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by Brandon Turbeville
February 11, 2012
from ActivistPost Website
Only a few days ago, I wrote an article entitled “Merging Man and Machine – Singularity vs. Humanity,” where I discussed the growing Singularity movement and its implications for humanity as we know it.
At the center of this article was the announcement by researchers at the University of California that scientists are now able to translate human speech into computer-generated signals which are then fed back to human brains as human speech.
While this may seem like groundbreaking news to some, the University of California is by no means the only institution working on such technology. Nor is it the only institution experiencing success in these endeavors.
In an article published in the Daily Mail entitled, “The cyborgs are coming! Living brains implanted with electronic chips to replace ‘faulty’ parts,” Rob Waugh discusses successful developments made by researchers at Tel Aviv University in regards to their ability to create and install computer circuits into brains that can replace and control motor functions.
Under the guise of developing technology that could possibly aid individuals suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Tel Aviv researchers have essentially created circuitry that can replace basic motor functions such as blinking, and have implanted these circuits into rat brains.
The circuits are tied together in such a way that they act as what Waugh describes as a “robotic cerebellum;” the area of the brain responsible for the coordination of movement.
After being wired to the brain, the robotic cerebellum,
“receives, interprets, and transmits sensory information from the brain stem, facilitating communication between the brain and body.”
As is the case in much of the tech-related developments I have had the opportunity to research, the robotic cerebellum is not something that will be coming in the future. It is already here.
Indeed, Professor Matti Mintz and other Tel Aviv researchers have already successfully implanted a robotic cerebellum into a brain-damaged rat, “restoring its capacity for movement” and teaching it to blink whenever a particular tone was sounded.
The rat was only able to perform the action when the robotic cerebellum was functioning; demonstrating that the robotic cerebellum was in fact successful in translating sensory information to the brain in a fashion that directly mimics the natural neural impulses.
Mintz, who recently presented his research findings at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence meeting in Cambridge, UK, stated,
“It’s proof of the concept that we can record information from the brain, analyze it in a way similar to the biological network, and then return it to the brain.”
This research dovetails with that which Ian Morris discussed in his own article for the Daily Mail entitled, “Hitler would have loved The Singularity – Mind-blowing benefits of merging human brains and computers.”
In this article, Morris discusses experiments recently conducted at the University of California where researchers scanned the electrical activity of the human brain while volunteers were listening to human speech, fed the information into a computer, and translated the activity back into human language.
Morris writes:
Last September, they asked volunteers to watch Hollywood film trailers and then reconstructed the clips by scanning their subjects’ brain activity.
(…)
Last week, the scientists boldly went further still. They charted the electrical activity in the brains of volunteers who were listening to human speech and then they fed the results into computers which translated the signals back into language.
The technique remains crude, and has so far made out only five distinct words, but humanity has crossed a threshold.
In another related experiment that was also conducted at the University of California, as well as at Wake Forest University, a brain implant was again tested on rats with findings that revealed the implants could actually restore lost memories.
The implantable device is able to mimic the neural signals of the brain, as well as transmit replicas of these signals to the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with turning short-term memories into long-term memories.
With these capabilities, the devices are thus able to trace the neural signals as they occur, then restore the memory after the original memory has been lost. If the device is used with a hippocampus that is functioning normally, it can even be used to enhance memory, not only restore it.
In this particular study, researchers trained rats to press one lever after another to receive water.
The tests were conducted by allowing the rats to press one lever and then distracting them so they would have to remember which lever they had already pressed in order to press the correct lever and receive their “reward.”
The researchers then attached electrodes to the rats’ brains and connected them to the CA1 and CA3 areas of the hippocampus. They recorded the signals between these regions of the brain as the rats performed their trained tasks. The researchers then drugged the rats to the point that the two regions (CA1 and CA3) could not communicate. Thus, the rats forgot which lever to press next.
As Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineering professor at USC and lead author of this study, stated,
“The rats still showed that they knew ‘when you press left first, then press right next time, and vice-versa.’ And they still knew in general to press levers for water, but they could only remember whether they had pressed left or right for 5-10 seconds.”
After the research team implanted the artificial (robotic) hippocampus, they turned on the device which replayed a previously recorded signal from CA1. The rats then remembered which levers to pull and in the correct order.
As Berger stated in more simplistic terms,
“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget.”
The researchers have stated that they are moving forward in testing the device in monkeys next.
However, the authors of the study have also stated that,
“the system could easily be fitted for human use.”
Obviously, this technology is far ahead of the much-hyped “amnesia pill” that has been discussed for some time.
