Biologically Immortal Humans

Before I begin my rebuttals, I would like to point out that my opponent did not adhere to the agreed upon definition of immortality: exempt from death. He has attempted to prove that we can and we must make our cells ageless, without attempting to correct the definition in either round. He has provided no reason at all why: a) Immortality is achievable b) Immortality is reasonable Rebuttals/Defence: Although my opponent has presented no clear arguments, his attempt to address everything I said indicates that I may have managed to address all his points in arguments 1,2 and 3 of my last post. I will be defending my arguments and rebuttals now. My rebuttals/Defence will address the following points: 1) DNA cannot be perfect. 2) Assuming we could be immortal it would be immoral. 3) Assuming we made all humans immortal, life would perish. 1: DNA will eventually degrade no matter what. The existence of Telomerase merely fixes one of the issues. When DNA is reproduced, there are flaws along the sequence every now and then, most of the time, repair enzymes identify these mismatched base pairs and fix them. However, nothing is perfect and every now and then a faulty pair is let through. When the DNA is reproduced again this flaw is transferred to the daughter strain and eventually builds into a mutation. [1] The cell may be able to live longer due to the Telomerase, but it will still die. A far cry from my opponent’s claim of immortality. Now, I would like to examine a very curious statement from my opponent that undermines all his arguments: "It is obvious that the maintenance system is self-maintaining." No, the system cannot maintain itself, photolyase for example requires the cell to die before it can regain its electron, and there are more flaws than enzymes, which is why skin cancer is becoming an increasingly tragic problem. "The system is physical, in that any degradation is the result of physics." This is a concession by my opponent. He has admitted that natural wear and strain degrades the cellular system to death. In the last part of my case, my opponent attacks me for failing to take his burden of proof. "What my opponent fails to state is how this genetic feature can be adapted into humans won’t work." BoP is on Pro to show how it is possible. Complete phoenix-like rebirth is something not physically possible in mammals. The Turritopsis nutricula grows from birth to full maturity to birth again; the mechanisms involved cannot be applied to anything other than this jellyfish. 1.1 Removal of the ability of apoptosis leads to severe mutation and malfunction of cellular systems. Apoptosis is a safety measure employed by cells to ensure the well-being of the body as a whole. When a cell has been damage or degraded to a dangerous level, it kills itself and engulfs itself in materials to identify it to the body as a waste product. [2] Bcl-2 can be used in prevention of apoptosis to block cytochrome c release from mitochondria. [3] If the cell is allowed to live on in its damage state however, it becomes cancerous, and kills the host body. If Apoptosis is not removed however, the cell will die due to DNA flaws anyways. 1.1.1 Degradation of the cells leads to overall destruction of the organism. Let's grant my opponent his wish and say that time freezes when a cell is at the bare minimum order required for life (no matter how absurd) The cell will still work, but the body will not be able to function in a way appropriate to survive. The person will just be able to breathe shallowly and do nothing else. After a while, the muscle fibres will simply just tear themselves apart and the body will appear to fall to bits slowly. 1.1.2 My opponent here provides a reference in rebuttal to my point and practically says: Here, this website refutes your argument. The actual argument connected to his source has already been refuted and I do not like it when people say that a source refutes me. 1.1 Bones are not made of cells. [1] They are made by cells, and then the template is filled with calcium and phosphorous. 1.2 Activating telomerase in every cell of an adult human is unconscionable. It needs to be done on babies, which is immoral as I argued before. 1.3 I did not make a straw man; I made a valid argument which my opponent failed to refute. How can I make a straw man if I don't know my opponents arguments? Straw men are grossly simplified misrepresentations of an argument. I didn't do that. This argument stands 1.4 we have never experimented like this on a human ever before, Pro cannot say that we know what we are doing. We don't. Summary of argument 1: When cells have degraded sufficiently, they die. If you stop them from being able to die, they turn cancerous, to stop them from turning cancerous you must nullify or remove the cell's Telomerase, which will cause its DNA to fray, then die. This is classic paper, scissors, rock. You cannot immortalise a cell. 2: Creating reasons to fight are immoral my opponent concedes that war is inevitable under his scheme, but justifies it by saying wars happen anyways. My contention is that wars are caused, and are not spontaneous. So it follows that if we take out the reasons why people could fight, then there would be no more fighting. Likewise, if we take out this major temptation for WW3, it may never happen, or will be delayed. It is pure rubbish to claim that we might as well go ahead with war since its inevitable anyways. My opponent's reasoning disagrees with his next argument, I will address it soon. Wars only occur due to a specific reason, and my opponent concedes that it is morally ok to provide a reason to go to war. I do not see how this is moral. My opponent did not do much to refute my reasoning; he just says that since it will happen anyways, we might as well fight now. This is the same as saying: Since Earth will die one day; we might as well kill it now. A completely morally horrific argument that cannot be called moral at all. 3: The world cannot support immortal humans my opponent attempts to refute this with a single point: We will be pushed to colonise other planets. There are a few reasons why this won't work: a) we don't have enough resources to send millions into space. b) We don't have enough technology to start a colony off earth. But what we can do is NOT allow people to be immortal. Even though immortality is impossible. My opponent's arguments have these main flaws: 1) Telomerase will allow the cell to replicate without losing DNA, but the DNA will continue to degrade (the cause of aging) and eventually lead to apoptosis (Cellular suicide). 2) He has conceded that degrading will occur due to the results of physics "any degradation is the result of physics." So cells cannot be immortal if they are ruined by the environment. 3) Biological immortality cannot be achieved when many parts of the body is not made of cells. These parts, like the bones, will eventually cease to function at a strength appropriate to support the human 4) Biological immortality requires currently established scientific laws to be wrong, 3rd law of thermodynamics: Entropy must increase. [4] 5) my opponent failed to justify points 2 and 3. Concluding: The ribonucloidprotein Telomerase will enable a cell to replicate with DNA a constant length, but cannot stop it degrading to apoptosis. Everything else in the body will degrade as well regardless. Activation of Telomerase or negation of Apoptosis will not stop a cell from dying. My opponent’s arguments have been thoroughly refuted and disproven. He has given no reason to believe that humans can be immortal; his BoP has not been touched by him. This debate concludes in my favour. Thankyou Pro for a very interesting discussion. [1] http://www.nature.com... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org...