Ela+Y’s+2016+OpEd+Article

Throughout the history of humanity, death has been a common end to all humans as well as all organisms. Today, with modern technology and modern science and engineering techniques, scientists are predicting that humans will live "well beyond 120 years" soon. In fact, scientist Aubrey De Grey, who is on the Palo Alto Longevity Prize Board, stated that ageing is just a "medical problem" that science can solve. Furthermore, he stated that the first person who would live to be 1,000 years old is probably already alive. De Grey has also founded the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (Sens) Research foundation, dedicated to increasing the human lifespan of which Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley billionaire is one of the biggest supporters and donators of. In addition to these developments, tech giant Google has formed the California Life Company (Calico) in order to reverse ageing and increase the lifespan. The fact that all these tech giants, Silicon Valley billionaires, and scientists are following and supporting this cause shows that the expansion of the human lifespan and even immortality will be a reality soon.
 * The Oldest Human Fate, Death, Is Being Changed**

These facts are immensely mind-blowing. Humanity's oldest species, the hominid, has existed for 6 million years, and the final evolutionary form: the homo sapien, has existed for 100,000 years. Ever since then, death has been an inevitable fate for us as well as all other living organisms- a solid fact that we could not change (until now). Death is one of the most fundamental aspects of the earth and has existed alongside life for millions of years. The fact that mere humans can alter this ancient fact of the earth is just amazing. It just serves to show how much humans have evolved and how much our scientific knowledge has expanded throughout the years. We, as a living species, are now able to alter a foundation of the earth and a societal belief that everyone automatically accepted from thousands of years (I'm not sure why? Maybe because it seemed impossible to "cure"). We are truly upon the crest of a humanitarian revolution in science and knowledge.

To wrap things up, I would like to end this post with two quotes from the revolutionary genius Thiel.

“You can accept [death], you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.” " There are many arguments against life extension, and they all strike me as extraordinarily bad: it’s not natural; there will be too many people; you will be bored. But I don’t think it would be boring at all.’ He pauses. ‘People always say you should live your life as if it were your last day. I think you should live your life as though it will go on for ever; that every day is so good that you don’t want it to end."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/11/-sp-live-forever-extend-life-calico-google-longevity