Original story

NetWeb 9.8.2018

NADA tries to destroy age prevention therapy files in Quebec

According to reports coming in from Montreal, a team of activists from the Natural Development Association NADA broke into the Quebec City premises of BioMechanics last night in an attempt to destroy files stored in hologram memories.

The hit-team had posed as tourists on a day visit to the BioMechanics complex, and had managed to smuggle into the datacentre of the company’s age prevention laboratory a group of nanobugs that were pre-programmed to infiltrate the centre’s hologram units, search out any aluminium oxides they could find, and eat them. The synthetic ruby crystals in the hologram lasers are of the mineral corundum (Al2O3), in other words aluminium oxide. The result was that when the nanobugs found their prey, all the memory holograms crashed and the thousands of files contained in them were lost.

However, the company’s management stressed in an immediate statement that the files are quite safe, since some of them were also kept in engraved form, and the remainder are available in back-up copies at the datacentre of the BioMechanics head office in St. Louis in the United States, where they are updated on a weekly basis.

NADA has this morning claimed responsibility for the attack. The Association steadfastly opposes all genetic and artificial improvements to the human species as unnatural and inhumane.

For many years now BioMechanics has been in the forefront of the search for an answer to the genetic code that causes ageing. Scientists have been able to unravel the mystery to such an extent that - at least according to the company’s own press releases - a solution to the problem of getting old will be with us in a matter of two or three years. Research to date has already offered very promising results. The life-expectancy of the 5,000 individuals currently undergoing gene treatment therapy in the company’s experimental age prevention programme has gone up by an average of around ten years.

Demographic revolution looms

Aside from groups like NADA, the company’s research has plenty of opponents. A number of UN member-states have demanded the immediate termination of the research, although their reasons do not coincide with those of the Natural Development Association. Opponents charge that in the event that we are able to increase the age to which humans can live, even by as little as ten years, it will produce a whole clutch of global problems. In the first place, genetic treatment of this sort is extremely expensive and thus could only be afforded by the citizens of the richer, developed nations. The inevitable consequence of this would be that while the populations of the developing world will continue to increase through higher birth rates, in the richer countries’ population levels will begin to rise again - in this case through lower mortality figures.

BioMechanics’ research staff have claimed in medical journals that it is feasible to raise the average age at which a person dies to as much as 140 years. If - as they also claim - at the same time the age-span during which humans are fertile and able to reproduce is also “stretched”, and 80-year-olds can conceive and bear children, this will undoubtedly cause an enormous demographic revolution in all social structures. A child could for instance have a sister who is “old enough to be her grandmother”. As the average age of the population increases, pension systems will also be in even greater difficulties than they face today.

Deferred ageing will not fight off disease

One of the greatest problems envisaged by opponents of the process is nevertheless that of the explosive growth in the need for medical services. Even if the illnesses associated with the aged are to be “deferred” to a later date, we can still expect an increase in cancers, infectious diseases, and other environmentally-transmitted ailments, since with age the predisposition to suffer from environmental factors - for example carcinogens in the air we breathe - is likely to be cumulative. The implication of this is that whilst people may live longer, their lifespan is likely to include a greater number of diseases requiring treatment than before. Such a threat would bankrupt the entire healthcare system and bring it tumbling down on our heads, say the detractors.

In spite of all the arguments to the contrary, BioMechanics has announced that it will continue with its research programmes, which it considers will do humanity more good than harm in the long term.

NADA meanwhile remains defiant, and reports that it has many variants of the nanobugs used in the Quebec raid, and that the organization fully intends to use them in order to achieve its ends. The nanobugs in question are robots of less than 0.01mm in length, and similar devices have been developed and used by military forces to infiltrate and destroy enemy communications links and battlefield hardware.

Toteuma-arvio 2026

Toteuma lyhyesti

  • Ilmiön toteuma: 3/5
  • Toteuma viiden vuoden tarkkuudella: kyllä; arviointi-ikkuna on 2013–2023
  • Toteuma väljemmällä aikahorisontilla: kyllä, mutta ilman valmista hoitoa
  • Ilmiön ydin: ikääntymisen biologiseen hidastamiseen tähtäävä tutkimus muuttuu merkittäväksi teollisuudeksi ja herättää voimakasta eettistä sekä yhteiskunnallista vastustusta.

Senolyyttien, solujen uudelleenohjelmoinnin, geeniterapian ja pitkäikäisyysyritysten ympärille on syntynyt suuri tutkimus- ja sijoitusala. Luotettavaa ihmisen vanhenemisen pysäyttävää hoitoa tai sitä vastaan tehtyä kuvattua hyökkäystä ei ole.

Johtopäätös: pitkäikäisyystutkimuksen ja yhteiskunnallisen kiistan ydin toteutui osittain.