with a perfect Avatar will be able to remain part of society. People don’t want to die.' James Cameron's Avatar: Dmitry Itskov's 'Avatar' project aims to 'load' human minds into robotic bodies within 10 years. ‘I understand these are some very big challenges for scientists,’ Itskov says. ‘But I believe in something you call ‘The American Dream.’ If you put all your energy and time into something, you can make it a reality. Itskov envisages surgically 'transplanting' a human consciousness into a robot body within 10 years. He hopes to then 'upload' minds without surgery, leaving human bodies as empty husks as their owners 'live on' inside robots. The project is called Avatar after the James Cameron movie, set far in the future, where human soldiers use mind control to inhabit the bodies of human alien hybrids as they carry out a war against the inhabitants of a distant world. 'The next effort of science will be to create a new body for the human being,' says Itskov, speaking at the Global Future 2045 conference. 'It will have a perfect brain-machine interface to allow control and a human brain life support system so the brain can survive outside the body.'Itskov says that the system will at first be of interest to, 'Disabled people and people at the edge of dying.' 'The third phase will be to create an artificial human brain,' he says - a computer environment into which human minds can be uploaded. Measuring brain waves with EEG machine: Recent breakthroughs have allowed scientists to 'see' what is inside people's heads for the first time - but could the technology really be used to create robot Avatars? His final goal, he says, is to upload human minds into holographic bodies. Holograms give plenty of advantages. You can walk through walls, move at the speed of light, he says. ‘Remember in Star Wars, Obi-Wan’s hologram? That was pretty amazing.’ Itskov says he wants to work with DARPA - the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency in the U.S military. DARPA is already  researching ways for its troops to use their minds to remotely control androids who will take human soldiers' place on the battlefield. The Pentagon's hi-tech research arm, has earmarked $7million for research into the project, also nicknamed Avatar. According to the Darpa's 2013 budget: 'The Avatar program will develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate.' We DON'T want to live forever: Why a growing movement believe we shouldn't obsess over increasing life expectancy People in First World could live to 200 Commentators claim long lifespans would be 'drain' on planet's resources Could lead to uncontrollable expansion of world population Over last 150 years, our life expectancy has doubled - and trend is going upwards

The end of DEATH? Medicine is now so advanced that corpses could soon be revived 24 hours after death, claims doctor

Dr Sam Parnia said his research is on the cusp of major breakthroughs At the moment medics can bring people back to life within two hours but he believes this window is about to be significantly widened Average resuscitation rate for cardiac arrest patients in UK is 16% but at Dr Parnia's Stony Brook University School of Medicine it is 33% He added: 'My basic message: The death we commonly perceive today in 2013 is a death that can be reversed' A U.S. doctor has claimed that modern medicine will soon reach the point where it will enable experts to resurrect people up to 24 hours after death. Critical care physician, Dr Sam Parnia, said his 'revival research' is on the cusp of major breakthroughs which will allow the dead to rise again. He explained that in the past decade there has been incredible progress and that while doctors can bring people back to life up to two hours after death, it is only a matter of time before this window is widened significantly. Eternal life: Critical care physician, Dr Sam Parnia, said his 'revival research' is on the cusp of major breakthroughs which will allow the dead to rise again after being dead for some time. 'We may soon be rescuing people from death's clutches hours, or even longer, after they have actually died,' Dr Parnia, author of new book Erasing Death, told Germany's Spiegel magazine. 'With today's medicine, we can bring people back to life up to one, maybe two hours, sometimes even longer, after their heart stopped beating and they have thus died by circulatory failure. In the future, we will likely get better at reversing death.'It is possible that in 20 years, we may be able to restore people to life 12 hours or maybe even 24 hours after they have died. You could call that resurrection, if you will. But I still call it resuscitation science.'The average resuscitation rates for cardiac arrest patients in U.S. hospitals is 18 per cent. In the UK, it is slightly lower at 16 per cent. Dr Parnia said one could call his research 'resurrection' but that's he refers to it as 'resuscitation science'. But at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York where Dr Parnia's research team is based, it is 33 per cent and peaked at 38 per cent earlier this year. He said: 'Most, but not all of our patients, get discharged with no neurological damage whatsoever.' He said it  is a 'widely-held misconception, even among doctors', that the brain suffers massive oxygen-deprived damage after three to five minutes after the heart stops. 'It's mostly based on research done in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s,' he went on.  'In those days, doctors concluded that brain cell death was inevitable in such a short time. Now we know that if treatment is correct, it really can take hours for brain cells to die. 'And only if all the treatments that we know today are not implemented, the damage can become apparent after as little as five minutes without blood flow.  'Part of the problem is that we all live in the past. 'We have preconceived ideas about death. For thousands of years, death was a clear, precise moment: The heart stopped beating, and that was it. Nothing could be done from then on. You either were alive or not. 'But since the arrival of CPR more than 50 years ago, we know that this view is no longer correct. 'Death is not a fixed moment anymore. From a cellular perspective, it is a process that proceeds at various speeds in the different tissues of the body after the heart stops. 'My basic message: The death we commonly perceive today in 2013 is a death that can be reversed.   The immortal Christophe Lambert in Highlander: But now a growing movement is claiming that living forever might not actually be a good thing - and could do harm to us and the planet. It is the impossible wish that mankind has long yearned for - but now a growing movement is claiming that living forever might not actually be a good thing, and could do harm to us and the planet. Philosophers, economists and commentators have claimed that with more people around there will be stiffer competition for resources like water or oil. There would also be huge strains on health care and families would change forever - with several generations around at the same time. Some also argue that old age allows us to slowly ‘let go’ of a loved one instead of having them disappear from our lives abruptly. And were life spans to extend into the hundreds of years it could mean the world’s population doubling or even quadrupling.   In a discussion on theatlantic.com Bennett Foddy, Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Programme on the Ethics of the New Biosciences at Oxford University, said that the ‘sky’s the limit’ when it comes to extending our youth. Dr Foddy, who has written extensively on the ethics of extending our lives, said over the last 150 years we have extended our average life span from 40 years to 80 years and the trend is going upwards. The ethical implications however are extremely complex and commentators like Frances Fukuyama have claimed we should not tinker with evolution. If we age then it is for a reason that is actually for our own good, he claims. Another to come out against eternal youth is philosopher Leon Kass who says that as somebody gets older they gradually slip away from us, rather than the sharp pain of a sudden death. In the discussion Dr Foddy said once consequence of people living forever would be greater inequality in the world. He said: ‘The story of industrialization is that the people who could afford the cars and machines and factories in Western countries were able to produce a lot more and generate a lot more wealth than people in poorer agrarian economies. Pensioner on Worthing Pier: Philosophers, economists and commentators have claimed that with more people around there will be stiffer competition for resources like water or oil ‘That's a serious issue. It's probably true that if people in the first world were, through some sort of medical intervention, able to live to be 200 years old and people in Bangladesh were still dying at a relatively young age, that would tend to widen the distance in personal wealth.’ Dr Foddy added that it was ‘already unfair’ how just because he was born in the 20th century he will live longer than somebody born in the 19th century. The only solution was to ensure everybody had such an opportunity - even if it meant greater challenges ahead. He said: ‘It would be great if everybody could live to be 150, because that would benefit every single person. ‘It's not a good that benefits you only if other people are worse off. When you have goods like that you should try to develop them and then you should worry separately about making sure that they get delivered to people in poorer areas, whether it's through government aid or massive production.’ However he added: ‘Having said that, death is, in fact, inevitable. Even if we solve every medical problem, you still have a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying every year by some sort of accident. So, on those odds you could probably expect to live to be about 1,000. ‘I don't think it's ever going to be the case that we will live forever. It's not even going to be 1,000. We're probably talking about living to be 120 or 150 or somewhere around there, but to me the idea that we have to accept living to 80 rather than 120 is bizarre given that it's not so long ago that we lived to 40.’

