The First Person to Live to 150 Has Already Been Born — Audrey de Grey.
In the next few decades, you will outlive your house. You could even outlive that road outside your house. You will live long enough to see countries emerge, governments fail and climate change. All the while looking not a shade over 30 with not a wrinkle on the forehead.
If the scientific efforts of all those involved in delaying ageing and promoting longevity fall into place, the average lifespan will reach a stunning 200 years. A life so long you could forget memories from when you were 50.
Because think about it… in the ’60s, India’s average lifespan hovered around 45. Half a century later — thanks to science and medicine — we’ve managed to add over 20 years to that number. Which is why 200 is the current target, and rejuvenative medicine is the key.
How serious are we?
Very. There’s now even a prize for it — a million dollars to be given to the team that can “hack death”. It’s called the Palo Alto Longevity Prize and it was started by Dr. Joon Yun who, according to his website is “in search of unconventional truth” (registrations end by June 15, this year!). The prize is privately funded, has invited teams from all over the world and aims to defeat certain “limitations”. Experts attached to the prize truly believe that “life is programmable code, which can be altered”. We spoke to Navtej Toor, Ph.D, Yale alumni and leader of ‘Toorlab’ — a team of six-plus experts whose approach is genetic modification.
“We have started this year and are looking forward to achieving our goals,” says the professor. “Think about the possibilities. For example, the insurance firms will be happy because there’s better investment in staying alive. A longer lifespan does have its benefits and do remember, the focus is on healthy living, not just on longevity,” he said. One of the targets of the initiative is achieving a stage called homeostasis — a property of a system to retain its internal variables at a constant, stable rate. In simpler terms, no changes whatsoever within the human body. And no changes means no ageing as extreme stress and other deviations from normal routine abet ageing.
But the Palo Alto prize is not alone in the pursuit of this code. Google has invested in Calico. It’s a very secretive outfit and requests for interviews are often declined. At the time of Calico’s launch in 2013, Google had said the company’s aim was to “cure death. In the US alone, there are over a dozen companies that have invested billions in their attempt to cure ageing — it’s the 21st century’s search for the elixir.
How
It’s more than just money. Agreed, the cosmetic-heavy approach to anti-ageing will be worth USD 191.7 billion by 2019. But let’s not discuss plastic surgery here. The true fight for longevity involves defeating our biggest killers — cancer, Alzheimer’s etc. For a better understanding, we called up the SENS Research Foundation — a 5,000 sft non-profit complex, situated in Mountain View, California. “We basically do three things. The first is we are researching the seven kinds of damage that occur at the cellular and molecular levels in our bodies, as we age,” says Jerri Barrett, the vice-president of the SENS’ Outreach.
“How we go about it is by funding studies worldwide that look into damage from ageing and heart disease and by studying methods that could prevent a disease from ever occurring, within our bodies,” she adds. Barrett also offers insight into that one question you might be thinking of now — how are we going to look at say, 130? “We are talking about rejuvenative technologies here, that function at the most basic level.
Over time, we are accumulating cellular damage, nothing else — the loss of the body’s ability to carry out certain functions, causing what we know as frailty. Then, the muscles weaken and the bones no longer have the structural integrity to keep you moving all day. This is ageing and all this damage can be done away with. Health problems will one day be reversed or even be vaccinated against. That’s actually the ultimate goal — vaccination shots to prevent all this from ever happening.” SENS funda is really straightforward. Keep the body through a regular routine of what’s called as “preventive maintenance”, keep the systems running smooth and stop those cells from deteriorating.
And for Barrett, fighting damage and general deterioration has a bit of a personal background too. “I lost both of my parents and three of my grand-parents to cancer and not a single one of them ever said, ‘I wanna go’. Towards the end, all five wished to live longer. Some decades ago the lifespan was a paltry 40 years and now, it’s 80. Our ancestors would’ve loved to live a little longer — be around to see their grandchildren or great grandchildren. If we don’t want to live longer, why are we spending time and money fighting diseases?”
Barrett then hands over the phone to Aubrey de Grey, the man responsible for that world famous quote — ‘The First Person to Live to 150 Has Already Been Born’. He was one the very first people in the world to suggest the idea we fight ageing and has been one of the loudest proponents of enhanced longevity. With his long beard and almost acetic-like looks, Aubrey’s anti-ageing’s Gandalf.
To understand how Aubrey sees ageing, here’s a sample from his TED talk on the topic. “Please raise your hand if you want to get Alzheimer’s disease. Please raise your hand if you think there is some age at which you will want to get Alzheimer’s disease,” he had asked the audience.
Fast forward to now, and the Cambridge-educated chief science officer at SENS is convinced that mankind’s finally on the right track. “I think it’s quite possible that in the next few decades, mankind will have technologies that will stop people from ageing beyond the middle age. And those technologies will only keep getting better. So, the ones who have lived to see technologies get better, will be able to avail even better healthcare… which means we can’t really cap the age at 150 or 160. And I don’t look at living till 200 as a good or a bad. Longevity is but a side effect of a healthy life.”
True. But what about India? All of these future procedures are going to cost a bit of money and for a developing country like ours, what’s the outlook? “I’m looking at India of the future and I’m seeing the country make substantial progress. As these technologies advance, so will your country and let us also not overlook the fact that some of the progress India’s making is in the field of medicine. The country will definitely find cheaper alternatives to these procedures. It’s already doing that in several arenas,” says Aubrey.
In the long run, the economics match too. Keeping people healthy is agreeably better for any privatised or nationalised healthcare system and since contributors to society are living longer, there’s no stress on the system either.
The end, or not yet
Living until 200 seems like an enticing prospect. Imagine the number of books you could finish or even the countries you could visit. It’s everything your current lifespan of 75 does not permit. Longevity however, is also the pursuit of a healthy life because yes, no one wishes to die in pain. Our advancements must save people from suffering and no longer can a life be snuffed out by disease. Science is also changing the way we see fate, karma and everything else…. but hey, very soon in the near future… you’ll have all the time in the world to think about that.
