Looking for Immortality (51'24)

 

00:03         Becoming the perfect being, like Leonardo da Vinci imagined: stronger, more intelligent, free from disability and illness, and even death.

This dream is as old as humanity, but the rapid advances in science and technology promises to make it possible.

 

To live better, longer, some are willing to go very far.

These innovations could improve our daily lives but could also take a turn for the worse. 

And we're all concerned.

Are we already transforming ourselves past the point of no return?

 

00: 45      TITLE:  IN THE SEARCH OF THE IMMORTAL MAN – NB changed to Looking for Immortality.

Reporting by Jacqueline Dubuis and Corinne Portier

 

01:02       Vincent has been trapped in his body for seven years. For the most part, it no longer functions. He fell into a ravine while driving and miraculously survived. He slowly learned how to live, by regaining some motion in his forearms, and gained independence with technology invented by his occupational therapist at the Cité Radieuse, right above Morges. Seemingly simple things, but essential things.

 

01:37             Vincent Petit

 

Before, when I lived at the hospital, I only had a bell. I always felt like I was bothering the nurses to turn on the TV, change the channel, raise or lower the volume. "I'm too cold, lift up the blanket. "I'm too hot, pull it down. "I'm thirsty, bring me some water." And now, each feature is programmed. This means that from my bed, I can manage the TV by myself, and I can open and close my windows. I can turn off my bedside lamp by myself.  I select "house", then select "window", then "open", and it opens. I no longer feel like a constant nuisance, always asking someone to come and help me. That gets heavy after a while. I’m involved in my own comfort. I'm the main actor in my life. That's a beautiful thing. I love technology as a tool, because it has given me a lot of independence.

02:44

I use my mouth for the mouse. My fingers are paralyzed, so I can't use the keys or an ordinary mouse. I'm moving the mouse around. To click, I blow. There. I can write, draw...

I'm also very interested in research in technological advances at universities. I recently saw that they had invented a mechanical arm. They call it an exoskeleton. It's a sort of glove that you wear, like a sleeve. It links up to the nervous system via a helmet and electrodes, and it spots cerebral motor activity when you think of a movement. And just thinking about movement activates the muscles. These are hydraulic systems, which move your finger when you think about moving it or turn your arm when you think about turning it. When I saw that, I thought: "Awesome!" It means that I can dream to one day grasp a cup and easily drink from it, or even cut my own food. This gives me a lot of hope.

4:14         YouTube Sarif Industries

                 We’ll help you develop more talent than you could ever dream of having.

                 But what is feasible today? This video is a fiction, made to promote a video game. We showed it to an expert on exoskeletons in Zurich.

                 With our enhancements, we’ll help you and your families live the life you’ve always dreamed of having.

 

04:43       Roger Gassert, Associate Professor, Health and Technology Dept, EPFZ

 

This is far into the future. It would entail not only restoring our basic functions, but also enhancing them. It is presented in a rather impressive manner, but there are still many problems to solve before we reach this point. Exoskeletons are very complex because you have a robot directly interacting with a human. It’s a complicated process: on one hand, it has to follow movement, and support the it physiologically, and on top of that, it must be light, compact and ergonomic. And on the other hand, there is much complexity in terms of detecting what a person wishes to do, knowing what movement they wish to initiate and support the right movement at the right time.

 

05:43       Not crushing this plastic bottle when grabbing it with an exoskeleton is not so simple. Gestures that come to us naturally are actually quite difficult to reproduce. Will it one day be possible to move individual fingers and play the piano or write? In theory, it's possible if you wore a big backpack with lots of motors, which would only make it more complex. We must be realistic. If a person suffers from brain damage and can no longer move individual fingers or open and close their hand, their main goal is simply to hold an object. It's unrealistic to think that this person could one day play the piano. We're at a point where we can perform very basic functions and that is useful for a handicapped person. But we're very far from being able to reproduce human capacities. And enhancing them isn't even in the picture yet.