Why man COULD live for ever,

The day may soon come when death is no longer inevitable, says Desmond Morris Few years ago I held the hand that had served Vincent van Gogh with the paints he used to create his greatest masterpieces. I was at the 121st birthday party of Madame Jeanne Calment, officially the oldest person who has ever lived. When she was a teenager, she had worked in her father's shop in Arles in the south of France. Vincent came in to buy his paints, but she wasn't that keen to serve him, she said, because "he was ugly as sin, had a vile temper and smelled of booze". Yet, as a dutiful daughter, she had taken his money and handed him the paints with which he would create Sunflowers and many of his other most famous works. I was attending her birthday because I wanted to understand how any human being could survive for such a long time. Her answer was that it was due to her calmness. "That's why they call me Calment," she chuckled, with a twinkle in her now almost sightless eyes. But there was much more to it than that. I discovered from her doctor that, amazingly, she had never had a day's illness in her entire life. What an immune system she must have had! It had protected her against every virus going. If only medical science could have extracted its essence and injected it into the rest of us. In addition to being genetically blessed with this extraordinary defence mechanism, she had also, by her nature, retained a cheerful outlook on life and an irrepressible sense of humour. She was particularly amused that, aged 120, she had made her first music record, a funk-rap number called Mistress Of Time. In these health-conscious days of carefully balanced diets, fitness regimes and workouts, it is worth asking what kind of lifestyle the astonishing Madame Calment had enjoyed for so long. The answer comes as a shock. It turns out that she was a gourmet who liked alcohol, cigarettes, chocolates and sweets. Desmond Morris: the day may come soon when death isn't inevitable As well as her sweet tooth, she was fond of cheap red wine, fois gras and a rich local stew. When she reached the age of 117, doctors advised her to give up drinking port and they tried to stop her smoking. Somehow she managed to fool them and was caught by a photographer puffing away on a cigarette the following year. I argued with her doctor that it was mean to start interfering with her small pleasures, which had obviously stood her in good stead. He replied that he wasn't forcing her to stop drinking, merely trying to persuade her - now that she was a national treasure - to drink a more expensive, better red wine. Jeanne Calment died the year after that party (perhaps missing that rough red wine she had enjoyed for so long). And though I never saw her after that initial meeting, I think of her often - especially now that I am into that part of the human lifespan which my friend and fellow octogenarian Sir David Attenborough laughingly calls "injury time". It's not that I confront my own mortality with dread. It's simply that as the indignities of the ageing process become harder to deny, I find myself wondering about the best means of adjusting to that reality. A quarter of a century ago, I wrote a book about the ageing process. Now that I am 80 years old, I regret havingbwritten that book because I know too much about the physical decline of the human body as the years pass. Like other animals, we have a built-in obsolescence. As we grow old, the efficiency of cell-replacement declines and our bodies become weaker until eventually something comes along to which we no longer have sufficient resistance, and we die. There is nothing mysterious about death, it is simply a way of keeping each species genetically flexible. Each of us is a temporary container for our immortal genes. We come to an end, but they go marching on - through our children - and, in the process, each generation sees a mixing of the genes that keeps offering new possibilities and enables our species to adapt to changing conditions. Sadly, this system works only if we as individuals are discarded after we have bred and reared our offspring. Or, as the saying goes: "Nature with its frugal eye asks only that we mate and die." We all have to face this, but it would be preferable if there were a system in which we remained strong all our lives and then dropped dead, rather than slowly wearing out. What is worse, the wearing out process is uneven. With some of us, the brain goes first. The last time I saw Iris Murdoch her body looked in good shape, but she had no idea where she was or what year it was. With others, the body goes into decline, but the brain stays sharp and bitterly resents the fact it can no longer command the limbs to sprint or climb. I belong to this second category. My body is beginning to creak, but I am still working until 3am or 4am every night. Brain cells hate being idle. It is a case of: "If you don't use it, you lose it." If you stop challenging yourself, your mental processes decay rapidly. The very concept of "retirement" is lethal. Society should find other forms of occupation for its older members - not trivial hobbies, but serious challenges that require experience and ingenuity. Facing them would keep the brain from rusting. But if society should change its attitudes to ageing, then so too should individuals. And there are important lessons here that can be learned from people like Madame Calment. The first and most important one is that she had outlived everyone else on the planet by not worrying about her health. Until the doctors got at her, in her final years, I doubt if she ever gave her health a moment's thought. She ate the rich food she liked, she drank the cheap wine she liked, she smoked the strong cigarettes she liked and - as she said - she kept calm. Had she worried about her health and taken steps to improve it, the anxiety caused by stirring up fears about ill-health would themselves have reduced the efficiency of her immune system. She would have then probably succumbed to the afflictions that plague so many people. Another important point is that she didn't do any extreme exercise, but she did take a lot of the milder type. She was still riding her bicycle at the age of 100. When I made a study of the lifestyles of people who lived to be 100 and over, I found this applied to most of them. They nearly all had a regular, mild form of body activity that kept them moving. Cycling, walking and gardening were three of the most popular - done not to keep fit but for pleasure. And, like Madame Calment, they almost all retained a wry sense of humour and cheerfulness. Surprisingly, among the very old, Jeanne Calment was not alone in her love of cigarettes. The actress Estelle Winwood was still smoking 60 a day aged 100; a woman named Edith Beck gave up smoking on her 103rd birthday because she felt it was time to start looking after her health and promptly died. It seems horribly unfair, but there appears to be a gene that protects certain individuals from the ravages of smoke-filled lungs. They also enjoy their