Samfundsmøte: Killing death

Would you like to design a better, healthier child? Or to be frozen down when you die, so that you can be brought back to life when science has gotten far enough? What do you think of a world where you can live forever? Well, even though this might sound like the plot of a sci-fi movie a future like this is not unrealistic, and not that far away.

Since 1840 human life expectancy has increased by 2,5 years per decade- this equals as much as three months every year or six hours every day. This means that if this development goes on in the same speed, most norwegian children born after the year 2000 will be able to celebrate their 100th birthday. And it does not seem to be slowing down. As a matter of fact, Kurtzweil and De Grey say that if you have a healthy body and economy in 2050 you have good chances of becoming immortal.

Thanks to scientific progress we become better and better at removing life's speed bumps. Will we continue to find solutions for our bodies technical difficulties until there are none left? Will gene editing tools like CRISPR remove our mortality? Can we possibly freeze ourselves down, and wait until science has the answers? Can we actually kill death? Will we this way be able to kill death? And if so, what will eternal life actually look like?
We don’t view death as something we get in the same way as illnesses. Throughout life we get sick, but with the help of technology and medicine these problems are solved until they become too many and too big and we eventually break down. When this happens it is viewed as if technology has failed us. Will we keep finding soloutions to our bodies technical difficulties until there are none left?

To discuss this we will be joined by Ole Martin Moen who is a philosopher and who has chosen to be frozen down before his death. We will also be joined by Sigrid Bratlie, who is a senior advisor at the biotechnology council, as well as Erik Tunstad who is a journalist, author and lecturer of science.

Tickets: 0,-/50,- (Member/Non-member) can be bought at the door.

The meeting will be streamed at: http://www.samfundet.no/live/

Agenda and protocol: https://www.samfundet.no/saksdokumenter

If you want to reserve a table, you can do this from thursday 06.09.2018 at 12:00. To book a table send an email to "styret-bordreservasjon@samfundet.no". There is only room for 6 people at a table and there is a set number of tables. The booking will stop at saturday 08.09.2018 at 14:00. This is a free offer for those who wants a reserved seat at a table. It is not neccesary if you want a seat during the meeting, only if you want a seat at a table.