 

06:51       Things aren't progressing as quickly as we think. A new international competition, launched in 2016 by Zurich’s Institute of Technology, wants to speed them up. Cybathlon is a sort of bionic Olympic Games, in which researchers from around the world compete. The goal is to improve the lives of people with disabilities, thanks to technology.

 

07:18       The most futuristic discipline: the brain-machine interface. Quadriplegic athletes must pilot, using only their thoughts, people on a screen. Their intentions are captured in the form of electrical impulses in the skull, then decoded, and transformed into movements on the screen. In our day to day lives, this set-up would allow us to move objects. A victory for the EPFL team, who they are raking in gold medals.

07:47       Further on down, the exoskeleton challenge looks like a miracle. Paraplegic athletes are racing. Amongst them is Silke Pan, an ex-acrobat. She's been in a wheel chair since her fall 11 years ago. She never dreamed she would stand again. She joined EPFL's exoskeleton team three months before the competition. Just three months to learn how to pilot the modular robot that carries her.

                 Those are good memories.

                 -I’d never seen these videos.

                 -Me neither.

08:26       Silke Pan,   athlete

                 The Cybathlon was the result of a long and intense period. We started from nothing and had three months to deliver a good performance. I’d never used an exoskeleton before so I needed to learn from scratch: how to stay up, walk without any assistance, and then complete the obstacles.

 

08:53

                 I'm pressing on it! It says: "Connecting". No! It's "searching"! Everything was going well until the machine got stuck and took over. It says it's "searching". Before reaching the stairs, there was a real interaction between human and machine. Everything had already been set up on the machine, so it was up to me to make a difference. It was up to me to pilot it perfectly and to make it work. It's true that, since I was stuck on the stairs, suddenly, the machine took over the controls.

                

09:37

                 I was back in this body, with my handicap, and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even get out of the exoskeleton by myself. I couldn't change positions. I was stuck in an upright position, and that was it. I was completely powerless. The illusion, the euphoria that I felt before, of being the master of the universe, completely disappeared. When I found myself with my feet on the ground, I thought: "I am paraplegic, and that is a machine, "and I depend on it to do these things."

 

10:17

                 Though Silke is a handbike champion who is used to competing, that day, the exoskeleton stopped her. After kicking off to a strong start, she finished in 4th place.

10:33

After nine years, Silke has become used to living with her body folded in half, without any control or sensation below the waist. Discovering this machine reawakened the hope inside of her.

11:03       Silke Pan,    athlete

        With the exoskeleton, I really had this sensation of having been given a new body. Not my body before the accident, but a different body. It made me so happy. At the same time, I also felt a little disappointed, because I was already imagining myself doing cartwheels and dance steps, how I was even going to jump on the trampoline, a dangerous jump... But that's just how I am. But it was all in my imagination. I was completely disillusioned by the fact that it was hard, even for me.

11:45

                 For two and a half years now, Silke has been regularly training with the EPFL team. Her progress is spectacular. She is now able to get into her exoskeleton all by herself. She has mastered the machine, which has now become lighter, more manageable, more stable, and that's just the beginning.

 

12:17

                 The motors are battery-operated in the back.

12:54 Tristan Vouga, PHD student EPFL, designer of the Twiice exoskeleton,

                 Today, we've got a basic functional exoskeleton. It's extremely simple. It works just like a bicycle. If you pull on a lever, the exoskeleton will act in a predictable manner. If you press on a bike's brakes, it'll stop. That's it. Unless the breaks are broken. An exoskeleton's button makes it takes a step. Nothing else happens. The user has full control over the entire thing. You can imagine its features becoming more complex in the future and the exoskeleton being able to detect any arising dangers, like detecting a stair that is higher than the others, or a hole, which it can't currently do. We've figured out how to keep a person upright so that they simply need crutches to stay standing.

  13:18

                 Silke Pan, athlete

                 Sometimes, I think: "If I were in an exoskeleton, I could clean more thoroughly... I could go to the supermarket and not have to wait around for someone to pass by to say: "Would you hand me some eggs from the top shelf? "There. To the right. No, the left. Thank you." That happens almost daily. I would be a lot more independent.