Yet, even a pill that is capable of erasing certain memories was derided as a conspiracy theory for as long as it has been discussed. However, now there can be no derision of the technology and experiments addressed above. Not only are they here – they have been successful.
In addition, we know that any technology introduced to the general public is already quite obsolete. The military-industrial complex and the high sciences are light years ahead of anything the mass population is even faintly aware of.
The fact that such advancements in the area of mind/brain control are now being introduced to the general public should be concerning to the say the least. While these types of developments undoubtedly hold some benefit to individuals suffering from neurodegenerative diseases or paralysis, the fact is that the agenda behind their development and introduction are not geared to these ends.
Machine-brain interfacing is almost solely geared toward the aims of warfare and control, with positive developments such as ending paralysis and motor impairments only being used as a marketing method for their introduction and acceptance.
The Singularity movement itself holds no improvements in the quality of life of mankind, only the possibility (and indeed probability) of a vastly increased level of centralized control over every human being.
Keep in mind, the funding for research in this particular area of science tends to come from military and secretive agencies like DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
These agencies are not in existence due to their contributions to humanitarian efforts. They exist due to their contributions toward “improving” the ability of the State to wage war more effectively.
In an age where the citizens of the supposedly free world are considered the enemy by their own governments, developments such as Singularity and brain/machine interfaces should be viewed with a heavy dose of skepticism and resistance.
That is, while our ability to do so still exists.
by Dr. Joseph Mercola
January 22, 2023
from Mercola Website
Story at-a-glance
- Silicon Valley is essentially fused with the national security state. Silicon Valley is now also entering into joint ventures with medical companies, and many of these ventures are financed by groups like In-Q-Tel, which is the CIA‘s venture capital arm
- There’s a concerted effort to frame transhumanism – which is really the new eugenics – as health care. Joint ventures involving Big Tech, Big Pharma and the security state typically focus on products and services (Big Data) that normalize and further the transhumanist agenda
- Food and agriculture are also being tossed into the mix. The U.S. government has launched a “Food is Medicine” program, which is yet another way for the government to seize control of the population. Food as medicine will be used to get you into their control system, and keep you there
- In 2023 and 2024, watch for the rollout of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). It’s crucial that as many people as possible refuse the system during the initial voluntary phase. Once it becomes mandatory, it cannot be stopped and all freedoms will be lost
- If the Singularity cannot be achieved, technocrats may end up faking it, because if they can blame eugenics, depopulation and other unethical decisions on artificial intelligence running the government, they can do whatever they want, with no repercussions
I recently interviewed (far below video) investigative journalist Whitney Webb about her two-volume book series, “One Nation Under Blackmail – Vol. 1 – Vol. 2“
She’s been on tour, promoting the books in dozens of interviews.
Here, we discuss some of her experiences since the release of her books, and delve deeper into the disturbing merger of the intelligence state, Silicon Valley and medicine, and how transhumanism – eugenics rebranded – is being rolled out under the guise of health care.
We also talk about censorship and other tactics used to mold public perception, and how artificial intelligence may be overhyped to give technocrats and eugenicists carte blanche to do whatever they want without having any accountability.
The Encroaching Surveillance State
Her book tour brought her back to the U.S. for the first time in eight years.
When asked about her first impressions after being gone for such a long time, she expresses surprise at how willing Americans have become to embrace spy tools like Ring cameras on their front doors.
“This is actually troubling,”she says,
“because a lot of those tech companies, Google included, are contractors for the military and for intelligence.
I think it would be naive to assume they don’t have backdoor access to those devices, knowing when you’re home and when you’re not and all of that.
I think it’s interesting, the willingness of so many people, so many households, to invite that type of technology into their homes.
I didn’t see inside people’s homes much, but a lot of people, as I understand it, have things like Amazon’s Alexa. Numerous stories have come out that they’re recording you without your consent, even though they say they’re not.
But people still continue to use the product, and I really wish people would wise up about inviting that type of technology into your house.
So much of what we’re being sold today is being marketed as convenience, but really a lot of it is really just the building blocks for the infrastructure of a very dangerous and Orwellian system of control.”
How the Transhumanist System is Being Pushed Forward
As a former contributor to Mint Print Press News, which provides a lot of great coverage on the encroaching surveillance state, Webb knows a thing or two about Orwellian systems of control.
Much of her work there focused on the intersection of intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley.
“Even after I left and started to do my own thing, I maintained a lot of that focus,”she says.
