Today, most people reach their sixties before dying of old age. If you were born in 1880 in the United States, you would be lucky to see your 40th birthday when you were born. Over the years, our life expectancy has almost doubled thanks to science and medicine. But why should we stop there – and what happens if we don’t? For many, this is literally a billion dollar question.
Investments in longevity startups have surged $5.2 billion in 2022the market must reach $44.2 billion by 2030. Billionaires like Sam Altman and Jeff Besos support projects targeting longevity research, such as cellular rejuvenation, gene editing, and AI-related drug discovery.
Take, for example, Bryan Johnson, a 46-year-old tech millionaire who recently became the headlines with his extreme anti-aging diet. He gets up at 4:30 a.m., eats all his meals before 11 a.m. and goes to bed at 8:30 p.m., without fail. He told The Daily Beast that he was on a strict 2,250-calorie diet, where every calorie “had to fight for its life” and that he took more than 100 supplement pills every day. Johnson says this process allowed him to become “the most measured person in the history of mankind.”
“I want to be the personal embodiment of this idea of ‘Don’t die’ and build an algorithm that takes care of me better than I can take care of myself,” he said.
Experimental technologies involving genomics, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence are moving from the fringes to the mainstream with longevity researchers and Silicon Valley types like Johnson pushing for extended life by at least two decades. In doing so, the rich and powerful have offered themselves – and their wallets – as guinea pigs, the idea being that the fountain of youth will eventually flow to the point where it will be accessible to all, as has apparently been the case with other technologies.
“My goal is basically to figure out how not to die,” explained Johnson, who considers himself a “professional rejuvenation athlete.” “People hear this and jump to all these conclusions. None of this is accurate, I’m just playing the same game as everyone else: don’t die.
Bryan Johnson on stage at the Web Summit in Lisbon on November 7, 2017. Johnson is known for his many unorthodox treatments and practices that he claims rejuvenate him, including a strict diet and sleep schedule, penile injections and the exchange of blood with his son. .
PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / Getty Images
It may seem obvious that most causes of death are age-related. Living longer is simply a matter of treating or preventing these age-related diseases. One option, as Johnson attempts, is simply not to age.
“Right now, when you’re born a long time ago, you have no way to escape the descent, both mentally and physically,” biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Gray told The Daily Beast. No one looks forward to this mental and physical decline, so that’s where researchers like de Gray come in.
Common sense says that if you live in a healthy lifestyle you are more likely to live longer. For de Grey, life extension is the next logical step after living such a lifestyle. “It’s just about developing new drugs that can achieve this goal to a greater extent than we can with today’s technology, whether it’s lifestyle, “diet or exercise.”
In the same way that medicines, treatments and simple concepts of hygiene and sanitation have doubled our life expectancy from 40 to 80 years or more, says de Gray. Science is now starting to look at “the next thing that will kill people who no longer die from the first thing.”
“Many people will convince themselves that aging is simply not a medical problem like any other. That it’s somehow woven into the fabric of the universe and that it’s inevitable, universal and natural… That’s also nonsense.»
— Aubrey de Gray
Faced with the idea that one day we will have the possibility of slowing or reversing aging, one question continually arises: do we really want it? Just take a look at securities And research generated over the last decades to deduce that the field of life extension is complex and controversial. In addition to an already aging population, some wonder whether longer life spans could threaten our social and economic systems. Others wonder if quality of life is more important than quantity.
For de Grey, the answer to the first question is obvious: yes. “People who ask this question are just as eager as anyone to go to the hospital when they get cancer,” he said. “They don’t need to have a reason; they just don’t want to get sick any more than anyone else.
Aging is bad for your health, but until now we haven’t been able to do much about it. As a result, people found ways to cope psychologically, de Gray explained. “One solution is to make you believe that this is some kind of blessing in disguise, so that if we hadn’t gotten older, we would have even worse problems.”
Some argue that aging is a natural part of life and that we should embrace it rather than run away from it. “Many people will convince themselves that aging is just not a medical problem like any other,” de Gray said. “It’s somehow woven into the fabric of the universe and it’s inevitable and universal and natural.”
He added: “That also makes no sense. »
What is natural is not fixed. Instead, it’s determined by our environment, John K. Davis, a philosophy professor and bioethicist at California State University, told the Daily Beast. “We have evolved in such a way that we cannot sustain ourselves any longer than our environment allows,” he added. “We now live in a human-made environment, so what was natural when we were essentially intelligent primates is no longer natural today.”
So, as technology advances and we have the means to live a few more decades, why not?
Of course, the question arises WHO manages to live longer. Inequalities are the basis of human society, in which some people live longer than others simply because they can afford or have access to better health care. Some argue that these inequalities would only worsen if a miraculous life-prolonging drug or treatment were on the market.
“If some people don’t have access to it, life will be a lot harder for them,” Davis said. “It would be much more difficult for them to accept death. There is a kind of harm there. »
For example, Johnson would have spent 2 million dollars per year on its team of 30 doctors and cutting-edge technologies. Meanwhile, people like Bezos, Mark ZuckerbergAnd Sam Altman are equally investing their billions in longevity research, while having access to better quality medical care than the rest of us. It seems unfair that Silicon Valley billionaires are celebrating their 150th birthday when the majority typically reach 70 or 80 before biting the dust.
However, proponents of longevity argue that it is not morally right to deny access to some simply because access cannot be ensured for all. Health and wellness is not a zero-sum game. “We don’t deny people a heart transplant because there aren’t enough hearts to go around,” Davis said. “It is not a general principle of justice that equality is achieved by leveling down.”
Then the question arises of should we are spending money to solve the problem of aging in a world where many people do not have access to basic health care. To this, Davis asks: “How confident would you be that by preventing life extension, these other needs would actually be met?” »
“No one is proposing death as a solution to these problems,” Johnson said. “We try to find other ways to solve problems because we value life and so these other things are just tangents to the real questions.”
However, a common concern for which there is no such simple answer is overpopulation, which can be exacerbated if people have more time to have babies and if people stay longer. This is something that Davis admits poses a significant challenge when dealing with a potential reality in which people live much longer. “It’s really difficult to solve this problem because it’s just a matter of simple arithmetic,” Davis explained. “No medication will solve this problem.”
Of course, all technologies have their advantages and disadvantages. Faced with negative aspects, time is on our side. Despite the challenges of extending life, history suggests that society would adapt. Genes from our paleolithic ancestors mutating over time to protect themselves from dangers, and with advances in public health contributing to the doubling of life expectancy between the 19th and 20th centuries, humans adapt quickly. Then there are the potentially positive social consequences to consider when adding a few more decades to our lifespan.
“The main impact would be that we wouldn’t be spending billions of dollars a year to keep people alive because they wouldn’t get sick in the first place,” de Gray said. Preventing age-related illnesses would make it possible to live a more comfortable old age, thus simplifying the management of retirement due to prolonged work. Furthermore, it could also benefit younger generations, in addition to helping them live longer.
“I think as people get older, they get wiser,” Davis added. “We might be more inclined to care about future generations because we think we will be there.”
Living a long, healthy life is not a controversial idea. In the end, what a few decades were added to the end? These days, our lives and careers are structured around a beginning, middle, and end. With the rise of longevity research, we may see this structure expand a little further into something new and transformative.
“If you live forever, maybe it will be a different structure,” Davis said. “More like a TV series than a movie.”