                 I'd like to try an exercise. We'll walk together.

                 OK.

                  You'll simply walk using one crutch.

                 The robot and I are one. We're like one robotic human being. And the robot makes us a bigger person, enhanced, better...

                 - Is that strange to you?

                 - It was, at first. But you get used to it.

                 We'll need to train more often, but it's a good start. Yes.

 

14:31

                 Seeing Silke walk is quite miraculous. Less than 1,000 handicapped people have daily access to an exoskeleton worldwide. It's very expensive, as it is still in the experimental stage. But this physical link between human and machine even has its creators asking questions. Who is in control? The robot or the one wearing it? Should we set limits?

 

14:54 Tristan Vouga, PHD student EPFL, designer of the Twiice exoskeleton  

                 Of course, as researchers, we always ask ourselves what implications this technology could have on society. It isn't our responsibility to limit what new technologies come out, but rather to inform the public, to make people and society aware, before the decision is made to accept or reject technology. Of course, one might wonder if people truly understand and would use the technology for its true purpose. If society says: "Exoskeletons are out of the question. It is unthinkable for a human to be confronted with or in contact with a machine in such a close and intimate manner", we would stop immediately.

 

 

15:49

                 Beyond ethical issues, the idea of a robotized human can be frightening. Hollywood has already anticipated the question.

 

15:58 Excerpt from Robocop (Real. José Padilha - 2014)       

                 Robocop is first and foremost human.

                 We'll put a man in a machine.

                 - Where am I?

                 - There was an explosion.

                 -You're at the hospital.

                 -You say you can save him. I want to know what kind of life he would lead.

 

16:15 .

                            After science fiction comes reality. Other versions of exoskeletons exist, though they aren't for the handicapped, but rather to heighten human capacities. Especially those of soldiers.

 

16'33       Thun, BE

                 In Thoune, a special department in Armasuisse, the supplier of military equipment to the confederation, deals with technology and has agreed to meet with us. (Alternate) In Thoune, there is a special technology department at Armausuisse, supplier of military equipment to the Swiss government. They agreed to meet with us.

 

 

                 This engineer studied at EPFL and examines new developments  in civil research to find potential threats or new defensive weapons. Exoskeletons are amongst these new technologies.

16'55 Quentin Ladetto,       Director of Prospective Technology Research, Armasuisse

Exoskeletons have started to come out on the public market for rehabilitation purposes. In the military world, we've already done several tests, especially for carrying a great amount of weight so that soldiers will tire less easily on the field. I'm talking loads that vary between 50 and 70 kilos

Subtitle: Advertising, Revision Military

Military If he needs to shoot, for example, our experiments have shown that the target is more likely acquired than if he were to be tired or in bad shape. From the battlefront to the homefront, we're building a world where science fiction becomes science reality.

"From the battle front to the home front, we're building a world where science fiction becomes science reality"

17:45

                 The Canadian company Revision Military supplied the exoskeletons currently being tested by Swiss special forces.

17:59

                 Supersoldiers are becoming a reality today and the enhancements aren't purely physical.

 

18 :10

We want soldiers to have quicker learning capacities when learning to use new weapons, and to sleep less, while remaining rested and alert. There are certain pharmaceutical products, or simply caffeine. How could we raise the dosage so that the person would stay awake a little bit longer? On the other hand, there are all the studies that are currently being done to better understand the brain. The idea is that, by stimulating certain areas at certain times, we'll be able to learn more rapidly or have a better long-term memory. Will this only be for military use? I don't think so. It's progressing very, very quickly.

 

19:00

Caffeine for energy, stimulating the brain for memory, these treatments aren't for healing but for enhancing capacities or to preventing their decline. The army isn't the only concerned party.

 

We are all potentially interested.

 

Staying in shape without worrying about health... In short: preventing the aging process thanks to scientific progress. For some time now, a new type of medication been flourishing on the market. Not covered by insurance, it is reserved to certain clients. At 56, Maïté Gétaz has already been using it for a while.