“I guess a theme of my work would be the structure of power and how it really works. If you’re looking at Silicon Valley today, it’s very clear that it’s essentially fused with the national security state…
One thing we’ve seen happen, specifically during the COVID era, is that Big Pharma is now getting in this mix. There’s a lot of merging happening between Big Pharma and Silicon Valley.
You’re seeing this with a lot of joint ventures into the health care space of Silicon Valley companies. A lot of it’s through wearables and these efforts to normalize technology like CRISPR or nanotechnology injectables.
You’re seeing them all come together, and a lot of these joint ventures or companies in this particular space that’s spanning big pharma in Silicon Valley tend to have a lot of funding from groups like In-Q-Tel, which is the CIA’s venture capital arm.
I think we’re seeing, in the effort to push through this technocratic transhumanist system, a lot more overlap between the power structure of the national security state in Silicon Valley with Big Pharma.
And that’s very, very bad. I don’t know how else to put that.
It’s awful. I think more people should be paying a lot more attention to that specifically…
[There’s] an effort to frame transhumanism – which is really the new eugenics – as health care, and that’s what a lot of this is about.”
The Coming Food Coup
Food and agriculture are also being tossed into the mix.
In early December 2022, I wrote about how John Rockefeller eliminated food from medicine 112 years ago and how, now, The Rockefeller Foundation is working with the White House to bring nutrition back in.
While it sounds like a great idea, the real purpose is the same now as it was a century ago. It’s all about controlling the population.
As noted by Webb:
“If these people take over the food supply, they’ll be framing it as a return to ‘food is medicine,’ but it’s not. Well, it’s not exactly food as medicine as people would think of it when someone like you talks about that concept…
This idea, for example, of putting vaccines in your food, like in tomatoes.
Eating one of these GMO tomatoes is the equivalent of taking a vaccine and stuff like that… It’s taking this age-old adage and twisting it to fit their purposes.
Food as medicine is only convenient to them when it’s not something that actually heals you, but [rather] something that keeps you in this new system they’re creating.”
Predictions for 2023
As we record this in late November 2022, we seem to be in a bit of a lull, in terms of tyrannical overreaches. It’s a bit like being in the eye of a hurricane.
You know the storm will be upon you yet, again, it’s only a matter of time.
The question is, what comes next?
“I think there’s a couple things to watch really closely in the next year,”Webb says.
“One is how thisWorld Health Organization Pandemic Treaty, which tries to [supersede] the Constitution, not just of the U.S. but pretty much every country that signs it.
That’s definitely something to pay close attention to, because if that does get passed, I think it’s likely we’ll see an effort to repeat a lot of what we saw duringCOVID 19from these particular groups.
And if it’s not signed, I think they’re going to wait…
They’re waiting to get that type of new authority so they don’t have to deal with so much dissent, whether it’s from nation states or from particular domestic populations that have had enough and are unlikely to believe all of this a second time.
I think they’re really counting on having thatWHOsuper-national authority in order to go forward with the biosecurity agenda, in terms of a repeat of what we saw in recent years.
The other thing I think is really important is the central bank digital currency (CBDC) agenda.
Almost every country in the world at this point – there are exceptions, but I think it’s a majority – have some sort of CBDC pilot program going on right now. In the U.S., they’ve even announced they’re doing pilots of [CBDCs] with commercial banks like JP Morgan and some of the big financial giants of Wall Street.
I would say that either 2023 or 2024 is likely to be the year of the CBDC.
In countries where they’ve already launched a CBDC, or have a very advanced pilot program, it’s framed first as voluntary, and then of course, once enough people start using it, it becomes the only form of legal tender in use.
At least that’s the end game for CBDCs in any particular country.”
Programmable CBDCs Mean Someone Else Controls Your Money
As explained by Webb, CBDCs are programmable money.
The Central Bank will decide when, where and on what you’re allowed to spend your money. You also cannot save when and however much you want, because some of the CBDCs have expiration dates.
Use it or lose it. You don’t get to decide when you spend your money, the state does…
CBDCs can also be programmed to only work for certain types of items, including certain types of food. If your health records indicate you have a health problem, your CBDCs can be programmed such that you cannot buy foods deemed unhealthy for you.
Purchases can also be blocked based on your carbon footprint score, and they can be blocked based on geofencing parameters.
“If they declare a lockdown, for example, and you’re not allowed to go five miles beyond your home, your money won’t work five miles beyond your home.
That’s basically why CBDCs are attractive to the powers that be. But they’re going to frame it as voluntary first, before it moves into involuntary.
We’re going to see it pop up in a lot more countries over the next two years.
