• Question: Why do we die

    Asked by to Thomas, Simon, Clara, Becky, Daniel on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Thomas Elias Cocolios

      Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      There are many reasons, ranging from shear stupidity to organ failure, e.g. from abusing your body. Some recent studies show that ageing and death can be related to a programming in our DNA and it might be possible to reverse it.

      The more important question to me seems to be: what does death mean to life and what would life become without death? And I am not rhetorical about this.

    • Photo: Becky Martin

      Becky Martin answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Every creature has a biological clock, a point at which they become redundant because they’ve passed the age of reproduction and are therefore not needed by nature any more.

      If you have survived a plethora of diseases, accidental death, disaster or some other misfortune, you might be lucky enough to reach old age (there are so many ways you can get killed off, but transmissable diseases such as malaria and HIV are one of the biggest causes of death in the world, especially in less economically developed countries – We die of them because we are effectively parasitised by another species, for its own benefit!).

      However your generation is likely to live a very long time, in fact, possibly over the age of 100! 🙂

    • Photo: Simon Albright

      Simon Albright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      If we’re lucky because we’re very old and our bodies stop working.

      The body can only handle so much. Whether it’s diseases destroying our cells, radiation damage turning them tumorous or a very long fall of a very high cliff onto big spikey rocks. Eventually our body can’t handle what’s happening and so it essentially turns off.

    • Photo: Clara Nellist

      Clara Nellist answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      If you’re not asking about dying from an accident or illness, then the reason we get older is because of our cells. Inside our cells there are things called ‘telomeres’ which are at the end of the part of the cell that contains our DNA information, called the chromosome. Every time your cell divides, this can get clipped, or shortened, and we start to lose information. This can lead to a lot of diseases that can affect older people and eventually the person will die. If we can learn to switch this off and prevent ageing, like Thomas mentioned, then we can stop people from getting old or dying of old age related diseases.

      This doesn’t mean people will live forever though as there are still other illnesses or accidents that could kill someone. But without ageing, it could be hundreds, or even thousands of years before this happened! Think of all the things you could do it that time!!

    • Photo: Daniel Roach

      Daniel Roach answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      I think everyone has answered this question very completely… I suppose I could add one thing. Research into aging and the genetics/mechanisms behind these questions is still very new – and there is lots yet to discover.

      But with modern technology, and modern computing resources, these questions are becoming more and more answerable – if this is something you are interested in, perhaps you will be able to contribute towards solving this big problem – hopefully in time to help me!

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