 

19:36       Maïté Gétaz,

                

                 About 20 years ago, my mother, who is Brazilian and was in Brazil at the time, was very ill and she called me up on the phone: "I've discovered a marvelous kind of medication called 'orthomolecular medicine'."

 

                 "Orthomolecular"? Molecules? What does that mean?”

                

                 "You need to try it, because it's preventative. It works on missing elements in the body, or sees if there is a surplus of these elements, which could cause health issues."

 

20:17

 

                 Maïté Gétaz found the doctor she needed in French-speaking Switzerland. Doctor Marcel Capt, who studied anti-aging in the USA.

 

20:30      

                 There. Remember, this is a harmless procedure.

 

20:34

                 He specializes in the use of spectrophotometers, a device which analyzes the state of cells by pressing on the palm of the hand. More than determining vitamins and trace metals, the idea is to detect toxic heavy metals which poison our systems, and which must be cleaned out. The tool was developed in the 1970s for Russian astronauts.

20:58       Dr. Marcel Capt, ortho-molecular and anti-ageing medicine 

                 Let's look at the heavy metals. That's what interests me because your level of heavy metals was very high. Your aluminum levels are still very high. Silver is very high. You have very high levels of cadmium and mercury. It seems , from what I remember, the levels of heavy metals have increased. The silicon is a bit low.

 

                 This is preventative medicine. It predicts and anticipates. A person might feel just fine, they may already be out of balance. This is called the pre-existing condition. The person feels fine, but no longer has the necessary and sufficient defenses to protect themselves from various illnesses.

                 -This treatment lasts for three months, right?

                 -Yes, three months.

                 We've noticed patients are increasingly concerned about their future, and their future health.. That's what they want. They want to grow old but stay in good health.

                 Is anti-aging medicine a medical discipline in itself?

                 Yes, but it is not yet recognized by insurance companies. Anti-aging medicine, or orthomolecular medication, as we also call it, dates back to 1970. Linus Pauling, a chemist, introduced it. It is especially popular in the United States. But in France and Switzerland, unfortunately, it isn't recognized by insurers as a medication that can be prescribed. They don't officially recognize it.

                 -Super. Ah! Yes. My God. OK. Super. Great. Thank you. See you later. Thanks. Ciao.

22:45

                 Aside from algae, trace metals, and the vitamins prescribed by Dr. Capt, Maïté Gétaz lives off of organic vegetables grown by her son. This is part of the preventative lifestyle she has chosen.

23:00 Maïté Gétaz

They say: "You must eat this, eat that..." And then they change their minds after new research. It's all very temporary, it seems to me. So I took all of this information, and said: "OK. "In what context can I use a bit of everything?"

Do you think it is your responsibility to care for your own health?

Yes, very much, because if I don't take care of my health, who is? Only I know how my body functions, and if something is wrong.

23:37

                 Can this anti-aging medication, based on vitamin supplements, truly prevent illnesses linked with aging as its name indicates? Geriatricians are rather wary about it.

 

23:51 Prof. Christophe Bola, head of geriatrics, CHUV  

                 Anti-aging medication is really a quasi-utopic dream of stopping the aging process or even completely reversing it through interventions, which are based on questionable, or even non-existent, scientific research. Sometimes... there is a case for it. We've seen interventions that have been beneficial but which have had a certain amount of side effects and risks. Finding a balance between the two is the problem. There is still a lot of hope for antioxidants. We know that one main threat to cells is the accumulation of toxic substances, or oxidants. So we thought: "If we add substances to catch the oxidants, we could prolong cell-life."

                  Many substances, such as vitamin C and vitamin E, have been tested. Sometimes, at the laboratory, we'll have positive and encouraging results, but when we start testing on humans, we don't attain the same benefits. For example, with vitamin E, we've even observed deleterious effects which have increased the number of risks, especially cardiovascular risks. Se we really took a step back and said: "Despite our having high hopes, we aren't seeing it on a daily basis.” The balance between its potential benefits and its risks unfortunately leans to the wrong side. I asked a geriatrician about it, and he said: "Absolutely nothing has been proven "in clinical experiments on vitamins, "hormones, and trace metals..."