food and drink. When she was 100, Estelle was drinking sherry and regularly dining out. Katherine Plunket, who lived to be 111, enjoyed feasting on game and always tucked in to turkey, plum pudding and champagne on her many birthdays. The oldest man who ever lived, Mr Izumi of Japan (who made it to 120), enjoyed his daily saki (rice wine) and said his secret was "not worrying". Eubie Blake, a U.S. jazz pianist, said at his 100th birthday party: "If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." The irony is that it was probably his not worrying about his health that enabled him to live that long. It seems that if you wish to live an unusually long life, you need to eat and drink what you fancy, keep as mobile as possible, have a lively interest in the world around you, avoid introspection and, above all, do not waste time worrying about your health. Food faddists, couch potatoes, solemn bores and health fanatics all seem doomed to earlier graves. Studying the over-100s, it seems advisable to avoid intensive health regimes. I often look at the faces of joggers as they go past to see whether they are happy joggers or miserable joggers. Happy joggers - enjoying a gentle pace and the pleasure of getting out from behind a desk - are on the right track. They are keeping mobile without becoming anxious. They would be better off (at least their knees would be) if they went for long walks, but they at least come into the "regularly mobile" category that seems to go with long life-spans. By contrast, those joggers who stumble past with agonised faces, saying to themselves "Gotta get fit, gotta get fit", are probably reducing their chances of a long life. The couch potato goes to the other extreme. The secret is moderation. Another source of health-destroying anxiety is food faddism. Diets that are supposed to make you live longer are forever being offered to the gullible by the cynical. Every day, we are told that we should eat more of this or less of that. Then, later on, we are told that, sorry, it is the other way around: you should eat less of this and more of that. What is good for you today will be bad for you tomorrow. There are three truths concerning human feeding behaviour. The first recognises that we evolved as omnivores, succeeding where others failed because we consumed a wide range of foods. One of the reasons we are now living longer than we did in the past is that the shelves of supermarkets display a truly astonishing variety of food from all over the world. The second truth, which renders all diet books superfluous, is that the more you eat, the fatter you get, and the less you eat, the thinner you get. End of story. But whether you are eating more in order to put on weight or eating less in order to lose it, it is always important to keep the range of foodstuffs as wide as possible. The final food truth is that you should enjoy what you eat and take time to relax while eating it. Speed and anxiety ruin digestion. It really does seem that if you eat, drink and are merry, you have a good chance of not only having an enjoyable life, but a long one too. But there may, one day, be an even more efficient way of improving your odds against the Grim Reaper. Despite the old saying about death and taxes, there is nothing inevitable about death. If we could find a way of genetically interfering with the biological imperative that instructs our cell replacement to become increasingly inefficient we could, in theory, live for ever - as long as we are not knocked down by a No74 bus. If such a discovery were made, it would create a population explosion that would make our current global warming look like a trifling matter. Eventually, there would have to be a breeding licence that permitted a new birth only when a lethal accident had occurred. It is unlikely genetic manipulations will have advanced enough to enable us to cheat death in the near future - and certainly not in my lifetime. The point I am making is not that it may happen, but that it could do. The advance of medicine is so rapid that things that may seem fantastical today could be commonplace within a few decades.   While it is impossible to say how some future discovery may impact on those being born into the world now, it is safe to assume people like Madame Calment will be much more usual in the not-too-distant future. Two years ago, in the glaring sun of the Namib Desert, I suddenly noticed that I was the only person not wearing sunglasses. The lenses of my eyes had darkened with age. So when I returned home I had surgery to replace the old, discoloured lenses with artificial ones. I now have the eyes of a teenager again - the world is bright and beautiful once more. Returning for a check-up, I asked the eye surgeon who had given me my new eyes if, perhaps, he could manage a whole-body transplant. If only I could have my brain inserted into the skull of a healthy young man who had died of brain damage, but who, in all other respects, was in good order, I could start all over again and enjoy another spell of life on this fascinating little planet of ours. Scientists have found a way to slow cell growth Elixir of youth: The breakthrough could leave people feeling young well into their later years A ‘forever young’ drug that allows people to grow old gracefully could soon be a reality. Durham University scientists have found a way of slowing down ageing in individual cells. They believe their work could help the elderly stay healthy well into their twilight years, as well as help children with a rare condition that causes them to grow old before their time. Researcher Chris Hutchison said: ‘The findings are at a very early stage but they show the potential for helping people live more comfortable and less painful lives when they reach 70 or 80 years of age and beyond.’ The professor used a drug to slow the ageing of cells taken from children with Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS). This is a rare genetic condition in which huge amounts of DNA damage cause cells to quickly age and die. As a result, babies rapidly grow old and frail before dying of ‘old age’ between the age of eight and 21. Hayley Okines, from Bexhill, East Sussex, is known for spreading awareness of the condition, also known as progeria. In January, she was 13 - an age she was not expected to reach. Diagnosed in 1999, her condition causes her to age eight times faster than the average person. Some people have speculated that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald based his story The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button on HGPS. Old before his time: The drug could help people with a rare condition where they age prematurely - thought to have inspired The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (played by Brad Pitt, above) Treating cells with a drug normally given to people who have taken paracetamol overdoses slowed down the ageing process, allowing them to grow normally. It is hoped that the drug, N-acetyl cysteine, can one day be used to treat HGPS, improving the quality of life for children.

