Anatomy and healthy life extension

I already knew most of the references in the "Through a Scanner Darkly - Art and science unite in the representation of human anatomy" article published in the id magazine of march april 2004 : from the Humani Corporis Fabrica ("Vesalius's detailed account of human anatomy transformed its subject and forever changed medical education in the west. it's woodcut illustrations became the basis of medical art and illustration for generations to come, and continue to influence the way we look at the human body") to National library of health's The Visible Human Project®("the creation of complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the normal male and female human bodies"), except for some contemporary anatomical art so when I got online I followed up to learn more about Robert Lazzarini's extreme realist/extreme distorted sculptures, ,Justine Cooper's self portrait using Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans (a medical imaging technology) and that anatomical travelogue thing too.

While I was at it I used google image to check out what Gunther Von Hagens of the BODY WORLDS exposition was up to nowadays, that lead me to a good online gallery of his work that is part of an interesting site made by channel4 called "anatomy", about him but also about different aspects of anatomy: medicine, art, ethics.

As a materialist who thinks that one's life isn't a rehersal for something else, I was particularly pleased to hear about one of his recent project called "Futurehuman"

Channel 4 and Professor Gunther Von Hagens are searching for a donor to take part in an ambitious scientific project and television programme to redesign and 'perfect' a human body and preserve it for posterity at the Science Museum in London.

Futurehuman aims to 'improve' upon evolution by making alterations to a donor's body after their death. The changes will be based on the decisions of leading experts in fields such as anatomy, evolutionary biology, surgery and mechanical engineering.

I heard the idea before, Natasha Vita-More also used a multidisciplinary approach to design "primo posthuman body" by consulting experts of different fields (philosophy, nanomedicine, evolutionary biology, cryobiology, artificial intelligence, enhanced reality, gerontology, physics, economy, maths, robotics) but to me "Futurehuman" come across as more urgent because visceral, it is a good gimmick to bring healthy life extension concerns and values (living healthily for longer, being physically younger at any given age) to the attention of a vast public.

Another good article I came across that got a similar "back to basics" angle:
"The mainstream press is starting to catch on to the link between regenerative medicine and healthy life extension. This piece from the Miami Herald quotes Kent Vrana, pharmacology department chair at Penn State University: "Organ-replacement technology could boost the human life span to about 150 years." Using regenerative medicine and tissue engineering to build replacement organs on demand is the brute force, expensive, near term approach to extending healthy life span - if it's broken, buy a new one. Preventative therapies to block the aging process will likely be far cheaper and more effective in the long run, but the scientific community has a long way to go to develop this sort of technology."