 

I spoke to a geriatrician, I asked him what he thought of it and he told me that nothing is proven, on vitamins, hormones, anti oxidants ... What do think?

 

25:27 Dr. Marcel Capt, ortho-molecular and anti-ageing medicine         

- I don't agree. Many medical studies have proven - I can name a few, especially those by WHO - that we all have imbalances and lack different trace metals, minerals, and vitamins. It all depends on age, gender, genes, and a person's environment. These different factors make us more or less imbalanced.

 

26:06

                 There are two schools of medicine. Conventional medicine, available on the market, is clinically tested with double-blinded, structured, long, and costly experiments. The other school is proactive and mostly uses supplements and observational studies. It is seen as the solution of the future.

 

 

26:28       Prof. Christophe Bola, head of geriatrics, CHUV

                 What has changed today is that for many people, this type of approach is now accessible.

                 There are also societal challenges, because we have a mass of elderly people, to which I belong, who will be, in the next 20 or 30 years, on the aging market. There are risks of addiction, and risks to our health systems. Indeed, it would be wise to say: “What can we do to anticipate and avoid having a massive group of ill people, with various illnesses, who are dependent and can no longer make decisions, and have no descendants to take care of them?" This is the situation we're facing today. This will drive us to take this approach to the front of the market because we're all the same, in a way... If we're given the option of being healthy with old age, with less injuries and pain, of staying independent, and being mentally alert, I think we'd all say "yes".

27:47

                 In California, where health is synonymous with exercise, organic products, and technology, staying young is a must.

28:00  

The idea of slowing the aging process, or even stopping it, and reversing it, and becoming younger with age, is progressively gaining ground.

Alternate: Some take things very far. Beyond slowing down the aging process, the idea of stopping it, or even becoming younger with age, is gaining ground.

 

 

28:13      

                 For the past 3 years, at the end of each summer, its supporters have been meeting in San Diego, near the Mexican border. They have created a festival for radical life extension. RAADfest is a mix of scientific lectures and a fairground for anti-aging products. All kinds of alternative medicine are presented. In the public is Brian, a 60-year-old engineer, who traveled 800 km to be there. He had already attended last year.

28:55 Brian Shinmoto, Raadfest 2018 contestant

I wanted to find out health solutions for myself. I’m suffering from high blood pressure, but also for other people. I know somebody who is having heart problems.  And I know these kinds of things. Uh, sort of the, anti-aging is the byproduct of what I’m trying to learn about. More I can learn about how, perhaps the healthier I can get, perhaps I can avoid early death, things like that. SO it goes hand in hand.

 

-Alright, you ready?

 

-Okay

 

-Is it a problem to you, that most of the therapies haven’t been clinically tested and agreed by the FDA?

 

-No, it doesn’t bother me so much, only because a lot of the things, some of the things I tried personally, or for relatives and friends, I’ve seen that they work. It’s not been approved by any agency. I think there is a time, especially when one is ill, where what choice do you have? You try something or you don’t. If you don’t try something, we know where you’re heading.

 

 

                

30:21

                 Raymond came from Australia to attend RAADfest. Between two conferences, he uses this time to get a NAD+ transfusion, an enzyme which slows down the aging process. He doesn't see how this might be surprising.

 

 

30:42         Raymond D Palmer, anti-ageing technology researcher

 

There is a disconnect, where you can try to sell health foods, and vitamins, and everyone will buy those, and will believe those. But if you tell people you can have certain vitamins or enzymes or compounds for longevity, to extend human life, a lot of people are still thinking that this is science fiction, that uhh, surely that can’t be right, that must, that kind of technology is still a thousand years away. Well, it’s actually not.

