In the immortal germ line of human beings - that is, the eggs that sit in the ovaries - they actually sit there in a state of suspended animation for up to 50 years in the life of each woman.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A young woman in her teens has about 300,000 eggs in her ovaries. By the time she is menopausal, none are left.
Women of child-bearing age steadily run out of eggs by the continuous process of cell death. While reading a copy of the 'Guardian' carefully from cover to cover, a normal woman will have lost on average two eggs - while, typically, a normal man will have made 70,000 new sperm.
When sperm and egg unite, something goes from inanimate to animate. It is life.
You see, every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.
I see lots of women having beautiful children later in life. And, if not, just freeze your eggs!
Perhaps genes did regulate the aging process. Perhaps different organisms had different life spans because a universal regulatory 'clock' was set to run at different speeds in different species.
Human lifespan used to be 30 years, 25 years. But there's no basic, fundamental reason why it has to be short.
I could be with a woman in a bed, for weeks even, and it would seem to me like three seconds. Or 300 years.
Once DNA acquires the ability to persist forever, the carriers become disposable. Essentially, our bodies are designed to last long enough to reproduce.
The fact is that nothing in gerontology even comes close to fulfilling the promise of dramatically extended lifespan, in spite of bold claims to the contrary that by now should sound familiar.