The human race has a problem or two to solve before it can lay claim to "immortality."

For example:

1. The 20th century brought us the "war to end all wars," followed by a "lost generation" that essentially turned to boozing and high living as a way of escaping the loss of joy and the mass death of trench warfare; it brought us the mechanized warfare of WWII, by which devastation and death rained from the skies upon countless thousands of innocent people, the vision of a Third Reich and mass slaughter in ovens of an innocent religious group, from which thousands recoiled in horror but were powerless either to stop or to comprehend how such things were possible, and nuclear death that engulfed massive numbers of Japanese innocents, from which a mass stockpiling of such devastating weapons by the world's superpowers ensued, with follow-on proliferation now having reached into the hands of megalomaniacal dictators whose main claim to previously unthinkable levels of power will lie mainly in having developed such weapons and in being prepared potentially to use them, all followed by a "beat generation" that turned to drugs and other forms of escapism, and by a "hip generation" that did the same and by subsequent generations that are still groping in the dark, so to speak, to make sense of it all while somehow hoping that mankind will improve dramatically in its quest to achieve peace and tranquility notwithstanding all the sorry history to the contrary in ages past. As technology enables us to develop ever-greater forms of lethality, does anyone see "immortality" in his future even if one could live appreciably beyond the limit of 100 years that serves today as a pretty good measure of when the very few remaining representatives of a generation will in themselves be on the verge of dying. Yes, we all hope for solutions but let us see evidence of such solutions in action before laying claim to immortality.

2. The obvious problem that, when one reaches much beyond the age of 90, he begins to "fall apart." I know that is not a scientific phrase, but it accurately describes what happens when senility, dementia, and other mental problems attack the mind, when the body shrinks and most muscle mass is lost, when the skin deteriorates, and when cancer, congestive heart failure (or other heart disease), strokes, arterial, vascular, and blood problems, or any one of countless other illnesses attack and eventually overwhelm the body. And when there is no obvious illness, there is a winding down, a dying in one's sleep, a passing away owing to "natural causes." It would be one thing if some or most of these illnesses has been cured and scientists were able to say, "we are close and in a short while we will solve the remaining problems." It is quite another when science has not the slightest idea, based on today's knowledge, of how to solve even some of this onslaught of lethal conditions that affects us all at life's end.

3. The pure force of random accidents. This may not mean much if a lifespan is measured by a century. Multiply that by several centuries (assuming the other problems could be solved) and, in time, the odds will catch up with most people. Thus, solving the aging problem still leaves unsolved the cases of accidental, traumatic death, etc. that has never been a trivial problem at any point in history.

This piece, to my mind, projects fairly extreme forms of wish fulfillment in assuming that modern science is anywhere close to holding the "key" to solving any of this, much less in speculating that the answers lie in analyzing the genes of the little girl featured in this piece.

I understand the fascination of believing that potentially vast amounts of human betterment might result from the careful study of genetic conditions, and I have no doubt that much genuine progress can come from such studies. But science has to be tied to reality, above all things, and it does no service to its cause to deny the obvious (such as the items noted above), or to engage in what I believe are unsubstantiated speculations about "immortality," in hoping for the best from any given avenue of research.

Apart from speculating about immortality, this piece is interesting, and even fascinating, in highlighting the study of this young girl's unusual condition.