Life extension

 There are a lot of life extension enthusiasts out there these days. It's been progressively getting more and more media attention with advances in biotechnology and pharmacological sciences... The relatively recent mainstreaming of transhumanism really helped too. It's gotten to the point that there are full scale research institutions out there supported by prestigious universities and grants devoted to the research of the solution to the intriguing problem of death. Maybe it's driven by the life-like system's innate desire to live on. Maybe it's just a show of curiosity, an emotion that had never been too rational to begin with. 

Regardless of the validity of the concept of transhumanism in modern world, process of possibly halting senescence is an attractive prospect for the many. Only thing certain in life is death and people are looking toward scieces to possibly ward off that certainly, maybe forever. And there had been a lot of interesting developments in the area as well. Most of the research is being driven by new technologies of gene and protein discovery/extraction, and the latest discovery that came from a fungus of the Easter Islands might serve to demonstrate how some of the most intriguing researches in biological sciences might be made by simply studying the mechanisms inherent in one of the many variants of the living systems already on this planet as a product of years of evolution. 

The linked article is more about the effect of the chemical compound rapamycin on older mammals and its rather intriguing effect of prolonging lifespan of mammals from 9~13% even when administered late in life... I am not entirely too sure of the mechanism that allows the mammals to prolong their lifespan through injection/intake of the compound, since aging and effects of aging tend to be results of different innate and outer factors surrounding the organism. If it is possible to use a chemical compound to somewhat prolong natural lifespan of an animal even late in its life would it be possible that there is a definite central mechanism that runs the process of whole-body aging behind the show? Would it mean that it would be possible to prolong lifespans using such artificial compound therapy to prolong lifespan of human beings without resorting to a life time of controlled diet and full scale genetic modification? 

Rapamycin is apparently a compound that is already approved by the FDC and in use by the medical community for purposes of immunosuppressant therapy. Would that imply that the aging system built into mammals are somehow linked with the basic immune systems as well? Intake of rapamycin would lower the immune response of the subject, so there definitely is a chance that the subject will in fact die from infections despite increased base lifespan. It's something of a catch 22, and an interesting reminder of the folly of common conception in treating senescence as some kind of flaw or even a disease. If anyone is serious about artificially halting the processes of senescence we must consider the possibility that death might be a natural result of the kind of physical system we have for our body, just as our body requires us to eat and drink in order to sustain it for any significant lengths of time.