Lifeboat Foundation

Crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, written before and during the Bolshevik Revolution by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism.

Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest in its visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism.

Cosmism was developed by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov in the late nineteenth century; he believed that humans had an ethical obligation not only to care for the sick but to cure death using science and technology; outer space was the territory of both immortal life and infinite resources. After the revolution, a new generation pursued Fedorov’s vision. Cosmist ideas inspired visual artists, poets, filmmakers, theater directors, novelists (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky read Fedorov’s writings), architects, and composers, and influenced Soviet politics and technology. In the 1930s, Stalin quashed Cosmism, jailing or executing many members of the movement. Today, when the philosophical imagination has again become entangled with scientific and technological imagination, the works of the Russian Cosmists seem newly relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYdcX0iNnAE&si=qCOiSshv0e3KTMlz

Soviet Cosmism (Biocosmism-Immortalism) was a movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to Boris Groys, Cosmism followed a radicalized logic of \.

There used to be the concept of a “singularity”. The idea was that computers would become smarter than humans and start to replace them. Even the idea that humanity would be substituted by silicon-based computing machines (robots) was suggested. Against that two years ago we set the concept of “The convergence”. This assumes that biological and silicon-based computation would merge in the sense of better control over biological processes like diseases and longevity. It is essentially a deeply humanistic perspective, in spite of being futuristic, and not taking misuses actively into account.

Two eggs fertilized by two sperm coincided in a uterus and, instead of giving rise to two sisters, they fused to form a single person: Karen Keegan. When she was 52 years old, this woman from Boston suffered very serious kidney failure, but luckily she had three children willing to donate a kidney to her. The doctors did genetic tests to see which offspring was most compatible and they got a major surprise: the test said that two of them were not her children. The reality was even more astonishing: Karen Keegan had two different DNA sequences, two genomes, depending on the cell you looked at. Biologist Alfonso Martínez Arias maintains that this chimeric woman is conclusive proof that DNA does not define a person’s identity.

The most inspiring science book of all time is The Selfish Gene, according to a survey carried out by the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. In this famous work from 1976, British biologist Richard Dawkins defended that the DNA molecule uses the human being as a mere envelope in order to be transmitted to the next generation and become immortal. “We are survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes,” Dawkins stated. Almost half a century later, Martínez Arias refutes this perspective of the selfish gene and proposes a much more romantic alternative: the altruistic cell. “An organism is the work of cells. Genes merely provide materials for their work,” he says in The Master Builder, a fascinating and provocative book from the London publisher Basic Books that will also be published in Spanish this year.

Martínez Arias, 68, argues that the DNA sequence of an individual is not an instruction manual or a construction plan for their body, but a box of tools and materials for the true architect of life: the cell. The Madrid-born biologist argues that there is nothing in the DNA molecule that explains why the heart is located on the left, why there are five fingers on the hand or why twin brothers have different fingerprints. Cells are what “control time and space,” he proclaims. They are the ones who know where right and left are, and where exactly a person’s foot or an elephant’s trunk should end.

Futurists, including some medical doctors, are signing up to be decapitated—and then have their brains frozen. But without a body, what will their minds become?

Not a happy vid for E5. It appears to be something to make one healthy and as a result get extra time which is a good thing. But its testing standards could have been better and its off to some kind of skin care target.

A new study led by University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center researchers shows that an enzyme called PARP1 is involved in repair of telomeres, the lengths of DNA that protect the tips of chromosomes, and that impairing this process can lead to telomere shortening and genomic instability that can cause cancer.

Researchers have discovered that individuals who live to be 100 years old and remain cognitively healthy possess genetic variations that may protect against Alzheimer’s disease. These “protective alleles” are significantly more prevalent among centenarians compared to Alzheimer’s patients and even middle-aged individuals without the disease. This finding could pave the way for new approaches in preventing and treating Alzheimer’s, particularly by focusing on enhancing these protective genetic mechanisms.

The new findings have been published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that predominantly affects older adults, leading to a decline in cognitive functions such as memory and reasoning. Over time, this can result in a complete loss of independence and eventually death. The risk of developing Alzheimer’s increases significantly with age, and while it is not an inevitable part of aging, it is one of the most common causes of dementia among seniors.

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