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P . Welcome to the programme . Today , I'm joined by journalist Adam Clark , who has been researching current theories of immortality . Am I right in thinking that scientists are currently working on ____________________ that will allow people to live for ever ?

A Yes . indeed . That's exactly right . And some scientists believe that this technology Is not very far in the future - perhaps less than 30 years away - although there is still a lot of disagreement about that . But basically , the first person to live for hundreds , possibly thousands , of years could already be alive today . Perhaps some of the people listening now will live for thousands of years . It's certainly very possible .

P What ____________________ it possible ? It's never been possible in the past , has it ? Although people have often talked about It .

A I think the situation now is really different from at any time in the past . New medical and scientific techniques mean that it´s becoming possible to repair the human body . Gradually , scientists are coming to ____________________ why our bodies deteriorate with age - what happens to the cells in our bodies - and they're starting to find ways of stopping this . In short , they're finding ways to stop the ageing Process .

P It's an exciting idea , isn't it ?

A Well , yes and no ! Some people ____________________ think it's very worrying idea - they aren't in favour of it at all .

P Why not ?

A Well , they argue that there are already too many people In the world . Our planet is very crowded , and we're finding it difficult to feed all of them already . So , imagine a situation in which people start living for hundreds of years . They'll be alive to see not only they're grandchildren , but their great - great - great - great - grandchildren too . You'll have nine , ten or more generations of the same family all alive at the same time . Population will spiral out of control .

P And Christmas will be a nightmare ,
Absolutely . People have thought about this problem , of course . They have two main suggestions for dealing with it . Firstly , they say that well have to go into space and colonise other ____________________ . And secondly , they say that people who want to live for ever , they have to agree to only have one or two children . But I'm not sure that these suggestions will solve the problem entirely .

P Are there any other disadvantages to the idea of being able to live forever ,

A Yes , perhaps . There might be a problem with motivation . Why get up in the morning , if we know that there will be thousands of other mornings just the same ? In fact , why do anything today if we got a thousand years in which to do it

P . ____________________ .

A Other people argue that it would be pointless to live forever because you wouldn't be able to ____________________ more than , say , 100 years of your past . So , in a way , you wouldn't really know that you'd livend longer than that .

P Your past would be like another Life

A Yes , that's right . And there are other possible disadvantages . Some people believe that living forever would completely change what it means to be human . They argue that out time Is only Important to us - that ____________________ , hi fact , is only important - because we know it won't last forever . So if we know that we were going to live forever , we might never be able to experience the most powerful human emotions , like falling la love

P So , in a way , if we develop technology which allow us to become immortal , we'd stopped being completely human
That's right . You could argue that the longer somebody lives , the less Interesting life ____________________ for that person .

P Adam , thank you .