And obviously, that is the phase to mass reject CBDCs in any way you can… I’ll go back to COVID for a second to explain where I’m trying to go here.
I understand and have empathy for people that didn’t want to lose their jobs and were worried about being thrown into a position of poverty, so they took the vaccine because of the mandates.
But the more steps you take down that path of, ‘It’s convenient,’ the harder it will be to go on the alternative path later on.
For people that were in that situation with COVID 19, that should have been a huge wake up call to start doing something different and think about how to get off that path…
… if you went down that path, and then go down the CBDC path just because it’s more convenient for now, there’s going to come a point where, if you make enough compromises, it’s going to be almost impossible, if not entirely impossible, to redirect and go towards a different outcome.
These are things that are very important for people to pay attention to right now, in terms of developments, and plan how to keep your family independent of these types of systems and resilient in the face of all the shocks to the system that we already see coming.”
The Poor Will Be Squeezed First
As noted by Webb, those who will feel the squeeze of tyranny first are the poor and lower-middle class.
We’re already seeing how they’re planning to encourage mass adoption of CBDCs through various assistance programs such as food stamps.
As food and energy prices continue to soar, more and more people will qualify for government assistance and be forced into those systems.
Webb also suspects that any future stimulus checks, if there are additional long-term lockdowns, may be paid out only in CBDCs.
“It’s a very insidious plan,”Webb says.
“They’re trying to reduce the standard of living of people, and then in order for them to maintain their standard of living, they’re forcing them to adopt a control system disguised as a monetary system…
They’re going to frame it as voluntary before it becomes involuntary. That stage where it’s voluntary is when it’s critical for people to act [and reject it]…
I don’t think we can prevent them from implementing it, but you can prevent yourself, your family and your community from adopting that system, and use a parallel economic system [instead].”
While some have speculated that decentralized digital currencies such as Bitcoin might work as a parallel economic system, the problem with that idea is that government could easily make it illegal.
They’ve already promised to implement new regulations of that space.
The safest alternatives are those that government cannot regulate or make illegal (at least not easily).
This includes trading and bartering of goods and services, without any type of currency, with the exception perhaps of physical gold and silver.
“So, so we have to think about these sorts of things when countering the CBDC agenda,”Webb says.
“That voluntary stage is the time to make those plans so you don’t get swept up when it moves from voluntary to involuntary, which they are definitely going to do, or attempt to do.
But it will only be successful if there’s mass adoption.
The more people who opt out and do some sort of parallel system for their economic activity at the neighborhood or community level, the less successful that agenda will be.”
People Are Waking Up to the Social Media Manipulation
While it seems we’re headed into a dystopian future that cannot be avoided, and with no clear means of escape, Webb feels there is still reason to be optimistic.
Importantly, more people than ever before are now getting wise to the globalists’ agenda, and are hungry for explanations about what’s really going on.
People who want the truth are more likely to search for it, and are ready to take it in.
They’re less likely to stick their head in the sand and write everything off as a baseless conspiracy theory.
“I think a lot of people on a visceral level know something is really wrong. And I think that’s why there are so many efforts to censor that type of information.
I also think there is a major investment by the state in efforts to make us think we are a minority when we are not.
More than anything else, what social media is used for by the powers that be is to make us think certain ideas are more popular than they really are.
[Take] the bot situation on Twitter… a lot of those bots serve to promote ideas that many people don’t necessarily have, or make certain figures or ideas look more popular than they are…
When you combine that with the censorship, removing ideas that otherwise would be popular with real authentic accounts… you’re manipulating people’s perception of how the rest of the country feels…
A lot of what’s going on right now on social media is to completely change how we perceive a particular situation or agenda, in the hopes that change in perception will cause a change in behavior.
If you’re censoring an idea, you’re trying to take it out of the public mind and have it just not be part of the discourse anymore.
That obviously causes a change in perception, because you’re only having one idea, or a very small spectrum of opinion about a particular idea, out there.
That’s all people are going to engage with if you censor all the other takes.
The idea is to completely wipe out dissent so that everyone has a rather homogenous perception of events, people, ideas and agendas, and then from there, behavior will be molded to the benefit of these particular powers.”
Is Elon Musk Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes?
When it comes to Twitter, with Elon Musk now at the helm many are hoping it will become a bastion of free-speech.
Webb, however, is skeptical.
She suspects,
Musk is promoting ‘free speech’ and reinstating banned accounts because he wants to turn Twitter into a U.S. version of WeChat, an “everything app” that’s connected to digital ID, CBDCs and the social credit system.
