Toward Immortality is an attempt to outline where medicine has traveled in the past and to chart where it may be heading in the future. More specifically, this work endeavors to illustrate how advances in modern medical technology often leave in their wake increases in human life expectancy. In the words of the researchers at the UK’s Tony Blair Institute of Global Change, “One of humanity’s greatest success stories of the past century is the increase in global life expectancy as a result of the social and medical advancements that have dramatically improved basic living conditions and reduced vulnerability to infectious diseases.”
As we ponder this exciting odyssey in medical science, one telling question begs to be answered: Is this a story without an ending? That is, will every new century or millennium fashion its own singular contribution to the additional number of years each human’s body and mind can expect to survive? And will this continue indefinitely? Or does the story of humanity reach a chapter (or perhaps, “Grand Finale”) in which the body will no longer be needed? Could it be that the collective consciousness of humanity will reside and even flourish on the hard drive of a computer (or some other such device), creating an almost endless future—one that a growing number of distinguished scientists, scholars, and transhumanists believe is humanity’s ultimate fate?