'Immortal' humans have already been born: Aubrey de Grey, Cambridge scientist

LONDON: The first human beings who could escape the ill health of old age indefinitely may have already been born, a Cambridge scientist has claimed.

"If we ask the question: 'Has the person been born who will be able to escape the ill health of old age indefinitely?' Then I would say the chances of that are very high," said gerontologist Aubrey de Grey.

"Probably about 80 per cent," said de Grey, co-founder of the California-based Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Research Foundation.

"The first thing I want to do is get rid of the use of this word immortality, because it's enormously damaging, it is not just wrong, it is damaging," de Grey told the Motherboard website.

"It means zero risk of death from any cause - whereas I just work on one particular cause of death, namely ageing," said de Grey.

De Grey does not believe that a single breakthrough will make all the people immortal in a single go, according to the Metro.

However, he believes that an increased life expectancy of 30 years will give gerontologists enough time to think about and bring small breakthroughs in the field.

"We will be able to keep one step ahead of the problem and keep rejuvenating the same people as long as we like. That is what longevity escape velocity is all about," said de Grey.

De Grey's theories are based on the idea that age-extending treatments will match their speed with the rate at which a person usually ages.

He believes that the current two years per decade growth of life expectancy will eventually become one per year soon.