But with many of the problems of HGPS, such as hardening of the arteries, stiffness of the joints and hip dislocations, also present in normal ageing, it might have a much more general use.

While the drug may not help people live longer, it could make a person’s later years more pleasant. Enlarge  Progeria sufferer Hayley Okines on her first day at school aged four in 2002. She has now reached 13 Professor Hutchison said: ‘Our findings could be an important step to helping both children with progeria and older people to live lives that are less debilitating in terms of health problems.’ Professor James Goodwin, of charity Age UK, said the research offers valuable insights into the ageing process. He added: ‘Although it’s fantastic that people are living longer than ever, we know that on average men can expect to live 7.4 years and women 9 years at the end of their lives with a disability. ‘To mitigate the years we spend in ill health, it is clear that one of the most promising areas of research centres on slowing down the ageing process and tackling age-related illness.’ The approach is not the only one that holds promise. Last year, Ronald DePinho, a Harvard University doctor, made old mice young again. At the start of the experiments, the animals’ skin, brains, guts and other organs were at a stage equivalent to those of an 80-year-old person. Within just two months of being given a drug that switches on a key enzyme, the creatures had grown so many new cells that they had almost completely rejuvenated. Remarkably, the male mice went from being infertile to fathering large litters. Speaking this summer at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Professor Linda Partridge, a University College London expert in the genetics of ageing, said that science is moving so quickly that people will soon take a daily pill from middle age to prevent many of the ills of old age. However, she added that any drugs would have to be shown to be extremely safe before they were given to healthy people to combat ageing. PHOTOS FOREVER YOUNG IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS

Found: The secret of looking up to 40 years younger is chemical that rewinds the effects of old age and can make you look 20 again

Harvard Medical School made the discovery A protein found in all living cells called NAD could be the key They are also exploring whether it can be used to treat rare diseases If all you want for Christmas is to be 20 again, it could be possible one day as scientists claim to have found the secret to eternal youth. Experts believe they may be able to turn back the clock as much as 40 years after identifying a natural compound proven to rewind the effects of old age in mice. A protein found in all living cells called NAD could be the key to slowing down the ageing process or reversing it altogether. Harvard: A protein found in all living cells called NAD could be the key to slowing down the ageing process Tests on two-year-old mice who had been given the NAD-producing compound for just one week had body tissue which resembled that of a six-month old. Professor David Sinclair, an expert in genetics at Harvard Medical School said: 'In human years, this would be like a 60-year-old converting to a 20-year-old in these specific areas.' The compound works by restoring communication between energy cells within the body which have broken down as we get older. Prof Sinclair added: 'The ageing process we discovered is like a married couple - when they are young, they communicate well, but over time, living in close quarters for many years, communication breaks down. 'And just like with a couple, restoring communication solved the problem. 'There’s clearly much more work to be done here, but if these results stand, then many aspects of ageing may be reversible if caught early.' Mice: Tests on two-year-old mice who had been given the compound for one week had tissue which resembled six-month old His team are now looking at the longer-term outcomes of the NAD-producing compound in mice and how it affects the mouse as a whole. They are also exploring whether the compound can be used to safely treat rare diseases or more common diseases such as Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Longer term, the professor plans to test if the compound will give mice a healthier, longer life. Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, said: 'This is an intriguing and exciting finding that some aspects of the ageing process are reversible. 'It is however a long and tough way to go from these nice mouse experiments to showing real anti-ageing effects in humans without side effects.' The findings were published in the journal Cell. http://

A revolutionary new DNA tool could help take humanity a step closer to eternal life.

