C.2.1. Question 1: is immortality a possible issue for human beings and/or an organization?

Mikhail Lobashev wrote in 1967: “we need to develop the discipline of eugenics to study the paths, methods and peculiarities of human evolution”. In 1980, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: “finally, looking ahead to the end of the century, the possibility of biochemical mind control and genetic tinkering with man, including beings that will function like men and reason like them as well, could give rise to some difficult questions”.

Indeed, as soon as scientists start to progress in life sciences research, new questions are raised, and now we have many more questions related to immortality rather than solutions and explanations to specific issues.

Since “death” is a natural step of evolution, a fundamentally raised question is: What is immortality? Does immortality exist? Can we measure and validate this assumption since an immortal fact … cannot be measured?

Let us take an example: we know that very old bacteria have been identified: they are long life organisms which are, sometimes, several millions of years old. Are they immortal? Are these bacteria the only systems alive with such a property? Can we know or imagine less sophisticated organisms but more resistant to a destructive or hostile environment? Some research laboratories have undertaken studies around soft minimum structured artilects to increase the resilience of a global system. No living artificial organisms have yet been developed, and we do not know if it is possible through the Turing approach?

With regard to our knowledge, we cannot conclude, and as far as we can, we will not agree with the assumption that immortality is a real fact.

C.2.2. Question 2: immortality or better aging of a living system? [HEC 08]

In the below, we quote a statement written by the famous Russian scientist H.J. Heckenberger [HEC 08]:

In view of the potential opportunities promised by genetic engineering, there are reasons to believe that one day it will be possible to achieve a dramatic increase in the human life span, or even to remove limits upon it at all, which would mean immortality.

Already today there are effective rejuvenation procedures for the human organism. In the future, a method will probably be developed to introduce preprogrammed stem cells into a sick person’s bloodstream to infiltrate the organism’s affected systems (the brain, cardiovascular system, etc.) and perform the necessary repairs.

It may become possible to disable the mechanism of aging and to support cell regeneration on the genetic level by means of modifications at the embryonic stage – as Lee Silver said, to “write immortality into the genes of the human race”. Such technologies, however, would definitely be expensive, and, therefore, immortality would be accessible only to a limited circle of people, which means that the future world population will be divided into mortals and immortals.

The issue of social justice would become very acute and needing prompt resolution.

For several decades a number of companies have specialized in deep freezing people’s bodies after biological death with the hope that future technologies will allow them to be revitalized. Freezing here is performed in a special way so as to preserve the blood vessels and organs.

It cannot be ruled out that there may be several billion people entitled to immortality, with new ones joining the select only in the event of the accidental death of one of its permanent members. The latter scenario would mean a full stop to natural evolution; however, the possibility would remain of targeted modernization of the human species by means of genetic engineering (this is based on the book by Professor John Harris, Clones, Genes, and Immortality: Ethics and the Genetic Revolution [HAR 98]).

In fact, all this development is related to the higher aging of an individual. Even when so-called immortality is considered, we cannot assert that the result will be effective. The above-mentioned solution is probably interesting, but for some reasons detailed above, it would be only applicable on a few specimens. We cannot really talk about immortality. It is a kind of speculation, interesting for increasing the aging of a species, and to provide breakthroughs in our mind, then to suggest innovative and disruptive ways of working.

C.2.3. Question 3: some considerations about the probability of dying

Let us call p the probability of occurrence related to a given aggression which may cause a death (illness, accident, aggression, earthquake, etc.). The probability of survival of the upper organism is called “S”: S = 1–p.

Let us suppose now that during our life we are subjected to a number of attacks equal to n. Let us also suppose that all of these attacks are equiprobable (i.e. equal to p). In that case, the probability of survival is equal to:

If we are optimistic, then we could assume that in our life we are subjected, twice a year, to an unfavorable event, the probability of which being p = 10–3. For a duration period of about 50 years, our survival rate is equal to:

This development is only given to demonstrate that, even considering that we are a self-repairable system (again with a probability of efficiency less than 1), the probability of survival after a long lifecycle is almost nil.

Then considering that we can be immortal, within an aggressive environment, is not practically a possible assumption.

As mentioned before, we will consider in this book that any living system, or system emerging from the complexification of living systems, is not possible.

These statements are just an extension of what has been developed in quality theory several decades ago, in IBM manufacturing plants, concerning the SPQL (Shipped Product Quality Level) [MAS 77]. Indeed, life is necessary, death is a necessity: it is an opportunity to convey essential information, to implement paradigm changes, to foster adaptation, and lastly to enable the evolution around us, toward something better.