 

I take about 12 pills a day. I take metformin, which is a prescription drug. It’s usually used for diabetics, but it’s been shown to be excellent for longevity, so I take that. I take resveratrol, I take NAD, I take pterostilbene, I take curcumin, pqq, I won’t even tell you what that stands for, the word is like this long. But, yeah, I take a bunch of pills. And each pill specifically targets a pathway we know causes ageing and if we can stay ahead of every piece of biological decay that comes our way, then yeah, we can certainly extend human life by not just decades, but possibly hundreds of years.

 

 

 

31:52      

                 His recipe: many, many antioxidants. And one conviction: that aging is the result of dysfunctions and can be fixed, one by one. This theory, according to geneticist Denis Duboule, doesn't correspond to our current knowledge.

32:08       Prof. Denis Duboule, Professor University of Geneva and EPFL

                 The problem is that our body isn't built like a car. They're often compared for having a motor, a direction, etc., but it isn't the right metaphor to adopt because each part isn't independent from the whole. The aging problem is a system problem. It isn't a problem with one of the parts. You could say: "Let's replace an arm, a leg, an eye..." We can already do that. We can replace teeth, replace this, and that... But the problem is that we continue to age with these new parts, for the whole body ages.

32:48

                 Yet radically slowing down aging, and stopping it entirely, is now a new frontier to conquer for the giants in Silicon Valley. Since 2013, Google launched its own subsidiary, Calico, the Californian Life Company, and has gone all-out. Worldwide renowned researchers were sought out to invent future medication for longevity. But they won't appear at RAADfest, nor will they answer our questions. Calico's researchers are very secretive. This hasn't stopped one festival speaker from talking about it on stage.

 

 

33:21       Bill Faloon, Director, Life Extension Foundation

                 And Calico is putting in over $1 billion to develop anti-aging drugs. Hey, this is huge! To develop anti-aging drugs, they’re doing this, but they’re nine years away. Nine years away from the first drug ever being approved by the FDA. We don’t have that kind of time to wait. We cannot wait for the FDA to approve these drugs. 

 

33:43

                 Waiting for the real medication might be too late. This is the leitmotiv of Bill Faloon's, 64. The ex-funeral director became a multimillionaire by selling supplements. He's invested his fortune in anti-ageing research. In the meantime, he recommends people take medication, though not for their original uses. Anti-diabetics, immunosuppressive for transplants, and even chemotherapy, in small doses.

 

33:15       Bill Faloon, Director, Life Extension Foundation

I encourage people to self-experiment, under a physician’s supervision. So far, we haven’t seen side effects that are serious. So I do encourage people to do that. They’re all part of the experimental group, they are going to engage in these studies, based on bloodwork, follow up bloodwork, and we’re going to know within the next twelve to twenty four months, how well this is working.

They are all part of experimental groups,  which are based on blood tests that they do at the beginning and then in the course of treatment, and within 12 to 24 months we will see how it works.

-Does the FDA say anything about this?

-Oh, the FDA, doesn’t approve of any of this. But we can’t wait for the FDA to get around to that. We have 5,000 people dying in the United States every day of a degenerative illness. And we know of ways to slow this process, to slow this down, and now know ways of at least partially reversing generative aging.

34:56

                 With what proof? That is the question. We asked a very important figure in longevity studies, Aubrey de Grey, hired from Cambridge University by Silicon Valley. This doctor in computer sciences is self-taught in the biological aging process, devoting 20 years of research towards it, when he isn't travelling the planet to raise funds.

35:21 Dr. Aubrey de Grey, researcher in the biology of aging         

                 Proof is always a strong word in science, in technology. Any technology, when it’s ambitious, and pioneering, always go through overcoming obstacle after obstacle, and the only so called proof that one might have, the nearest thing to proof, is the intuition, the gut feeling, the experts like me who are looking at the details of what has already been done, and what needs to be done, and you just get a sense of how difficult the remaining hurdles are. But of course we know that that translates into extreme uncertainty about the time frame.

35:57      

                 An uncertain time frame, proof judged to be superfluous in the name of innovation, is all rather surprising in a scientific conference. But it doesn't seem to shock anyone here.

