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Originally Posted by Slavakion
Telomeres. And the ironic thing is that there's a chemical (or enzyme maybe) that keeps telomeres from degrading. But that chemical promotes cancer. Ya can't win... 
Sorry to get slightly off topic. |
Certain areas of the body produce this enzyme in small amounts, but most of the body doesn't get any to the point where it would do anything constructive. Skin cells for example get small portions of it, mainly because they do a butt-load of growing to do things like seal cuts, and just normal replenishment. The reason its probably so active in cancer cells is to help promote their wild growth, part of the glitch that makes a cancer cell a cancer cell. Once there's a cure for all types of cancer then the use of telomerase may be more useful in the lengthening of the human life span.
And even if we could expand the human life span that would probably cause more harm than good. The world is already nearing the limit of what it can handle when it comes to the number of humans it can support. We gotta get better at space travel, and other things, before any of this can start.
Main Entry: tel·o·me·rase
Pronunciation: te-'lO-m&-"rAs, -"rAz
Function: noun
: an enzyme that is a ribonucleoprotein catalyzing the synthesis of chromosomal telomeres in eukaryotic cell division and is particularly active in cancer cells
The only problem with the many worlds is that we live in one world. We have little to no control over what happens in most circumstances. To be able to take advantage of this system we would either need the ability to traverse and "read" to/from all of these infinite worlds simultaneously,or have ultimate control over every single bit of energy in existance. Since i don't see any of these thigns happening, i prefer to not worry about this.