Can science and the fast evolving human intellectual capabilities help in understanding Mahdism Doctrine?
Since the last decade of the 20th centaury, our understanding of the Molecular and Cellular mechanisms that underline human ageing process has increased significantly. Scientists are currently putting forward a set of provoking questions to the scientific community such as: Is there a limit to the length of the human life? How much longer human life can be extended? These questions stem from the wealth of knowledge gained from immense scientific research through different biological disciplines, namely, Genetics, Developmental Biology, embryonic and adult stem cell, tissue engineering, signalling protein, Biomedical and Human genome projects. The promises of these researches have raised huge expectations about its ultimate goal: longer healthier human lives; it is a very fast moving target. Today the retention of youth, the preservation of beauty and the defiance of death are billion-dollar industries in the West.
Whatever the maximum longevities might be in the future, the main objective of this paper is that scientific community has no objection in principle for a potentially longer human life.
Humanity on the other hand, through its evolving intellectual capabilities, reached the conclusion that humanity need to come together, acknowledging the mystery of collective intelligence, thus, a lot of organisations and research centres established for this purpose, Global leadership initiative, International Coalition for dialogue and deliberation, collective wisdom movement, grassroots collective activisms and World café, just to name few. These new organisations through collective technologies are spreading across the world mobilising and empowering countless organisations and communities to reach for innovative solutions to the most troubling social, ethical and economical world’s problems. Today the world is experiencing unprecedented global changes overwhelmed by profound sense of uncertainty and discontinuity manifested itself in increasing number of acts of extreme behaviour, personnel, social and governmental. We are witnessing a global crisis in values. There is universal sense of malaise, independent of geography and ideology and a loss of faith in the existing world order. This is the drive that led the UN to set up a commission on Global Governance. The Commission believes that world events, since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, combined with advances in technology, the information revolution, and the now-global awareness of impending environmental catastrophe, create a climate in which the people of the world will recognize the need for, and the benefits of, global governance. The foundation for global governance is the belief that the world is now ready to accept a "global civic ethic" based on "a set of core values that can unite people of all cultural, political, religious, or philosophical backgrounds." This was previously alluded to by the great Muslim thinker Martyr Ayatollah Morteza Mottaharri on the viewpoint of Islam regarding development and the movement of communities and civilizations, he said:
“…if we take into account the international community, Islam believes in the perfection of human community. For, Islam believes that communities, civilizations and cultures are moving towards oneness and unification and finally merge with each other and the future of human communities is the international single perfect community.”
This paper argues that, currently the time is right for the convergence of science, human intellect and the divine wisdom to heal humanity’s maladies, and the concept of Imam Mahdi (PBUH) is timely and what the world is eagerly waiting for.
Introduction:
Muslims believe that Prophet Noah (AS) lived more than 950 years as mentioned in Sura Ankabut (19:14). They also, believe that Jesus (AS) is still alive and he is more than 2 centuries old now as mentioned in Sura Al Umran (3:55). Muslims also believe that al-Khidr (AS) is still alive as in Sura Al Kahaf (the Cave) (18:65-82) and the people of the Cave (Ahl al-Kahf) were put to death for 309 years and then were brought back to life by the leave of Allah (SWT) as in Sura Al Kahaf (18:25 ).
The above historical incidence can not be proved or disproved scientifically, yet we accept it as a divine revelation.
Mas’udi in his book Muruj al-dhahab, vol.1&2 mentioned a number of historical figures who lived a long life, among them are Adam who lived 930 yrs; Lot 732 yrs; Idris 300 yrs and Ibraham 195 yrs.
However what I am intending to explore in this paper, is what science and in particular molecular and cellular discipline have to say about longevity and aging process? Though in a very limited scale as I am aware of the nature, themes and participants of the conference.
Scientific Research on Longevity and aging process:
There are numerous conventional research papers on longevity, stretched to the beginning of the 20 th century and beyond, cited by prominent authors in explaining the scientific basis for possible potential long life for human being, among those are Ayatollah Amini (1996), Ayatollah Muhammed Baqir Sadar and Ayatollah Mutahhari (1982), Ayatollah Muhammed Baqir Sadar (1981), Ayatollah Muhammad Saddeq Sader (2004), Alhakem (1996) and Gulpaygani, (2000). Most of the papers cited referred to the experiments on animals (notably, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, worms and insects) as well as plants. Other line of mentioned research experiments were done on isolated cells, tissue cultures and organs taken from relevant organisms and kept in controlled environmental conditions.
The theme of those papers was to establish the possibility of long life in other forms of life such as plants and turtle which extend to thousands and hundreds of years respectively. The papers also discussed the possibility of inducing long life in isolated cells, tissues and organs provided controlled conditions and nutrients were maintained.