36:08 TC: TV5 cut

                

I want to welcome Liz Parrish to and also applaud her for the courageous work she’s been doing, because she has been doing self-experimentation. 

-Thank you Bill. That was amazing.

36:22

She's the festival's heroine, head of her own biotechnological startup company.

36:27       Liz Parrish, Director, Bio Viva        

                 Right now, we’re working on health genes, but in the future we might be genetically engineering you for where you want to live, what you want to do for a living, and how you like to spend your free time.

36:40

                 Genetic modification for personal benefit is Liz Parrish's promise for the future. This entrepreneur, who admits to having no scientific education, has decided to lead by example by being the first human to take on genetic therapy as an anti-aging treatment. To do this, she gets telomerase injections, an enzyme which extends telomeres. Telomeres are sequences at each end of a chromosome, indicated in red, which shorten over time indicating our biological age. Extending them could prolong our lives. This is the 45-year-old woman's goal, who has taken on an experiment only done on rats. Being illegal in the USA, the procedure is done in Colombia.

37:30

                 So when we did the before analysis of the telomeres, they were actually unusually short. So the average age of my telomeres, when we took the first test, were at the age of about sixty five. A year after taking the therapy, they were the average age of a fourty five year old, and then just recently we took a telomere test again, and they were around the age of thirty two.

                 -How do you feel?

                 -Well I feel fantastic, but what we learned is we have a long ways to go. So we don’t know how much gene therapy to give a body. We really don’t know how to measure the hallmarks of ageing yet, and that is what our company is working on now.

38:09

                 The experiment, which also helps promote her startup, is strongly opposed by the scientific community.

38:19

                 Prof. Denis Duboule, Professeur, Univérsité de Genève et EPFL

                 Each is free to do what they wish, as long as it doesn't harm others. If this woman wants to inject telomerase into her body, let her. However, there are issues regarding this experiment. First, in order to arrive at a conclusion in these types of tests, they must also be done on cohorts, that is to say, an array of patients who all have the same pathologies, to have a statistical reality, to know if it actually works or not. Secondly, telomerase is an enzyme, a protein fabricated by a gene, which is implicated in a great number of diseases. So by injecting someone with telomerase, there is a great risk of developing, for example, a series of cancers. On the other hand, our knowledge of the mechanisms used by telomerase is essential to reverse it. In short, we'll be able to treat certain cancers when we understand how to block this mechanism. And that's another problem.

39:27      

                 These arguments haven't deterred the conviction that taking risks is necessary in scientific progress and that eternal youth is within reach. This has been Jim and Bernie's dream for decades. They are the festival's organizers, which attracted 1,000 participants last year, and makes them feel that their dream will become reality.

 

39:43       James Strole, co-founder of Raadfest    

                 Isn’t this an amazing time together?

39:48

                 They are the festival's organizers, which attracted 1,000 participants last year, and makes them feel that their dream will become reality.

 

40:03       James Strole, co-founder of Raadfest    

                 Some of the top scientists are saying a year from now, we’re going to have something, that’s remarkably going to extend our lives maybe fifty, hundred years, hundred and fifty years. Could be a year away, could be two years away. I think for sure, O.K., within the next two to five years, we will have something that will remarkably extend our lives.

                 -Yeah

                 -I see a world where nobody dies, I see a beautiful world. And we see ageing as a disease. But it’s a curable disease. Because Bernie is 82, I am turning 70 next year. We feel better than ever.

                 -And what would look like, a world if nobody dies?

                 -You know, this is a question that always comes up. But there is a lot of space in this world, and besides I think as we go along, people are going to become smarter, they aren’t going to have so many kids, they’re going to find out there are more interesting things to do in their lives, and so the population, look that’s not going to happen real quickly anyway. Overpopulation, I really can’t see it.

41:09      

                 Infinitely prolonged lives and no children. This perspective might give some the shivers. It also diverts humans from a fundamental question: death. To philosopher Jean-Michel Besnier, who has long been interested in the consequences of new technology, this is the weakness in the quest for immortality.

