"We see a better world coming". Liz Parrish on Becoming Immortal in the latest VPRO Backlight documentary

Dutch independent documentarists VPRO's latest documentary about Silicon Valley and its quest for immortality, featuring  Liz Parrish, with Linda Chamberlain for Alcor, Aubrey de Grey for SENS,  a DIY life extensionist and two science fiction writers.  They speak about the scientific endeavor, funded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, to cure aging.  Far from being a narcissistic enterprise by Me, Myself and I to add days to my given lifespan, the goal of gene therapy is ultimately to modulate our genetic profiles to make people who will work together to the bigger goals: happiness and harmony.    "For me it’s all or nothing: either we start solving the problems of the future and the now, or we are not participating in making a better world.  So I would rather be dead than die of the diseases of aging," says Liz Parrish and explains why she became the first human to receive gene therapy to cure aging.  "We couldn’t use the therapies in other people if we didn’t really know what would happen.  I wouldn’t put a drug in anybody that I wouldn’t take myself."

Against her critics Liz stresses that, "We see a better world coming and we have to be very careful that we don’t get stuck in the myths of what is ethical... As a society we have already decided to cure cancer, to cure Alzheimers, so treating biological aging is essentially curing those diseases."