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Nanomedicine
every tissue cell of your body (requiring a total dose of several
trillion nanorobots), then exit the cell and tissue, re-enter the
bloodstream, and finally eliminate themselves from the body
through the kidneys.
DECHRONIFICATION: A TREATMENT FOR THE DISEASE
OF NATURAL DEATH
The end result of all these nanomedical advances will be to
enable a process I call dechronification or, more colloquially,
rolling back the clock. I see no serious ethical problems with
this. According to the volitional normative model of disease
that is most appropriate for nanomedicine [19], if youre physi-
ologically old and dont want to be, then for you, oldness and
aging and natural death are a disease and you deserve to be
cured. Dechronification will first arrest biological aging, then
reduce your biological age by performing three kinds of proce-
dures on each one of the 4 trillion tissue cells in your body:
First, a respirocyte or microbivore device will be sent to
enter every tissue, to remove accumulating metabolic toxins
and undegradable material. Afterwards, these toxins will con-
tinue to slowly re-accumulate as they have all your life, so
youll probably need a whole-body cleanout to prevent fur-
ther aging, maybe once a year.
Second, chromosome replacement therapy can be used to
correct accumulated genetic damage and mutations in every
one of your cells. This might also be repeated annually, or less
often.
Third, persistent cellular structural damage that the cell
cannot repair by itself such as enlarged or disabled mitochon-
dria can be reversed as required, on a cell-by-cell basis, using
cellular repair devices. Were still a long way from having
complete theoretical designs for many of these machines, but