The more users he has, the more people will be lured into the digital prison system.
“We’re in this paradigm shift, where we’re going from an oil-based economy to a data-based economy.
Data is the new oil, and whoever owns the ‘everything app’ in this new system is going to be the king of the castle of the new economy.
They’re going to be the Rockefellers of the data age,”she says.
“There’s nothing good about that. I think what we’re seeing right now is an effort to coax people back Twitter, and there might be some benefits to that.
But ultimately, what Elon Musk is interested in is the data and getting more people on Twitter than before, with the goal of turning it into WeChat, which is a segue to this ‘everything app.’
And it’s worth pointing out that the company behind WeChat, Tencent, is one of the most active advisors to Tesla and a major shareholder in Tesla.
There is a relationship there.”
Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of ‘Smart Dictatorship’
Webb and I also discuss the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI), and the role of social media in feeding AI with data for programs relating to pandemic outbreak detection and pre-crime.
But while AI and its successor, artificial general intelligence (AGI), has impressive capabilities, Webb believes there’s a lot of false hype, and that this hype will be used to shield human powerbrokers from accountability.
“A lot has been said about the role of AI in our lives once it reaches a particular point referred to asthe Singularity, which is where AI intelligence allegedly outpaces human intelligence so extensively and so rapidly that it’ll basically take over.
If you ask me, based on everything I’ve seen, I don’t think the Singularity is actually possible. Or if it is possible, I think it’s very far away.
But if you are the people behind… this agenda – people likeEric SchmidtandHenry Kissingerwho just put out their ‘The Age of AI‘ book, which has a lot about AI and its role in government, basically having AI become the government – all you really need to do is convince people… that the Singularity is here and… that it’s so far superior to human intelligence that we should outsource all our decision-making to it.
Then, there’s a Wizard of Oz type guy… behind the curtain who makes the decisions.
If you look at what Schmidt and Kissinger and these guys say about AI and government, they say it’s going to be so far above our intelligence that there’s no way for the AI to explain its decision-making.
It’ll just be ‘The computer says this.’
And if you’re basically organized crime, running the government, which I would argue is the situation today, and you don’t want to have to explain the reasons for your policy because it’s a horrible reason that no one would agree with, what a great curtain, what a great facade to have for your smart dictatorship.
They just have to say that it was the AI’s decision. They have plausible deniability about everything, don’t they?
And a lot of the stuff they say in that context is very unsettling. Stuff like, AI may decide to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, if not millions of their own population to win.
If the goal given is winning, then AI is willing to make all sorts of sacrifices that humans wouldn’t make.
But if you look at people like Kissinger and Eric Schmidt, they’d be very happy to kill a bunch of people and then blame it on AI for the decision.
They don’t care about killing millions of people. They care about expanding their money and power infinitely.
How do you have plausible deniability about that and get away with mass murder, eugenics programs and population control?
You say,
‘There’s this new super intelligence thing that’s going to take over government because it’s so superior. It’s going to churn out policies and we’re just going to follow them.’
It’s the new god basically. It’s superior to us and it can’t explain how it got to this conclusion because it thinks so differently from us.
So, we just have to follow what it says, but we’re not responsible for what it says at the same time…
People likeRay Kurzweilsaid the Singularity was going to happen a long time ago and it didn’t happen.
And if you look at programs like Welcome Leap… where they’re trying to map baby brains and child brains by forcing kids to use very invasive, biometric technology… because they think that will create the Singularity – that, to me, says they are grasping at straws.
They have no way of producing something equivalent to the human brain. They can mimic stuff very successfully with AI and they have done so, but in terms of creating consciousness?
These are the most unconscious people on the entire planet trying to recreate consciousness in their image. Good luck… I think they’re going to try and fake it.
And, here’s the other thing.
This whole inevitability of AI narrative is a major marketing narrative necessary to get transhumanist technologies widely adopted…
The super intelligent Singularity stuff is most likely a PSYOP to get you into the transhumanist box that you’re not going to get out of.
Once you get a brain chip, there’s no going back.”
What You Can Do to Prepare
Clearly, we all face enormous challenges in the years ahead, regardless of where we live, as this is a global takeover.
So, what can you do to prepare?
Here are some of Webb’s recommendations:
- Build community and local parallel economies.
- Build your knowledgebase on how to grow and raise food, even if you’re not in a position to grow food right now. There are many free videos online that you can peruse. Ideally, download them so you can watch them offline, even if the internet goes down.
Books on homesteading and basic survival skills are also a valuable investment. “Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills” is one option.
