After Life: The Quest for Immortality
Since the beginning of recorded history, it seems, humankind has been searching for the Fountain of Youth. Tales of such a pool appear in legends across the globe as generation upon generation has set out to undo the ravages of time. And while some early explorers may have sought this pool in earnest, it remains largely a folkloric myth.
Today, a new quest to discover the 21st-century version of this fountain has been ignited: Exploring the possibilities of blood transfusions, digital avatars, tissue freezing, and experimental drugs, a modern generation of age- and death-phobic scientists and entrepreneurs are turning to technology in an attempt to live forever — or, at least, a lot longer.
While a fascination with youth has been a hallmark of the human species for some time, our outright aversion to aging and fear of death are more recent developments. This shift goes hand in hand with the rise of modern medicine: As the field improved, life expectancy grew, once-fatal diseases were cured, and death began to seem less like a looming inevitability and more like something to be warded off and treated like an illness.
Flash forward to today, and you’ll find that these ideals have evolved into full-on theories: More and more scientists are pushing to have aging officially classified as a disease, and an increasing number of splashy…