The authors referred to numerous scientific literatures in their endeavour to establish that cells are intrinsically capable of long life and immortality could be achieved. The cause of the death therefore, as they argued is due to illness and infection by various disease-causing agents. Ayatollah Amini (1996), stated in his book chapter 9 page 9, by refereeing to one scientific article as “…the reason for death is not the number of years a person has lived; rather, it is the anomalous conditions that attack the body and render its major organs deficient and incapable of defending it under adverse situations. Consequently, one can say that when medical science becomes capable of subduing these anomalous conditions or bringing them under some kind of control, then there will remain no obstacle for life to continue beyond a number of centuries, as is the case with some trees, for instance. Such a breakthrough in the advancement of medical science does not seem possible within the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, it is not far-fetched to expect that the present average life span may increase to two or three times.
This is true to certain extent as the life expectancy increased significantly compared to previous centuries. Eighty five percent of new born in UK will reach their 65% birthday (Kirkwood, 2002). In the United States, the average life expectancy rose from 45-78 during the 20th century, slightly more for woman and less for men. This is due to advances in public health and medical research (Olshansky and Carnes, 2001). The author also envisaged the possibility of further improvement in the statistics once further success against diseases of the elderly achieved. Hyflick (2000) predicted that, if the biomedical interventions were to eliminate the major scourges of the elderly – cardiovascular disease, stroke and cancer- an estimated 15 years would be added to average life expectancy. Kurzwell, (2001) follows life expectancy since the eighteenth century and he believed to be of exponential trends as in Fig. 1.
Fig. 2 The expanding human life span is one of those exponential trends. In the eighteenth century, we added a few days every year to human longevity; during the nineteenth century we added a couple of weeks each year; and now we\'re adding almost a half a year every year. With the revolutions in genomics, proteomics, rational drug design, therapeutic cloning of our own organs and tissues, and related developments in bio-information sciences, we will be adding more than a year every year within ten years.
Can current research and in particular in molecular biology discipline and associated techniques help in demystifying the mysteries of longevity and aging process?
It was previously thought that old age does not run in families. This belief was also supported by recent researches which were based entirely on twin’s studies that attributed more than 65% of the variance in twin’s life span to environmental factors (Bunk, 2002). Bunk also argued that telomere shortening probably does not give information about aging or molecular deterioration; it does help to explain how an organism’s cellular longevity is determined. Kirkwood (2002) also believed that genes account for only a quarter of what determine the length of life, the rest being attributed to factors like nutrition and life style.
On the other hand the studies conducted by Perls, et al (2000) and Puca et al (2001) at Harvard Medical school proved and documented the first ever findings of 4 families with high clustering of extreme longevity. The researchers found that a locus on chromosome 4 is “highly suggestive” of genetic susceptibility to age well and to achieve exceptional longevity. The authors also mentioned that those rare families are not only blessed with “longevity-enabling genes”, but they seem to lack certain disease genes. The finding also revealed that those people are tending to fight off age-related diseases better than most people. The researchers also indicated that there might be 10-longevity genes, and the team is currently conducting their research in other suggested region of the human genome.
Another interesting research and remarkable progress has been made during the last two decades in what is currently termed as telomere biology, a new discipline in molecular biology field. Telomeres i.e. the DNA structures at the termini of linear chromosomes, which have been implicated in regulating the lifespan of normal human cells. Telomeres cannot be fully replicated each time a cell divides, and they shorten until reaching a critical length that signals replicative senescence. However, reactivation of telomerase allows cells to continue dividing by polymerizing the addition of new telomeric DNA. This extends the lifespan of cells and allows for unlimited proliferation, Fig 2. (Kirkwood, 2002).
Fig .2 Telomeres protect the end of chromosomes, but without the enzyme telomerase they get shorten every time a cell divides. Telomerase serves to protect the germ line from losing its telomeres, but is normally switched off in the ordinary cells of the body. Telomeres shortening in ordinary cells contribute to the process of aging by causing cells to cease dividing, a phenomenon known as cell senescence.
Very interesting findings were presented by Christiansen, et al (2001), and their current works on turtle telomeres, telomerase and their relation to lifespan and tissue regeneration. Their works based on the fact, that human telomeres are similar to those of reptiles, and the discovery of telomerase based mechanisms potentially used by reptiles for immortalization of tissues could be usable by man in lengthening lifespan or improving tissue repair during long space journeys.
In summary, their researches appear to have accumulated support for a mechanism by which cell lines throughout the lower vertebrate world may extend their life without developing malignancies. This may be a major factor in the greater regenerative power well documented to exist in some lower vertebrates and could be a major factor in extension of life. Very recent research conducted by Dillin, et al (2007), which was published in Nature, in which the authors claim to find genetic clue to longevity. The researches provide genetic evidence to unravel the underlying molecular programme required for increased longevity in response to caloric restriction.