As a general rule going forward, you’ll want hard copies or copies on external hard drives of any information that you want to have access to in the future, as the internet is becoming increasingly scrubbed of important information.
If using an external hard drive, make sure you store it in a faraday bag to protect the information from electromagnetic weapons.
- Stock up on backup supplies such as food and energy generators. Also have a plan for how to secure potable water. Since the economy is collapsing and inflation skyrocketing, your money is not doing you much good in the bank. You’re losing purchasing power with each passing month, and a bank bail-in could wipe you out completely. So, if you need survival items, buying them now might be one of the better investment strategies out there.
- Do everything you can to avoid entering the CBDC system when it rolls out.
- Go back to using more cash if you don’t do that already. Also, consider cutting back on your online usage, social media in particular. “If things get really bad and the war on domestic terror gets underway and there’s all this profiling going on, I would stay as far away from the online world as you can,” Webb says.
More Information
In closing, Webb is now investigating the FTX scandal.
Could we end up seeing a Volume 3 in her “One Nation Under Blackmail” series?
Perhaps, but she’s not making any promises.
She’s also working on an investigative series with Ian Davis about the United Nations sustainable development goals, showing point by point “the agenda under the hood.”
She’s a world-class investigator, and is willing to take deep dives into crucial topics few others dare to touch.
by Tony Cartalucci
March 27, 2013
from LocalOrg Website
A bridge is about to be crossed, then burned.
Which side will you be on?
Old age and resulting death is a condition, and like all conditions it can, and will inevitably be treated.
Already in nature, evolution has left certain organisms endowed with what is known as “biological immortality,” where the cells of the organism are continuously renewed without deteriorating over time.
Of course, disease, predation, and environmental conditions can cause the otherwise untimely death of such organisms, but barring these exceptions, in theory they could perpetuate themselves indefinitely.
The New York Times in their 2012 article, “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?” reported that:
Sommer kept his hydrozoans in petri dishes and observed their reproduction habits. After several days he noticed that his Turritopsis dohrnii was behaving in a very peculiar manner, for which he could hypothesize no earthly explanation.
Plainly speaking, it refused to die. It appeared to age in reverse, growing younger and younger until it reached its earliest stage of development, at which point it began its life cycle anew.
The Times also reported on the discovery of what is now called the “immortal jellyfish” and the paper published upon its discovery, “Reversing the Life Cycle – Medusae Transforming into Polyps and Cell Transdifferentiation in Turritopsis nutricula (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa),” that:
Yet the publication of “Reversing the Life Cycle” barely registered outside the academic world. You might expect that, having learned of the existence of immortal life, man would dedicate colossal resources to learning how the immortal jellyfish performs its trick.
You might expect that biotech multinationals would vie to copyright its genome; that a vast coalition of research scientists would seek to determine the mechanisms by which its cells aged in reverse; that pharmaceutical firms would try to appropriate its lessons for the purposes of human medicine; that governments would broker international accords to govern the future use of rejuvenating technology.
But none of this happened.
However, it is very unlikely that “none of this happened.”
Since the beginning of recorded history, man, and in particular, the ruling elite have sought – after conquering all else – to defeat the last threat to the ill-gotten wealth and power they have accumulated over their lifespans – death. It is said the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, died of mercury poisoning while experimenting with potions thought to grant extended life.
The Philosopher’s Stone was pursued throughout the Middle Ages by alchemists both for its ability to transmutate lead into gold, and for its role in producing an “elixir of life” granting its users immortality.
It is only in modern times that mainstream talking points seem to encourage people to crawl into their graves contently and without struggle, with even national health care systems writing off patients as hopeless and drains on the system, better off dead.
Strange that as technology now stands to grant humanity one of its most sought-after goals, we face what seems a concerted effort to acquaint the general population with the concept of gladly embracing death.
The Science Behind Human Biological Immortality
The so-called “immortal jellyfish” has developed through evolution its ability to cheat death.
But what progress has science made in translating such a feat into success for species that have evolved without the means of defeating age-related deterioration?
The US National Institute of Health republished a 2008 report titled, “Telomere elongation and prolongation of lifespan in rats by unblocking of telomere caps,” the abstract of which included:
Telomeres are the ends of chromosomes and are non-coding DNA “end-capped” with structures containing DNA-quadruplexes and proteins. Telomeres become shorter after each cell division, which is one of the mechanisms of gradual ageing.
The abstract continues with:
This experiment shows that telomeres were elongated by the combination of hypoxia activated telomerase and a newly developed pharmacological method removing the telomere cap when this combined method was applied to the human lymphocyte culture and the Wistar rats.
