Today as I was describing my work's progress and updates to my supervisor, I had a slight lull period and reflected on the work I am doing. I talked about the future of targeted medicine and degenerative disease therapies.

I talked about want to see what I would be like in 30 years, my envisioning of the future of health-care. I talked a lot about my visions, where in the near future, everyone’s unique genetic code is coded for specific and customized pharmaceuticals, effectively reducing medical wastage and preventing side-effects.

I envisioned stem cells to cure degenerative diseases due to aging, and I believe pharmaceuticals should be genetic, right at the root, rather than symptomatic. Antibiotics will eventually give way to bioengineered bacteriophages that can both engulf bacterium and other pathogens effectively reducing the possibility of superbug evolved immunity against existing antibiotics.

I talked about how cancer can only be cured by targeted drug delivery, lasers and other radiological biomedical therapeutics, not just pharmaceuticals. Cancer is spontaneous and will occur anywhere in the body for no apparent reason. We might understand the cellular kinetics of cancer, but we still don’t know why it actually occurs.

We know cancer’s root is genetic, and the medical profession has identified genetic markers and we can prevent cancer by using DNA intercalators when identified in an individual, as well as cure cancer using targeted therapy.

That brings me to this point - immortality is impossible. The very soul that makes us human, makes us mortal. Our genetic code is eukaryotic, which is already prone to mutation. Nature has imbued protective mechanisms such as introns, as well as telomeres and DNA repair mechanisms, but despite all the stem cells and anti-aging formulas, majority of the cells in our body are too highly differentiated to be function-specific and the organs too highly inter-dependent on each other that there is no redundancy.

Our organs cannot reproduce or heal themselves without losing functionality, the brain, the heart, the lungs, the eyes, kidneys, spleen, stomach and gonads are all too highly differentiated for stem cells to effectively have a significant life-prolonging effects. We will all eventually die once our existing cells pass senescence.

Cancer. Stem-Cell treatments are all merely life-prolonging methods. Why? Humans are afraid of death and are willing to pay money to maintain their youth, no matter how short it lasts. It’s a big multi-billion dollar market.

But we can never be immortal.