CBS News Asks: Could We Live Forever?

Although Ponce de Leon never found the legendary fountain of youth, today in labs like the one at the University of California, San Francisco, scientists are trying to stop the clock or at least slow it down. In San Francisco, Professor Cynthia Kenyon is conducting experiments on microscopic worms. Their usual life span is little more than 13 days, but she has been able to get some to live as long as six times that by altering one specific gene.... But to some people, like inventor Ray Kurzweil, a pill like that is just the first of innovations that he and others think could extend our lives for hundreds - yes hundreds - of years. "We've gone 20,000 years without significantly changing the software that runs in our body. We have the tools now to do that," he said. Kurzweil - you may have heard of his keyboards - foresees what he calls "the singularity," when technology and human biology merge. He's banking on the advance of technology continuing to accelerate, yielding devices like nanobots - microscopic robots that would roam your blood stream, curing what ails you.