Rats from the control group died at the age 1 year 7 month – 1 year 8 month, which is typical for the Wistar rats from our sub-line. Rats from the experimental group died at the age 2 year 4 month.
The result Morris’s labyrinth water test showed the better spatial memory function of rats passed the telomere stabilization therapy. The results of these experiments show the significant role of telomere stabilization therapy in prolongation of lifespan.
In short, the DNA of each cell of most species have caps at the end to protect the DNA during cell division.
Each time cells divide, these caps get shorter until eventually, the DNA itself begins deteriorating with each cell division – thus bodily functions, both internal and external, begin to deteriorate as well, causing aging and eventual death.
The therapy carried out by researchers using lab rats sought to extend and stabilize these “caps,” granting the test subjects unnaturally long lives.
Gizmag’s 2010 article, “Harvard team successfully reverses the aging process in mice,” reported:
The aging process – it’s undignified, unwanted, and many would say unnecessary.
After all, the cells in your body are constantly replacing themselves – why can’t they do it without causing progressive degradation of organs that lead to discomfort, weakness and death? Well, perhaps they can.
Harvard scientists have discovered that by controlling certain genetic processes in mice, they can not only slow down the aging process, but “dramatically” reverse it throughout the body.
It’s a massive discovery, but it won’t be able to be used in humans yet without some pretty scary consequences.
Theory no more, the science of extending life at a cellular level is a reality, one that can and inevitably will be translated to human patients.
The science of life extension doesn’t stop with stabilizing telomeres. As the field of genetics and synthetic biology expand, the ability to sequence, understand, analyze, re-sequence, and reintroduce DNA into a patient will open new doors to both the treatment of disease, and regenerative medicine, including the regeneration of cells from a state of age or environmentally-induced deterioration back to a younger, healthier state.
Already, through the process of gene therapy (re-sequencing and reintroducing an improved version of a patient’s DNA), diabetes has been cured in dogs, lung cancer has been treated in rats, and human patients with terminal leukemia have given a second chance at life.
The current limitations involve our ability to read and rewrite DNA with the level of genetic “literacy” necessary to take a patient’s DNA and extrapolate what it should look like, re-write it and reintroduce it into their body on a full-spectrum scale to achieve full “biological immortality.”
However, the ability to do this is being developed through a wide variety of research and competitions.
Genetics & Synthetic Biology – Accessible for Everyone
While the reading, writing, rewriting, and reintroduction of DNA into human patients is still in the realm of highly trained professionals with vast resources at their disposal, the field of genetics and synthetic biology is not exclusively “super science.”
In fact, genetics and synthetic biology are increasingly becoming more accessible to a greater number of people as technology and information continue to advance and disseminate around the world.
Computers and the Internet make both the tools for participating in such fields more accessible, as well as the knowledge necessary to use such tools.
Professor Jamie Davies, Professor of Experimental Anatomy,
presents “Synthetic Biology: the potential and the problems of re-engineering life.”
As a result, there is a burgeoning DIYbio (Do-It-Yourself Biology) movement (VIDEO) – with local labs open to the public where everything from DNA extraction and DNA fingerprinting to gene splicing is taught and executed in a safe and educational environment.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) annual iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competition includes university students and now even high school students.
The competition involves developing new genetic sequences, introduced into viruses and bacteria, changing their characteristics into something that can be useful.
An example used in, “Creating Life – The Ultimate Engineering Challenge” (below video), involves a bacteria re-engineered to change color when it comes in contact with a particular water-borne parasite:
The Ultimate Engineering Challenge
by equinoxgraphics
February 15, 2012
from YouTube Website
A synthetic biology documentary by Kelly Neaves and Dominic Rees-Roberts, following the Imperial College IGEM team (International Genetically Engineered Machine), as they discover how to engineer bacteria to perform specific tasks, and consider the implications of their work.
The bacteria could theoretically be used in testing kits to determine the potability of water around the world.
While re-engineering bacteria is not exactly human gene therapy, a lot of the techniques, equipment, and theory is the same. By developing an understanding and competence in iGEM-style exercises, the general population would be better poised at tackling the more advanced challenges human medicine presents us with.
And by high schools and universities developing their physical and academic infrastructure to participate in iGEM-style competitions and challenges, they collectively expand the fields of genetics and synthetic biology, including increasing our human capital, thus making progress toward greater achievements faster and more profound.
But do people realize the end game? Do people re-engineering bacteria in high school and university labs, while reading headlines about the latest breakthrough in gene therapy, understand the future that potentially awaits us?
