Aging Reversal?

I am thankful for medical science that enables us to live longer, healthier lives, and there are principles we can put into practice that can prolong our life on earth and postpone the inevitable departure. But, if we truly want to provide for our future in eternity, we have to know the Lord. 1st Timothy 6 says:
13 I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate,
14 that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ's appearing,
15 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords,
16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.

We have the promise of eternal life with Jesus and the capacity to live in abundant life here on earth. While human ingenuity can contribute to amazing process, ultimately the power of life and death rest in the hand of Almighty God.  We can rightly seek to walk in health on this earth - spiritually, physically, emotionally, and mentally, and take the steps to be in right relationship with the One who has made us, and recognize that ultimately, we are in His hands, and He has our future - even through eternity, under His control.  For the believer in Christ, that means we can be confident we will be with Him forever, if Jesus is our Lord.

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A quest for humanity is to conquer death, or at least cheat it, to take steps along the path to immortality - that doesn't come through human wisdom, but through the knowledge of Christ; as Paul points out in 2nd Timothy chapter 1:
8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God,
9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,
10 but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...

When we sit down at our computer to order retail products, there is certainly a possibility that we will be intersecting with the site developed by Jeff Bezos, who certainly has impacted millions of lives through Amazon.  Bezos has also been influential in media, having bought The Washington Post, which can be easily characterized as an agenda-driven and highly influential publication.  He recently set his sights on space exploration and traveled on his first, albeit short, space flight.

Anything else Bezos wants to conquer?  Oh, yes, how about death itself, or at least the aging process? Say what?

The Daily Mail website reports that Bezos and Yuri Milner are "funding a startup biotechnology firm with the aim of discovering a way to reverse aging." It's called Altos Labs and already it's raised $27 million in order to "look into the potential of cell reprogramming technology to turn back the clock in animals, and potentially, humans."

This is some futuristic, and, it seems, ethically challenged research here.  The article says:

Other talent being brought on at Altos include Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a Spanish biologist working at the Salk Institute in California, who has pioneered research into cell switching.

In 2016 he demonstrated Yamanaka's embryonic stem cell technique and applied it to mice, which exhibited signs of age reversal.

After the experiment, Izpisua Belmonte dubbed the reprogramming technique as a potential 'elixer of life,' Technology Review reported.

And, the Daily Mail brings out that:

For now, some of the first goals of Altos will likely be to apply reprogramming in a way that doesn't kill the animal.

In previous tests the technique could produce embryonic tumors called teratomas, and there has been little research published on it so far despite great interest and funding.

'I think the concept is strong, but there is a lot of hype. It’s far away from translation,' said Dr. Alejandro Ocampo, who had previously worked on Izpisua Belemonte's team at Salk. 'It’s risky and it’s a long way from a human therapy.'

This changing the nature of cells is described as "too dangerous" to be used on humans.  But, there's plenty of money to pay high-profile researchers to move in that direction.

The "Technology Review," referenced in the Daily Mail article is the MIT Technology Review, which reports that:

Also joining is Steve Horvath, a UCLA professor and developer of a “biological clock” that can accurately measure human aging. Shinya Yamanaka, who shared a 2012 Nobel Prize for the discovery of reprogramming, will be an unpaid senior scientist and will chair the company’s scientific advisory board.

Yamanaka’s breakthrough discovery was that with the addition of just four proteins, now known as Yamanaka factors, cells can be instructed to revert to a primitive state with the properties of embryonic stem cells.

The review also says that, "Manuel Serrano of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, in Barcelona, Spain, said the company would pay him five to 10 times what he earns now." Serrano was one of the first scientists to produce those Yamanaka reversals. He says, "You introduce the factors and they do the magic. It’s very simple experimentally, even if it is not understood..."  The article states:

The major question now is how to tailor reprogramming to see if it can safely rejuvenate animals without killing them, and whether the process can be carried out using ordinary drugs, rather than via genetic engineering. “To me the Yamanaka factors are not realistic for use in the clinic,” Serrano says. “They involve the introduction of genes, some of which are oncogenic. This is hard to pass through the filter of regulatory agencies.”

So, this is "curiosity-driven research..."  It's no surprise that people want to live longer - we certainly should desire a more healthy life and a comfortable exit at the end.  I have talked on my radio show with nutritionists who discuss the physical aspects of healthy living, and with pastors and psychologists who encourage us to minimize stress and other factors that can damage the length and quality of our lives. 

But, this seems to me to be a "humans as God" endeavor, that possesses some ethical concerns.  And, perhaps a side effect of trying to manipulate God's intended order is the development of tumors from the "oncogenic" genes that were referred to.  And, there is the whole notion of using cells extracted from aborted babies that is concerning. 

Jeff Bezos is a very rich man, and certainly seems to want to cheat death, and is perhaps investing in extreme means in order to do that. But there is that desire, it seems, to cheat death, or to at least reverse the aging process.  Ponce de Leon sought the so-called "Fountain of Youth," and now you have a researcher who is talking about the "elixir of life," wrapped up in reprogrammed cells.  But, there is another "elixir" that we should be concentrating on - the life that flows through the believer in Christ; eternal life, life that is given to the believer in Christ; yes, we will live forever with Him if we accept Him as our Savior.  Certainly, all of us will exist forever - the choice is whether or not we want to live it in the presence of God or in spiritual death, in torment apart from God.  Through Christ, we can truly experience life as He intends.