How to become immortal…
...and do we want it
And what can it cost us?
The book "Macrobiotics, or the Art of prolonging human life" belongs to the pen of Dr. Gufeland, one of the founders of gerontology. A well-known therapist in the XVIII century, who was the family doctor of many famous people, from Schiller to Kutuzov, finished his work in 1797, after eight years of studying the subject. Among the numerous factors related to longevity indicated by him are a moderate diet with lots of vegetables and a small amount of meat and sweet flour products, an active lifestyle, dental health care, weekly bathing in warm water with soap, good sleep, clean air and good heredity (parents who have lived a long life themselves).
Towards the end of the book, the doctor expresses a passionate hope that "the duration of human life can be doubled against what is now considered the natural limit, and without losing full-fledged activity."
According to Wilhelm Gufeland's estimates at the time, half of all children born were destined to die before they reached the age of ten. Frighteningly high mortality rate! However, if a child is destined to happily survive smallpox, measles, rubella and other childhood diseases, he has a good chance to live up to 35 years, or even longer. According to Gufeland, in the presence of ideal conditions, a person could live up to 200 years.
Is there anything other than the rich imagination of an eighteenth-century physician at the heart of these claims? Undoubtedly, says James Vopel, director of the laboratory at the Institute for Demographic Research of the Max Planck Society (Germany). "The average life expectancy increases by two and a half years every decade," he emphasizes. "And that's 20 years for every century."
In his laboratory, Vopel deals with issues of longevity and survival in human and animal populations. According to him, the model by which life expectancy increases has changed a lot over the past 100 years. Until 1950, most of the successes in this area were associated with the results of the fight against the high mortality rate among newborns. However, in subsequent years, the greatest decrease in mortality was observed in people over 60 years old, and most recently in those over 80.
In other words, we are not only experiencing our childhood safely in greater numbers, but also then we live longer – much longer!
Your age is a combination of many factorsThe number of centenarians in the world – people who are over 100 years old – is expected to increase 10-fold between 2010 and 2050.
According to Gufeland, the age to which our parents lived has a serious impact on this. In other words, our longevity has a strong genetic aspect. However, the increase in the number of centenarians cannot be explained by genetics alone, which, obviously, has not changed much over the past couple of centuries. The reason, rather, lies in the significant improvements in our lives, which does not contradict Dr. Gufeland's research: better medical care, more modern methods of treatment, cleaner water and air, better education and better standards of living, for example, warm and dry dwellings. "In general, it all comes down to better medicine and more money," Vopel sums up.
Nevertheless, what the modern healthcare system and seemingly improving living conditions give us does not satisfy many people. The desire to prolong life does not weaken.
One of the popular approaches is to limit calories consumed. In the 30s of the XX century, scientists noticed that mice receiving food barely enough to not starve live much longer than those who had the opportunity to eat plenty. Subsequent experiments on rhesus monkeys confirmed this fact, which, however, contradicted the results of a 20-year study by the American National Institute of Aging: monkeys who were on a low-calorie diet, although they were slightly less ill than the control group, on average did not live longer.
The authors of the study noted that although calorie restriction made a certain contribution to the life expectancy of animals, the overall picture depended on a complex combination of heredity, nutrition and environmental influences.
Adherents of longevity have high hopes for resveratrol, a natural phytoalexin that is secreted by some plants (for example, grapes) to protect against parasites. However, whether the source of eternal youth is hidden in the vineyards is still a big question. As it has been noted, resveratrol has the same beneficial effect on experimental animals as dietary restriction, but so far there have been no studies that have proven that taking this supplement can increase human life expectancy.
There are no limits?However, why do we age at all?
"Every day we are harmed, which we cannot fully compensate for," explains Vopel. "The accumulation of this kind of damage [in our body] is the cause of age–related diseases."
Not all living organisms are like that. For example, hydra – a group of primitive, jellyfish–like creatures living in freshwater reservoirs - have a high ability to regenerate after almost any damage inflicted on them. From cells too damaged to restore them, the hydra body simply refuses, "drains" them. In humans, such damaged cells can cause the development of cancerous tumors.
"Hydra direct their resources primarily to restoration, and not to reproduction, like humans," notes Vopel. "Humans have a different survival strategy at the species level."
People may die early, but our amazing fertility allows us to overcome the high mortality rate. Now, when the mortality rate among newborns is so low, there is no need to direct so many resources to reproduction, Vopel believes. "The trick is to increase the ability to regenerate – instead of wasting energy on weight gain. In theory, it should be possible, although no one has the slightest idea how to achieve this."
If we manage to stop the permanent damage to our cells and achieve the so–called negligible, insignificant aging, then perhaps our age will not have an upper limit. If this happens, there will be no reason for us to die at all.
"It would be wonderful to live in a world in which death becomes optional. Now we are all sentenced to death, despite the fact that none of us has done anything to deserve it." These are the words of Gennady Stolyarov, a transhumanist philosopher (adherents of this rationalistic worldview believe that advanced technologies can eliminate suffering, aging and death - Ed.) and the author of the controversial book for children "Death is Wrong", in which an attempt is made to force the child's consciousness to reject the fatalistic idea of the inevitability of death.
Stolyarov vehemently opposes death, which, in his opinion, is just a technological challenge to humanity, and which can be completely defeated with the necessary funding and sufficient human resources.
Agents of ChangeFor like-minded Stolyarov, one of the goals of technological intervention is telomeres.
These end sections of chromosomes shrink in size after each division of our cells, thereby setting a hard limit to reproduction. Not all living beings have this reduction, and one of such creatures is the hydra.
At the same time, there are good reasons for such restrictions. Random mutations can allow cells to divide without shortening telomeres, giving rise to "immortal" cell chains. However, once out of control, these immortal cells can cause great harm to their owner, growing into cancerous tumors.
"Every day in the world 150 thousand people die [on average], two thirds of which are from causes related to aging," Stolyarov tells me. "So if we can accelerate the development of the technologies needed to achieve negligible aging, we will save hundreds of thousands of lives."
The author quotes gerontology theorist Aubrey de Grey, a celebrity in the world of those who are looking for life extension. According to de Gray, there is a 50 percent chance of achieving negligible aging over the next 25 years. "There is a high probability that this will happen in our lifetime, before the most harmful effects of aging affect us," says Stolyarov.
"Achieving negligible aging in the next 25 years is possible, but extremely unlikely," Vopel believes. He admits that a rapid increase in life expectancy may become possible as a result of certain breakthroughs in medicine. However, Vopel warns that in the future we are just as likely to encounter difficulties that we do not even suspect: "Diseases, economic crisis and climate change can cause an increase in mortality."
Stolyarov hopes to fan the flame of immortality from a small spark of hope. "What I think is necessary now is a purposeful effort to accelerate the pace of technological progress," he says. "We already have a chance, but for this to happen, we need to become agents of change."
Well, until that happens, the reader can find some consolation in the fact that there are already proven ways to help avoid meeting with the two main killers of the Western world – diseases of the cardiovascular system and cancer: through a combination of exercise, a healthy diet and moderation in alcohol and red meat.
The paradox is that very few of us actually manage to follow these recipes – perhaps because it seems to us that even a shorter, but filled with hearty food and wine, life is worth it. This puts us in a difficult dilemma: if eternal life were really achievable, would we agree to pay the appropriate price? Or not?
About the author:
Frank Swain is the editor of New Scientist magazine, the author of articles on science and the book "How to Create a Zombie".
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru28.04.2014