41:32

                 Humans have always wanted to be immortal, but human dignity comes with accepting death. Indeed, our animal natures have always loathed our own demise, and this is very natural, in a way. So what Western tradition has invented is eternity by saying: "You, humans who are mortal, you can become eternal by staying in the memories of others through your works, through your words, and your actions." You must die to be timeless. You must die. It's very apparent that we're in complete regression when we say: "Technology will allow us to satisfy our animal natures by rendering us immortal. Who cares about spiritual nature? Spirituality is for the devout. Or for philosophers. But we, thanks to our technology, "we'll be able to kill death."

42:57

                

                 Ray Kurzweil, a director of Google, has this exact idea. Genius to some, dreamer to others, this 71-year-old futurist engineer invented the first voice recognition program, and swallows 100 pills a day to ward off aging. He is convinced that we'll soon beat death by downloading our brains onto computers, the final stage in the evolution of humanity. Ray Kurzweil calmly explains his idea to the festivalgoers. He is the guest of honor.

43:38

                 People, fifty years from now, will think it remarkable, people in 2018 actually went a day without backing up their mind file. You wouldn’t think of doing that with your smartphone, or any of your digital information. And more and more of our lives actually reflect it that way. These are brain extenders, to some extent. I mean who could do their work, or do their jobs, or keep their health without the brain extenders we already have. We are going to extend the neo cortex in the Cloud, that’s a 2030s scenario, so that’s the fourth bridge to radical life extension.

44:21

                 And 2030 is just around the corner. It sends shivers down your spine, even for non-believers. For Ray Kurzweil presents the cell phone, an object so familiar to us, as a first step towards the fusion between humans and machines. This is Google's big dream, as well as that of other Silicon Valley giants. But not everyone feels this is a dream. At the prestigious University of Oxford, one organization was formed to study the risks we run with technological mutation. The Future of Humanity Institute was founded in 2005 by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher, physician, and mathematician.

45:12

                 We know that huge impacts on social societies can follow from technological innovations. Biotechnology, synthetic technology is gonna be a source of major risk, I think machine intelligence, is another. Those would be two near the top that we can currently see. I think there might be others with molecular technology. We’re developing increasingly powerful technologies. But it does seem that with increasing power, comes increasing possibility of messing things up in a serious way. If you look at say, the history of nuclear history, when people first figured out,       that it would be possible to cause a nuclear chain reaction, this very interesting physicist called Leo Zilard, realised that that would make it possible to build a bomb within a few years. He tried to go around and persuade his colleagues to not publish about this because they thought of this as just interesting science. We need to share everything. He saw that this would actually result in a bomb product within a few years and that Nazi Germany and others would try to race to get the bomb and he had this foresight. And it didn’t work, and maybe there are lessons we can learn there. If something similar comes up, can we be confident that now the world would have the ability to coordinate and I’m not so sure we can be so confident about that.

49:09

                 Nuclear history proves that progress can pose a permanent threat for mankind. We should be cautious. In the face of so much technology, of promises, and of warnings, what do we believe in? Is this far in the future, or should we begin to question this progress now, which could either help us or destroy us? Should we question the fate of humanity?

47:29

                 I know that there is a plan, in future exoskeletons, to integrate small computer chips into the body, inside the body. Crossing the body's boundaries with foreign electronic bodies... I find it problematic, ethically. I don't want to become quote unquote, a kind of "technological monster", half-human, half-machine, no longer in control. In the end, technology is a very complex thing, because it brings us comfort in our daily lives. Cell phones, in my case wheelchairs, remote controls... But there is a negative side to it: we might take things too far and lose our humanity. It isn't only about technology. We need to socialize, we need to interact with other individuals, and that counts for a lot. Losing my humanity frightens me. I see that many people like this Vincent. Quadriplegic Vincent in a wheelchair, who does theater, who makes people laugh, is funny. I'm somebody. Why go searching for more?