The device pioneers a new technique that makes it cheaper and easier to synthesise genes 'overnight' – a process that typically takes several days.

Scientists say the new system is also far more accurate than existing methods, allowing researchers to build DNA strands up to 10 times longer than current technology.

The technique could help scientists working to reverse the ageing process by manipulating a key molecule called telomerase - thought to repair our DNA.

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A revolutionary new DNA tool could help take humanity a step closer to eternal life. The device (pictured) pioneers a new technique that makes it cheaper and easier to synthesise genes 'overnight', say scientists - a process that normally takes several days

Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley said it could lead to 'DNA printers' in research labs that work like the 3D printers in many modern workshops.

'If you're a mechanical engineer, it's really nice to have a 3D printer in your shop that can print out a part overnight so you can test it the next morning,' said UC Berkeley graduate student Dan Arlow.

'If you're a researcher or bioengineer and you have an instrument that streamlines DNA synthesis, a 'DNA printer', you can test your ideas faster and try out more new ideas. I think it will lead to a lot of innovation.'

Current gene synthesis techniques are slow and expensive as they add bases, the basic building blocks of DNA, one at a time.

The process often fails and can only produce very short strands up to 200 bases in length.

If scientists need a longer sequence, they have to laboriously stitch these together using a cocktail of organic chemicals.

The new method gets around some of these problems via a 'brute force approach' that utilises molecules which occur naturally in the body.

Berkeley Lab students pioneered a new way to synthesise DNA

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The new tehcnique uses a tether molecule (grey) to link each new DNA building block (green) to an enzyme (cream). Enzymes are small proteins that our bodies use to speed up chemical reactions

It relies on enzymes - small proteins that our bodies use to speed up chemical reactions - to physically bind each new piece of DNA to the sequence.

Each enzyme is then snipped from the sequence and discarded in a process that allows researchers to create single strands of DNA up to 2,000 bases long.

This is 10 times longer than current techniques allow and rapidly speeds up the process of synthesising genes for research.

Normally scientists must order genes from a special laboratory that charges upwards of £225 ($300) per gene in a process that can take two weeks to reach recipients.

HOW MIGHT SCIENTISTS USE TELOMERASE TO REVERSE THE PROCESS OF AGEING?

Scientists decoded an enzyme thought to halt ageing in plants, animals and humans as part of a recent breakthrough study.

Unravelling the structure of the complex enzyme, called telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow or block the ageing process, along with new treatments for cancer, researchers reported in the journal Nature in April.

Elated scientists announced the completion of a 20-year quest to map the enzyme thought to forestall ageing by repairing the tips of chromosomes.

'It has been a long time coming,' lead investigator Kathleen Collins, a molecular biologist at the University of California in Berkeley, said in a statement.

'Our findings provide a structural framework for understanding human telomerase disease mutations, and represent an important step towards telomerase-related clinical therapeutics.'

Part protein and part RNA (genetic material that relays instructions for building proteins) telomerase acts on microscopic sheaths, known as telomeres, that cover the tips of the chromosomes found inside all cells.

In humans, each cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, including one pair of sex chromosomes - the 'X' and 'Y' - that differ between males and females.

Australian-American biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering telomeres and their protective function in the 1970s, likened them to the tiny plastic caps that keep shoelaces from fraying.

Eventually, however, shoelace tips and telomeres do break down: every time a cell divides the telomeres get worn a little bit more, until the cell stops dividing and dies. This, biologists agree, is probably central to the natural ageing process.The Berkeley team said their enzyme method could one day write whole new genes overnight for a fraction of the cost.

They believe that enzymes are key to improving the accuracy of current techniques because they are what the body uses to build its own genetic code.

'We have come up with a novel way to synthesise DNA that harnesses the machinery that nature itself uses to make DNA,' project scientist Sebastian Palluk said.

'This approach is promising because enzymes have evolved for millions of years to perform this exact chemistry.'

The method, detailed in the journal Nature Biotechnology, could make it cheaper and easier for biologists to uncover new cures for diseases.

'We believe that increased access to DNA constructs will speed up the development of new cures for diseases and simplify the production of new medicines,' Mr Palluk added.

The enzyme (cream), known as a polymerase, physically binds each new DNA block (green) to the DNA sequence (multicoloured). The left illustration shows the enzyme bound to the new block before it attaches to the DNA, while right shows the enzyme attaching to the genes

The technique may also help researchers in their quest to reverse the process of ageing and make humans immortal.

In April, scientists decoded an enzyme thought to halt ageing in plants, animals and humans after a 20-year plight.

Elated scientists announced the completion of a 20-year quest to map the enzyme thought to forestall ageing by repairing the tips of chromosomes. 

