Is it possible to prevent or reverse the aging process, perhaps by fiddling with tired tissues and cells, or even growing new organs inside a laboratory? Some people regard this as a pipe dream. Others see it instead as increasingly inevitable.
Physician, heal thyself. What if you are an aging surgeon and parts of your body are worn out? Options may include stem-cell therapy, the transplant of an artificial organ (a kidney grown in vitro), the printing of replacement teeth or bones using a fabricator, general life extension, some more hair, or perhaps some new fingers? This last idea may seem a little far-fetched, but if newts can repair themselves why not human beings? One way to do so might be to persuade cells to return to a younger state—in other words, trick the body into believing that it’s a young child once again. This sounds incredible, but there’s a serious possibility that by the end of this century, and possibly a lot sooner, human beings will be able to regrow lost limbs.
“I think that given sufficient funding we have a 50/50 chance of completely stopping people from dying of old age within about 25 or 30 years from now.”
Aubrey de Grey, gerontology theoretician and author
Our aging population As we’ve already seen, the growth in the world’s population over the past 100 years or so has not been caused by people having lots of sex, but the fact that we haven’t been dying as young or as frequently as we used to. In other words, population growth is intimately linked with healthcare and associated areas such as diet and lifestyle.
So the world is now full of lots of older people. One consequence of aging in prosperous populations is that more people want to put off the inevitable. In short, people don’t want to die at all and many have the means to ensure that, while they may not achieve immortality, they can certainly reach a ripe old age. Add some future scientific breakthroughs and technological marvels and you have a smorgasbord of options to extend both the quality and quantity of an individual’s life. For instance, in 2011 a patient was given a new windpipe grown in a laboratory using the patient’s own cells. Growing skin, pipes, blood vessels, bladders and even stomachs is either happening already or is not far off. Whether we can eventually grow solid organs such as hearts, kidneys and lungs raises more complex issues, but it’s not impossible.
But things could go much further. Human life spans have grown from 45 years for men and 49 for women in 1901 in the UK to 76 and 81 respectively in 2002. So why can’t this extension be repeated over the next 100 years? Why can’t nature and nurture be tweaked to extend life spans even further? The current record is 122 years, but why can’t this be 150? Indeed, why can’t we kill off the very idea of death itself? Again, you’re probably thinking that this is crazy. After all, surely all life broadly follows the second law of thermodynamics, which states that decay is inevitable?
What’s possible? In the more optimistic corner, are those who believe that aging is genetically determined and that the “death program” or process that causes aging can be switched off, or at least amended. Aubrey de Grey, editor of Rejuvenation magazine and cofounder of rejuvenation research organization the SENS Foundation, has even suggested that there is no scientific reason why human beings cannot live to 1,000. He has even suggested that this person may even be alive right now.
On the face of it, this is a very exciting idea. Around 90 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by aging so imagine what would happen if you could slow death down or eradicate it. But there are moral and even philosophical issues here. The first issue is practical. If we “solved” death, there would be many more mouths to feed on the planet. Perhaps we can solve this technologically. But if it were common to live to 110, 130 or 150, people might wait until they were 60, 70 or even 80 to have children.
Significantly extended life spans could also wreak havoc on marriage with “until death do us part” taking on a whole new meaning. And there remains the problem that death is to some extent useful in that it creates space—in the sense of mentally rather than physically—for new people with new ideas. Death, in part, is what moves the world forward.
It isn’t just about our physical bodies. Our minds age too and many people have just had enough life by the time they reach their 70s, 80s and 90s. According to Dignitas (a Swiss organization that helps people to die at a time and place of their own choosing), 21 percent of the people who come to them have nothing wrong with them. They are simply tired of life.
“The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired.”
William Shakespeare, poet and playwright
The pros and cons of immortality is a complex debate, but it’s not one we’ll be having for a while. In the meantime, many of us can just enjoy ourselves and look forward to a much longer and healthier life. But be careful. According to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, every 60 minutes someone spends watching TV after the age of 25 reduces life expectancy by an average of 21.8 minutes. So be mindful of how you choose to spend your time and perhaps congratulate yourself on the fact that you’re reading this rather than watching yet another rerun of Friends on TV.
the condensed idea
Alive for longer
| timeline | |
|---|---|
| 2010 | Bionic ears widely available |
| 2025 | Tooth regeneration creates unemployment among dentists |
| 2030 | Organs grown from stem cells available on eBay |
| 2032 | 1.2 billion people at age 65+ |
| 2033 | Global life expectancy now 80 years |
| 2035 | Alzheimer’s disease is finally cured |
| 2038 | Robots carry out 80 percent of operations |
| 2043 | Treatment allows amputees to regrow lost limbs |