Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume writes that rejuvenation maybe in reach and cites comments by familiar aging and longevity researchers.

Dr. Leonid Gavrilov, a Russian longevity researcher working at the University of Chicago, where he’s a director of the Centre of Aging, told The Independent that “replacing damaged organs to greatly extend the human lifespan by substituting young and healthy for old and failing is no longer science fiction.”

The 21st century is when science fiction will happen in reality.

The growth of replacement organs will eliminate many organ failures as causes of death - at least for anyone who can afford to pay for the replacements or get their government to pay. This is a 21st century prospect. When in the 21st century is harder to say. But the growth of human organs won't remain out of reach for the entire 21st century. My guess is we will see this start to happen in the late 2010s or maybe the 2020s at the latest.

But the ability to rejuvenate doesn't guarantee immortality. It just eliminates aging as a cause of death. Suicide, murder, and accidents will still cause eventual death.

Assorted advances helped cause substantial jumps in life expectancy in the late 1880s and beyond.

Between 1880 and 1900, life expectancy in the developed nations jumped by six years. Between 1900 and 1920, with the advent of blood transfusions, X-rays, immunizations for cholera and other diseases and better food preservatives, it jumped by another 7.4 years.

Between 1920 and 1940, with the discovery of insulin, vaccines for tuberculosis, tetanus, typhus and yellow fever and the first broad-spectrum antibiotic, penicillin, life expectancy again increased by 7.4 years.

Over the past century and a half, life spans have averaged an increase of just over 2.5 years every decade. If those scientists who say there appears to be no upper limit on age are correct, if trends in increasing life expectancy are sustained or accelerated by medical breakthroughs, then it certainly seems plausible to speculate that somebody alive today might indeed still be living in 2159.

What's going to be different about the next round of advances? The techniques used to develop new therapies will be qualitatively far more powerful than the tools and techniques used to develop previous generations of medical therapies. Biomedical scientists and bioengineers will manipulate genes and cells to rework human flesh into more youthful and healthful conditions. The next round of advances won't just kill pathogens, reduce toxin exposures, and provide better food. Therapies will intervene within cells to repair them and will provide replacement cells and organs.

Update: Leonid Gavrilov says he was misquoted by Hume. See Gavrilov's corrections here. I think Hume wasn't the original misquoter though. The Independent really does claim Gavrilov said this. Here's a relevant excerpt from The Independent in 2005:

Next month, a multidisciplinary group of academics, led by engineers, will celebrate the recent breakthroughs in stem-cell research at the second annual conference of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence). "Replacing damaged organs to greatly extend the human life span by substituting young and healthy for old and failing is no longer science fiction. Laboratories around the world are making progress in building replacement lung, kidney, liver and heart tissue," says Dr Leonid Gavrilov, a leading member of SENS and director of the Center of Aging at the University of Chicago.

Dr Gavrilov describes a "eureka" moment while working as a geneticist in the former Soviet Union on "an unpredictable, dilapidated mainframe computer". Its complex behaviour was best understood, he suddenly realised, "by resorting to such human concepts as character, personality and change of mood, and this observation led to the bizarre idea that living organisms, including humans, resemble partially damaged machines rather than new ones".

Maybe Aubrey de Grey or another biogerontologist originally said it? Anyone know?