Imagine that we take mirror reflection of a cell - change each molecule into its enantiomers.
In physics it's called parity transform - it's not perfectly conserved, but the differences of energies are many orders of magnitude smaller than thermal noise in biochemistry - such cell should function properly (but for example use L-glucose).

wikibin.org/articles/chiral-life-concept.html

One of the possibility is that such chiral life would be incompatible with most of normal parasites...
We don't have the technology to construct such cell in this moment, but maybe in a few dozens of years ...
If You think about all possibilities and dangers ... this topic is just huge ... there is only scratched the surface on the link.
So it would be wise to discuss about it now, because if we will wake up when the technology will be already available ... it could be just too late

What do You think about it?

One idea I always liked since I became interested in life extension is that of small incremental steps. Each step will allow you to be still around when the technology for the next step will become available. This is a concept that is central to SENS, if Im not mistaken. What worries me is the possibility of technological bottlenecks, where lack of progress in certain areas could freeze human maximal life span for long time. If you look at certain areas of technology, like for instance aerospatial engineering, it seems that from the 60s the progress has slowed down enormously. I still remember when in the 70s people believed that by year 2000 moon flights would become almost as easy and accessible as intercontinental flights. Economic and political decisions play a very important role in all this. Personally, my hopes are in a breakout in nanotechnologies and quantum computers in a few decennias. Until then, resources and WILL are necessary in order to exploit current technologies to gain moderate, but still important, increases in human life span.

This post has been edited by Proconsul: 10-Nov 2008, 11:45 AM