DARPA, the Malthusian Paradigm, and Burning Bridges
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA as it is more widely known, is actively involved in genetics and synthetic biology research.
Wired reported in its Pentagon-friendly “Danger Room,” in an article titled, “Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included,” that:
The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. DARPA is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever – or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.
Wired continued by reporting:
The project comes as DARPA also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”
Wired never directly answers the question as to what exactly the Pentagon wants with “immortal organisms,” or what “organisms” these would even be, but mention is made of the above cited experiments with rats involving gene therapy, suggesting the possibility that human biological immortality might be on the table.
The mention of “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes” would be the exact area of focus necessary for achieving human biological immortality.
DARPA also has begun programs aimed at outsourcing research, collecting genetic sequences created by researchers and standardizing them into a library it can then use for whatever means the Pentagon and its corporate-financier sponsors desire behind closed doors.
Wired again reports from its “Danger Room,” this time in an article titled, “Pentagon’s New Factory – Your DNA“:
DARPA is sick and tired of waiting around for Mother Nature. Instead, it wants to take the life-making business into its own hands – and manufacture new biological forms in a factory of mix-and-match bio-bits.
A recent call for research by the Pentagon’s mad science agency proposes a new program called “Living Foundries.” The idea is to use biology as a manufacturing platform to “enable on-demand production of new and high-value materials, devices and capabilities.”
In other words, let’s engineer life to make stuff we want.
The fields of bioengineering and synthetic biology have already produced some useful, scary and flat-out bizarre entities. Besides renewable petroleum or steel strong spider silk, there are all sorts of potential therapeutic, industrial and agricultural purposes for reorganized DNA.
While Wired attempts to pander to “geek culture,” making DARPA sound “hip” and “cool,” in reality one can scarcely imagine more dangerous hands such technology could be in, or what absolute folly it would be for researchers to work on, and then turn into the Pentagon the building blocks for such an incredibly powerful set of genetic and synthetic biological tools.
The dangers of the so-called “DARPA vacuum” have already been warned against in great detail.
It is clear that DARPA, the Pentagon, and the corporate-financier interests that direct both, are incredibly interested in harnessing the power of synthetic biology. Like the Internet, these interests can be kept in check if the population is educated and technically competent enough to ensure no one power gains an overwhelming monopoly over such technology.
Already, with the advent of DIYbio and the increasing popularity of MIT’s iGEM competition, it appears that the opportunity for monopolizing the field of genetics and synthetic biology is already slipping away.
But what if the population was convinced to pursue a philosophy that blinded people to the potential advances we stand to achieve? What if people could be convinced to just crawl into their graves willingly after learning to enjoy a life of increasingly limited resources and liberties?
That is just what the Malthusian paradigm aims at achieving in the minds of billions around the planet – a paradigm that literally seeks to burn the bridges behind the global elite as they achieve biological immortality and resource abundance, while denying it to a condemned and self-euthanized humanity.
From fuax-environmentalism that encourages us to do less, with less, while leaving multinational corporations free to continue pillaging the planet on a global scale, to the human-hating population control polices encouraged by Western governments and even across the United Nations, humanity is being encouraged to whither and die as a “solution” to a series of manufactured, fabricated, and otherwise artificial crises, both social and environmental.
If humanity falls for these tricks, it will forsake enjoying perhaps the greatest achievements we have ever made.
The paradigm, in technological terms is shifting in favor of both the masses and the environment, and should we take the time to develop an understanding and interest in liberating fields such as personal manufacturing, 3D printing, decentralized infrastructure, genetics and synthetic biology we can not only cross the bridge into the future together, we can ensure that it is guarded for all time so that all others may follow.
Real solutions don’t involve protests, political slogans, or elections.
They involve small steps taken each day by determined, and far-sighted individuals, collectively working together for our collective best interests. Something as simple as researching and talking about topics like synthetic biology or 3D printing can help place these first, small steps in the right direction.
The problems we face, created by insidious, persistent, and patient individuals will be countered by nothing less than patient persistent pragmatism.
If a future of resource abundance, biological immortality, and the conquest of cancer, diabetes, and other maladies that have plagued us for generations sounds like something you can get behind – drop the placards, leave the polls, switch off Fox and CNN, and spend your free time at a local hackerspace, DIYbio lab, or by building your own.
The future is what we make of it, and if with our own two hands we are making nothing, we have no future.
A Great article from a Great Site!!
http://isciencemag.co.uk/features/transhumanism-an-immortal-futur