Unravelling the structure of the complex enzyme, known as telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow the ageing process – or block it entirely.

To developed these drugs, scientists will need to synthesise the DNA the body uses to build telomerase - a process the new Berekeley gene tool could accelerate. 

Do lobsters hold the key to eternal life? Forget gastronomic indulgence, the crustacean can defy the ageing process

While the passing years bring arthritis, muscle loss, memory problems and illness to humans, lobsters seem to be immune to the ravages of time Scientists are shedding light on how age affects people and, as a result, developing new treatments for diseases such as cancer Like the lobsters, planarians, a group of flat worms, use telomerase to protect their DNA and prevent cell death They are usually associated with a life of gastronomic indulgence and heart-stopping excess. But away from the dinner table, lobsters may actually hold the secret to a long, healthy — and possibly even eternal — life. For this crustacean is one of a handful of bizarre animals that appear to defy the normal ageing process. While the passing years bring arthritis, muscle loss, memory problems and illness to humans, lobsters seem to be immune to the ravages of time. They can be injured, of course. They can pick up diseases. They can be caught and thrown into a pot, then smothered in béchamel sauce. A giant lobster: Rather than getting weaker and more vulnerable over the years, lobsters become stronger and more fertile each time they shed their shells But rather than getting weaker and more vulnerable over the years, they become stronger and more fertile each time they shed their shells. The typical lobster weighs 1 to 2 lb. But in 2009, a Maine fisherman landed a colossus of 20 lb, which was estimated to be 140 years old. And that isn’t even the oldest lobster found so far. According to Guinness World Records, a 44 lb leviathan was caught in 1977, with claws powerful enough to snap a man’s arm.

 

The species belongs to an elite group that appears to be ‘biologically immortal’. Away from predators, injury or disease, these astonishing creatures’ cells don’t deteriorate with age. Scientists cannot be sure how long lobsters would live if they were simply left to exist — it wouldn’t be for centuries because of physical wear and tear, but it would certainly be for a lot longer than similar marine creatures. A rare orange lobster, caught by fishermen on the Inner Hebrides. The crustacean, normally blue-black in colour, was discovered in the catch of Innes Henderson on the Isle of Coll, to the west of Mull Biological immortality isn’t just fascinating for wildlife experts. By studying the phenomena, scientists are shedding light on how age affects people and, as a result, developing new treatments for diseases such as cancer. It could even show us how to extend human life far beyond the standard three score years and ten. ‘The more scientists look, the more they find species that appear to be able to defy the ageing process,’ says Simon Watt, a biologist and TV presenter, who is speaking today at the British Science Festival in Newcastle. ‘These species of course still die. They get diseases, they are injured or hunted. But unlike humans, they don’t die as a result of their own metabolisms — there doesn’t seem to be a built-in life expectancy in their cells.’ There are many reasons why humans, along with most species on the planet, deteriorate with age. Mutations in DNA and the battering that our 100 trillion cells take every day contribute to the slow, inevitable decline. But scientists have discovered that our cells also have a built-in fixed lifespan — obsolescence if you like. Cells are constantly renewing and replacing themselves at a rate of millions every second. However, most human cells can only copy themselves 50 to 60 times before they die. The reason for programmed cell death lies in our chromosomes, the 46 strands of DNA found at the heart of almost every cell. The ends of every chromosome are protected with a chemical cap called a telomere. They act like the plastic tips on the end of shoelaces and stop the strands of DNA from fraying. But each time a human cell divides, these telomeres get shorter. Eventually — after 50 or so divisions — they are too short to protect the chromosomes, and the cell dies. It’s the same with almost all species — from frogs and goats to zebras and hummingbirds. But, amazingly, lobsters are different. They produce sufficient quantities of a substance called telomerase to renew these protective DNA caps and prevent cells dying. Lobsters aren’t the only creatures to have evolved biological immortality. One of the most incredible are the planarians, a group of flat worms. Lobsters aren't the only creatures to have evolved biological immortality. One of the most incredible are the planarians, a group of flat worms, like the one pictured above. Planarians can completely regenerate lost body parts Like some superhero from a comic book, the worms can completely regenerate lost body parts. Slice a planarian down the middle, or even lengthwise, and it will grow