Longevism

Longevism is an ideology devoted to achieving long life span with modern science. It is sometimes associated with transhumanism.
Definition
The Italian Transhumanist Manifesto declares longevism to be the "extension of the human lifespan and life expectancy within the limit of the opportunities increasingly offered by biological and physical sciences". and "individuals who attempt to apply themselves current knowledge about the control of aging".
Extropian Max More defined a longevist as a "person who seeks to extend their life beyond current norms (but who may not wish to live forever)". However, abolishing death has been seen as "the logical extension of longevism".
History
An early longevist was Luigi Carnaro, a Renaissance-era Venetian who advocated the health benefits of alcohol. At age 83, he wrote a discourse on healthy living, which was succeeded by three more such discourses by the time he was 95.
Sociologist James Hughes claims that science has been tied to a cultural narrative of conquering death since the Age of Enlightenment. He cites Francis Bacon (1561-1626) as an advocate of using science and reason to extend human life, noting Bacon's novel New Atlantis, wherein scientists worked toward delaying aging and prolonging life. Robert Boyle (1627-1691), founding member of the Royal Society, also hoped that science would make substantial progress with life extension, according to Hughes, and even proposed such experiments as "to replace the blood of the old with the blood of the young". Biologist Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was inspired by a belief in indefinite human lifespan that he developed after experimenting with cells, says Hughes. Hughes also notes K. Eric Drexler's proposal of using nanorobotics to cure disease and reanimate frozen bodies in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. In the '80s and '90s, philosophers were pulled together with longevity scientists by the work of extropianism, according to Hughes. Leading futurist Ray Kurzweil popularizes a version of Singularitarianism, says Hughes, that focuses on human benefits such as lifespan enhancement. Hughes also highlights Brian Alexander's 2004 book Rapture: A Raucous Tour of Cloning, Transhumanism, and the New Era of Immortality, which chronicles the merging of communities of longevists and genomic scientists, drawing the longevity subculture away from pseudoscience and towards legitimate science. Other modern longevists include writer Gennady Stolyarov, who insists that death is "the enemy of us all, to be fought with medicine, science, and technology", and transhumanist philosopher Zoltan Istvan, who proposes that the "transhumanist must safeguard one's own existence above all else". Futurist George Dvorsky considers aging to be a problem that desperately needs to be solved.

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