Namaste!

Perhaps the Dharma Initiative had something to do with making human beings immortal. A cure for death, so to speak. Of course it could not make you impervious to bullets and the like, but perhaps they found a way to halt the aging process and keep people from dying of “natural causes.” I’m no scientist, but perhaps there’s something about the island itself, the electromagnetism, etc. that helps to enable all of this….or at least render the island “invisible” so the experiment can continue undetected. This anti-aging theory would explain any discrepancies between how people look and how old they actually are…the weird X-Ray of the womb…the focus of this episode on “time.” In effect, the Dharma folks may have found a way to halt the effects of time, without stopping time itself. Perhaps the curative properties of the island somehow play into this theory, though I have not figured out how…

However, an unanticipated side effect of the experiment may be that it renders the people infertile. In other words, they don’t age outwardly, but they ultimately can’t reproduce. Perhaps this was by design, because you’d quickly have an overpopulation problem if people stopped dying but kept breeding. Maybe the Others (or at least some of them) are the leftovers of those experiments and have since drawn in others to deal with the infertility problem…enter Juliette and her magical ability to impregnate the unimpregnate-able. It may also explain why the Others are so interested in Kate and Sawyer…because they were voted “most likely to fornicate.” Also, Claire and Sun already being preggo…the interest in Walt and the other children…and the lack of kids in Other-topia.

Now, if you found a cure for death, you’d want to make sure the people you had around were “good” and not likely to cause trouble. This could help explain the “lists” of the good people and all of the good/evil/redemption undertones of the show. The lack of death would render current religions and their theories of an afterlife less effective as a form of moral guidance…but you’d still need some sort of moral code. A “new religion.” This may account for all of the semi-religious themes, etc.

Obviously, I don’t have it fully worked out, but thought it was worth consideration. A couple of questions though:

- Not sure how Benry’s life-threatening tumor fits into the above theory. If the electromagnetism has something to do with the curative/anti-aging power of the island, maybe the implosion of the hatch and the subsequent fail-safe measure by Desmond f-d everything up and accelerated Ben’s decline.

- Not sure how the Others move so freely between the island and the rest of the world. For Ethan to be able to go recruit Juliette, etc. Must mean there are people on the “outside” helping them…Tom made some reference to how they could not take Benry to a specialist in the real world after “the sky turned purple,” but I’m not sure why.

At any rate, I think the overall mystery has to be something “big” like a cure for death…or since the Desmond episode, maybe a wrinkle in the time-space continuum that allows people to go back and correct their mistakes (or try anyway).

I am sure there are many holes in my theory, but I’ll be interested to hear what others think.

AnotherOther
Comment 5, posted 3 days, 23 hours ago – Quote and reply
hmmmmm…. in a different post I saw that it was noted that in the Bible Rachel’s son was Benjamin (and she died giving birth to him). From last night’s episode we see that Rachel was pregnant and sick (or recovering from being sick). Maybe Ben is Rachel’s daughter, Juliet’s nephew. I know this doesn’t make sense, but with the freaky time changes on the island it might be possible.