back into two healthy worms. A piece of worm just one 279th of its body size will grow back into a happy, wriggling specimen. Like the lobsters they use telomerase to protect their DNA and prevent cell death. But a more important key to their death-defying behaviour is that a fifth of their body is made up of stem cells, the ‘master cells’ capable of turning into any type of tissue. Most species have only a tiny number of stem cells lurking in their bodies. Some animals don’t just stop the ageing process — they actually turn the clock back to youth. When the Turritopsis nutricula — or ‘immortal jellyfish’ — reaches adulthood, it alters the structure of its cells and reverts to a juvenile, sexually immature form. It’s the equivalent of a human hitting their 20th birthday then turning into an eight-year-old again. The jellyfish, which grow to a fifth of an inch long, repeat this cycle indefinitely as a means of defying death. So, with all this immortality going on, how did mammals, birds and lizards miss out? It’s a question that’s challenged biologists since before Darwin. Many of the immortal species reproduce without sex, so Simon Watt believes mortality could be the price animals pay for reproducing sexually and allowing the reshuffling, and refining, of genes in the next generation. ‘In evolution, it doesn’t matter so much if something is good for the organism. What matters is that it is good for the gene — it allows the gene to be passed on,’ he says. 'What can we learn from the death-defying marvels of nature that just keep going? 'Well, the study of telomerase has already led to potential new drugs for cancer' In other words, dying is worth it if you can propagate your species to be stronger and more resilient before you go. But if there are advantages to being mortal, what can we learn from the death-defying marvels of nature that just keep going? Well, the study of telomerase has already led to potential new drugs for cancer. One reason cancer cells divide uncontrollably is because they’re exposed to telomerase — making them immortal cells. Thus, drugs that deny telomerase to parts of the body where cancer is growing are already in clinical trials. Then there’s the intriguing possibility that scientists might find ways of using telomerase to prevent programmed cell death and possibly extend our lives. Researchers have already begun to investigate ways to introduce telomerase into human cells in a  test tube. But tampering with programmed cell death could be risky. Lengthening the life of cells could increase the risk of cells suffering other kinds of damage. The more times a cell divides, the greater the risk of a potentially dangerous genetic mutation in the new cell. And there’s a bigger philosophical question at stake, too, if we start attempting to extend life beyond the ‘natural’ limit written into the biology of our cells. Most people would be happy to have a few extra years or decades to enjoy life. But beyond that? Would we really be happy living 200 or 300 years — which might mean retiring after a working life of, say, 150 years? How would humankind cope with overcrowding — never mind pay for the care of the tens of millions of extremely old people? Would we need to ban or limit reproduction? An extended life is not much use if that life is spent in suffering, either. Few people want eternal life — they really want eternal youth. And crucially, biological immortality doesn’t mean you can’t die — as the lobsters served in restaurants each day know all too well. Pill boost: Dietary supplements that claims to boost skin health are growing in popularity The idea of eating ourselves beautiful is not new. But could the key to keeping wrinkles at bay be found in a tablet rather than a face cream? In the past year, nutraceuticals – dietary supplements, once a niche area of the beauty business – have taken off. Today, alongside anti-ageing lotions and serums are glossy bottles of capsules and pills. Rather than being sold in health-food stores in practical pots fit only to be hidden behind the kettle in the kitchen, the new offerings are designed to look beautiful in your bathroom and are sold in the smartest places – Liberty stocks Dr Perricone supplements, while Selfridges sells the Inner Me brand. And many skincare firms such as Caudalie, Healthspan Nurture and Yllume now offer supplements alongside their face creams, for a full-scale assault on ageing skin. So, is this the logical extension of a beauty regime – supporting your skin from the inside as well as from the outside? A COCKTAIL OF BOOSTERS Some brands advocate the power of the naturally occurring protein collagen to help the skin produce more of its own to support the structure and firmness. Anything that helps maintain collagen levels in the skin will keep it looking younger as natural levels of collagen start to fall in your mid-30s and by the age of 55 may have fallen by 40 per cent. Less collagen means skin that sags and wrinkles. Other supplements focus on high-strength antioxidants such as astaxanthin (which is found in minute crustaceans), lycopene (found in tomatoes) or resveratrol (which is extracted from grapes).

