• Question: Why do we die?

    Asked by anon-187760 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Stewart Martin-Haugh

      Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      We die because something kills us. Nowadays people are living for longer than ever before – lots of things that used to kill lots of people are now treatable. For instance, people used to get infections after operations that killed them, but now we have antibiotics.

      For people to live forever, you would have to find a way to cure every disease. And of course they would still have to be careful crossing the road. Alternatively you could think about storing your consciousness in something like a computer. But would it still be you?

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Unfortunately it’s just our biology!

      All living things are made out of cells, and cells make more of themselves by copying their DNA (their code) but they’re aren’t always perfect copies! Over time the cell gets damaged and bits of its DNA get changed or deleted so they no longer work and then copying those cells would lead to a bad cell. When this happens they stop dividing and die. We have billions of cells in our body and they will all only copy themselves a certain amount of times before they die so that they don’t start creating damaged cells. When we have lots of cells dying but no new ones to take their place (in our old age, 80-110) our body starts getting in trouble, we might have organs stop working or we catch an illness that we can’t fight off quickly enough and eventually we die.

      Luckily for us science is finding ways to fight off illnesses to keeps us healthier for longer. We also have people working on ways to make sure cells replicate better or to try and increase the times they will copy themselves. The longer those cells live the longer we live!

      In fact a few animals have a method of doing this already so they live forever and are only killed by predators and sickness, if we can do what those animals do we may be able to live forever!

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