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Reading 8: We Will Be Able to Live to 1,000
Aubrey de Grey
Aging is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address aging just as effectively as we address many diseases today.
I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure aging.
It is not just an idea: it’s a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time.
And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined.
This means that all parts of the project should be fully working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10 years to get them all working in humans.
When we get these therapies, we will no longer all get frail and decrepit and dependent as we get older, and eventually succumb to the innumerable ghastly progressive diseases of old age.
We will still die, of course—from crossing the road carelessly, being bitten by snakes, catching a new flu variant, etcetera—but not in the drawn-out way in which most of us die at present.
So, will this happen in time for some people alive today? Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage.
It is very complicated, because aging is. There are seven major types of molecular and cellular damage that eventually become bad for us—including cells being lost without replacement and mutations in our chromosomes.
Each of these things is potentially fixable by technology that either already exists or is in active development.
The Alternative View
Nothing in gerontology even comes close to fulfilling the promise of dramatically extended lifespan.
—S. Jay Olshansky
“Youthful Not Frail”
The length of life will be much more variable than now, when most people die at a narrow range of ages (65 to 90 or so), because people won’t be getting frailer as time passes.
The average age will be in the region of a few thousand years. These numbers are guesses, of course, but they’re guided by the rate at which the young die these days.
If you are a reasonably risk-aware teenager today in an affluent, non-violent neighbourhood, you have a risk of dying in the next year of well under one in 1,000, which means that if you stayed that way forever you would have a 50/50 chance of living to over 1,000.
And remember, none of that time would be lived in frailty and debility and dependence—you would be youthful, both physically and mentally, right up to the day you mis-time the speed of that oncoming lorry.
Should We Cure Aging?
Curing aging will change society in innumerable ways. Some people are so scared of this that they think we should accept aging as it is.
I think that is diabolical—it says we should deny people the right to life.
The right to choose to live or to die is the most fundamental right there is; conversely, the duty to give others that opportunity to the best of our ability is the most fundamental duty there is.
There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life. To say that we shouldn’t cure aging is ageism, saying that old people are unworthy of medical care.
The Alternative View
There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.
—Aubrey de Grey
Playing God?
People also say we will get terribly bored but I say we will have the resources to improve everyone’s ability to get the most out of life.
People with a good education and the time to use it never get bored today and can’t imagine ever running out of new things they’d like to do.
And finally some people are worried that it would mean playing God and going against nature. But it’s unnatural for us to accept the world as we find it.
Ever since we invented fire and the wheel, we’ve been demonstrating both our ability and our inherent desire to fix things that we don’t like about ourselves and our environment.
We would be going against that most fundamental aspect of what it is to be human if we decided that something so horrible as everyone getting frail and decrepit and dependent was something we should live with forever.
If changing our world is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image.
Source: “We Will Be Able to Live to 1,000” by Dr. Aubrey de Grey is reprinted with permission from BBC News at http://www.bbcnews.co.uk.
Reading 9: Don’t Fall for the Cult of Immortality
S. Jay Olshansky
Some 1,700 years ago the famous Chinese alchemist, Ko Hung, became the prophet of his day by resurrecting an even more ancient but always popular cult, Hsien, devoted to the idea that physical immortality is within our grasp.
Ko Hung believed that animals could be changed from one species to another (the origin of evolutionary thought), that lead could be transformed into gold (the origin of alchemy), and that mortal humans can achieve physical immortality by adopting dietary practices not far different from today’s ever-popular life-extending practice of caloric restriction.
He found arrogant and dogmatic the prevailing attitude that death was inevitable and immortality impossible.
Ko Hung died at the age of 60 in 343 AD, which was a ripe old age for his time, but Hsien apparently didn’t work well for him.
The famous 13th Century English philosopher and scientist, Roger Bacon, also believed there was no fixed limit to life and that physical immortality could be achieved by adopting the “Secret Arts of The Past.”