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Anti-ageing cream which uses LIGHT to improve the complexion set to sell out on day one NHS refused me skin removal surgery because I DIDN'T have a gastric bad: Mother who lost eight stone through sensible diet and exercise is denied treatment 'Plastic-looking' CGI characters could soon look more human as researchers unveil high-definition facial scanner to capture every skin cell and wrinkle Antioxidants help counteract the effects of free radicals, unstable molecules in our body’s cells which help speed up the ageing process, and astaxanthin and lycopene have been shown to help protect skin from ultraviolet light. Resveratrol is a particularly potent antioxidant, hailed as a wonder-worker in slowing the effects of ageing. Other supplements contain ceramides (which help the skin retain moisture) and hyaluronic acid, claiming they may help soften wrinkles and smooth the complexion.   Inside mosturise: A increasing number of women are using pills and capsules alongside their normal face creams to keep wear and tear at bay WHERE'S THE PROOF? The only sensible advice is to spend your money on brands that offer proven results for their products – though even with products that offer ‘proof’ in the form of clinical trials, you need a bit of help to read between the lines. Evelle (£35.95, multivits.co.uk) includes pycnogenol, a standardised form of pine-bark extract. Pharma Nord, the company behind Evelle, boasts a clinical study to show that it improves the skin – though on closer examination, this translates as a nine per cent increase in skin elasticity, and no worsening of skin roughness. The makers of PureLogicol collagen supplements (£29.99, pure logicol.co.uk) says a placebo-controlled clinical trial on 100 women showed a 43 per cent reduction in wrinkle width after six weeks, along with an increase in skin hydration. Need of help: The skin's natural levels of collagen start to fall in your mid-30s Imedeen, one of the longest-standing beauty supplements, is continually conducting trials on its products, which are based on a skin-improving ‘marine complex’. Its most recent showed that, over a year, the Time Perfection supplement (£40.80, imedeen.co.uk) improved skin by increasing the amount of collagen and the protein elastin. Seven Seas’ Ilumina (£29.99, at Boots), uses antioxidants from grapeseed extract. Its clinical trials show a ‘highly significant’ reduction in fine lines after 12 weeks – a 5.8 per cent reduction, to be precise. That’s clinically significant, but would you notice the difference on your face? BEAT WRINKLES FROM INSIDE All of these sound extremely promising, but cosmetic dermatologist Dr Sam Bunting, who has seen all the clinical studies, is less impressed. ‘Most studies are too short to be significant, or use unusual methods of measuring their results, or are published in obscure journals. None of these is a patch on the study design that Unilever put in place to test their DoveSpa pills last year,’ she says. The DoveSpa supplements are called Strength Within (£37.50, dovespa.co.uk), and there has been a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial on almost 500 women to back up their claim to reduce wrinkle-depth by up to 30 per cent – research that was considered rigorous enough to merit a story in New Scientist magazine, which normally remains aloof from cosmetic concerns. The DoveSpa pills contain soy isoflavones, which are thought to act on the body’s oestrogen receptors to encourage the skin to make collagen (the abrupt decrease in oestrogen levels between the ages of 35 and 50 is one of the factors that leads to less collagen being made in the body), while it’s also thought the omega-3 fatty acids in the pills act on a gene involved with making collagen. ‘I see skin pills as a potentially useful adjunct to a proper skincare routine, based on thoroughly researched active ingredients,’ says Dr Bunting. ‘They may well be very useful at helping prevent lines and wrinkles. However, we need better long-term data to know what visible effects they can really have on the signs of ageing that already exist.’ Giving up smoking is the most beneficial step you can take for your health Would you like to live forever? Unfortunately we can't promise you that, but there are a number of changes you can make to your lifestyle in order to live longer and healthier lives. We all know that eating sensibly can keep you healthy and happy, but did you know there are certain foods that have been proven to boost your longevity? The type of exercise you choose to do can also have an impact on your life span. Weight-bearing exercises can beat age-related diseases and even choosing to do your exercise in the local park can help you live longer. Follow our at-a-glance guide below to ten steps you can take to help you live longer. Each step could add one year to your life, so find out how you could live for ten years longer now! Give up smoking Medial experts tend to agree that giving up smoking is one the most beneficial things you can do to improve your overall health, including extending your life. One cigarette takes 11 minutes off your life, so smoking just 20 cigarettes a day for the past three-and-a-half years has already taken ten years off your life span. Smoking can affect virtually every part of your body. It can be linked to wrinkles, infertility, heart disease, stroke, oral cancer, miscarriage, lung and breast cancer, stomach ulcers and could cause you to lose a limb! For more information about what smoking does to your body, click on the link in the blue box above. But giving up smoking can help you avoid all these major killers. ASH, the anti-smoking campaigners, say that if you stop smoking right now, your blood pressure and heart beat will return to normal within the next 20 minutes. In 24 hours carbon monoxide will be eliminated from your body and after 48 hours there is no nicotine left in your system. After six months, your lung function will have improved by 10 per cent and 15 years after today, your risk of a heart attack returns to the same level as someone who has never smoked in their life. If you want to quit smoking, you can use nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) such as patches or chewing gum. According to ASH, studies show that using NRTs can double your chances of quitting successfully than if you used willpower alone. You can also call the NHS Smoking Helpline on 0800 169 0169. The helpline is open seven days a week from 9am to 11pm for information, support and details of local smoking cessation services. Take an anti-ageing supplement It seems hard to believe that taking a tablet could halt the ageing process, but scientists have now managed to identify a certain compound that could do just that. Carnosine is a naturally occurring chemical produced by the body that can also be found in red meat and in chicken. Scientists believe it works as an antioxidant, tracking down damaging free-radicals and eliminating them. Free-radicals are rogue molecules that our body can pick up from exhaust fumes, smoking or sunbathing. They are also produced as a natural by-product of bodily functions such as breathing. These molecules have been linked to serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis and can cause premature ageing. A number of studies have now discovered that carnosine not only protects cells from damage by free-radicals, but can also rejuvenate ageing cells and help cells continue to function at optimum health. A review of carnosine's effects on the body by China's Harbin Medical University, published in 2000, also found that eye drops containing carnosine could delay failing eyesight caused by old age and help restore vision after cataract surgery. For these reasons, researchers believe that carnosine can be used as an anti-ageing drug in humans. Further studies are now being carried out to assess the total impact that the compound could have on the body. You can buy carnosine from major health food stores and leading pharmacists. It may not be available as an individual supplement, but may be included with other anti-ageing treatments in one tablet. Drink some Miso soup The Japanese are known for their longevity throughout the world and one secret of their long life could be miso soup. Miso is a salty paste made from fermented soybeans, rice or barley, sea salt and Drinking miso soup could help prolong your life probiotic or 'friendly' bacteria. The paste is made into a soup by adding hot water. It can also be used as a replacement for soy sauce in other dishes or spread onto bread like Marmite. On the island of Okinawa, whose inhabitants are the world's longest living population, and in homes all over Japan, miso soup is regularly drunk for breakfast and last thing at night. Scientists believe the health giving properties of miso come from the soybeans. Soybeans are rich in antioxidants such as vitamin E. Antioxidants track down potentially harmful particles in the body called free radicals and destroy them. Miso soup can also lower high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels by helping the body remove harmful cholesterol from the bloodstream. It can also help maintain a healthy digestive system thanks to the 'friendly' bacteria produced by the fermented beans. The National Cancer Institute of Japan recently discovered that drinking miso regularly could cut the death rate from cancer, heart and liver disease, some of the biggest killers in Western society. Scientists believe a certain chemical found in the beans cuts off the blood supply to cancerous cells, starving them of nutrients. You can buy miso soup in dried form, like a packet soup, or as a paste from oriental food stores, larger supermarkets and major health food stores.