People Want to Stay Young and Live Longer: Aaron Ciechanover
People want to stay young and live longer. It became possible to prolong human life in the last century exactly through science. Aaron Ciechanover, Nobel Prize winner, expressed this opinion at “Nobel Days in Yerevan,” who appeared with a lecture on “Revolution of personalized medicine: will we cure all the diseases and at which price?”
“Israel is a small country like Armenia: we have 8 million population, and you have 3 million, we have similarities. There are political issues between the countries, but I hope, this week science will help to overcome our political barriers,” Aaron Ciechanover said.
The Nobel Prize winner spoke of how it was succeeded to prolong human life.
“Everybody knows that we want to stay always young and live long. Historically 100 years ago average lifespan was 50 years. Currently people live longer—in average 85 years. We have prolonged our lifespan by 35 years. Old Greeks were living 30 years in average. It took us four thousand years to prolong the lifespan,” he stated.
Aaron Ciechanover links that success with the development of science and technique.
“Science improves human life. However, prolongation of life didn’t cost us cheap,” he stressed.
The Nobel Prize winner memorized that there used to be a time when people died of infections. He highlighted the fact that currently there are medicaments, which are crucial for a person.
During the lecture the scientist also touched upon the accidentally discovered medicaments, adding that antibiotic can save people.
Ciechanover also mentioned that science very often is applied to kill a human being.
To the question whether the final point is making a person immortal, the scientist replied, “I don’t believe it. Everybody wants to be immortal, people waste money by freezing their bodies. I don’t consider a machine is able to implement it. If I change my brain, it won’t be me, but another person. However, we can prolong human life, people born nowadays can live longer.”
According to the scientist presently it’s important to solve the issue of diseases, for the treatment of which mechanisms haven’t been worked out yet.
