Coming at this from a life of no serious scientific scrutiny or messing about with physiology, I believe that it is a scientific impossibility for the body to biologically regress without serious distress.
The window of possibility is open given the propensity of our minds to continuously engineer and discover new things, but it sounds messy.

The idea has been considered for transfer consciousness into some cybernetic brain and body which can be replaced. The same might be true of eventually perfecting cloning that doesn’t create a copy that is weaker then the original and then transfer consciousness into each new brain and biological body. Currently copies still prove to be weaker, unless you take a body, grow it in a lab and have your consciousness take over the body/brain without loss of memory putting all the neural chemical brain networks in place. This is assuming that we are only ego chemicals and the concept of spirit and the after life is wishful egotistical thinking. Still, nothing will ever last forever in the known universe, so transferring consciousness and/or biological or cybernetic brains is the only shot.

Then the last question is in the movie highland, who wants to live forever, and would it really be that great? Assuming an infinite universe with infinite dimensions and worlds that a spirit might travel to, and/or just a chance to return to the presence of God might be lost by such a wishful eternal stay on this dying planet.

I personally just wish I had more time to just be, so that perceptually my 82 years dont go by like they were only 30 years long. I want to kick back on the beach of life, take a walk on the road of life enjoying the journey without care of the destination. Then I am more then happy to die so that I stop sucking up our children future.

Until we perfect space travel, immortality would mean no more children. Or at least severe limitations on the number of children people can have... which we know doesn't work - it's been tried in China and caused big big problems... In the circles of the US science (fiction?) community there's been talk of colonizing Mars and the like because they believe we can't curb our population growth... But ya know, by now we were supposed to all have flying cars too... given that the only flying car currently in any kind of production or even preproduction that I know of is the Molar SkyCar and that's been in development for like 50yrs, costs a cool million and the company was sued by the government for fraud... Doesn't inspire me with huge confidence that we'll have a dozen or so planetary colonies in our solar system to export our kids to by 2060. I could be wrong of course... heck, who knows, maybe a technological singularity (an artificial intelligence with more computational power than the entire human species for less than the cost of a new plasma TV) will solve those problems. :)

Ok, bear with me, please. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, right? That's a "law of the universe?" So, LIFE is a sort of energy, right? We talk about 'vitality' (which means life, vital-life), some people have more than others. So, can LIFE, by this conceptualization, ever be created or destroyed?

Nah, I don't think so. It goes on, and mass mind is awareness of the whole universe, which is alive. So genetic immortality, well, it would be changing consciousness through time, but you'd be stuck in a human body. if your children figured out how to manipulate the acids that digest the telemeres on the ends of DNA strands, which has been found to be the ultimate cause of aging, cool.

But what about being something else? We're just a part of a biosphere on earth while we're alive. What is life? Maybe the whole planet is alive? What about becoming the life of a planet upon checkin' out of the life evident in your human body? The WHOLE consciousness of a PLANET?! Or, the UNIVERSE?

Seriously, what is it that holds together this whole organism that is YOU, and where does it go when you die? Because, we do, and THAT (thing I was just referring to) CANNOT be created or destroyed: it's the law.

I'm not trying to be morbid.

I just don't want to view death as something really terrible and nasty: an ultimate end, of my awesomeness.

I think my awesomeness exists because i got it from somewhere: I didn't just make it up.

I am a part of a whole. A functioning organelle.

So, it'd be neat if the human race accomplished that experiment: was successful in stretching the longevity of a human beyond the 80 some-odd years they're almost guarenteed by modern medicine. Then we could take the time to learn more stuff: like chinese, and how to be really good at chess, and really listen to people when they are talking to us: because we have all the time in the world. We have FOREVER.

But maybe we do have forever.

It just seems like we never don't.

(the poor grammer was intentional)

there is a great presentation about the possibility of eternal life on Ted.org: www.ted.com/talks/view/id/39. It is part of a set of presentations about the subject: www.ted.com/index.php/themes/view/id/44
Michel

Linda Goodman's Star Signs (1987) Chapter 9 Physical Immortality
a thought transformation, leading to the achievement of cell regeneration

"We fear acid rain and the holes being torn in the Earth's ozone layer, endangered species and a multitude of acts of violence and cruely to Mother Earth and her creatures. Yet, the belief that death is inevitable --- that death is beyond an individual's control --- is still the biggest killer of all,"

My thought regarding the potential to hold off death is that it is a terribly frightful idea. I couldn't imagine a world in which people never grew old. I think even with all the time in the world that there would still be a huge number of people unsatisfied and always wishing they were younger. If it's not 22 then it's 82 and if not that it's something like 102 and people a still want more it's just human nature.

The other concern with living for an indefinate period would be the toll it would take on our already exhausted natural resources. In many regions of the world there is considerable overpopulation and slowed or halted aging would exacerbate this.

Finally, without the risk of death, what fun is living?