Who wants to live forever?
Full marks if you read the title in Freddie Mercury's voice!
OK, this isn't exactly about living forever. That was just an excuse to namecheck a Queen song. None of the breakthroughs that I've read about hint at being able to make you immortal. You'd still be vulnerable to accidents, crime and the rare disease that can fell even a young bodied person. But they do suggest that the aging process can be slowed down and even reversed. With senescence (biological aging) no longer occuring, our lifespans could be hugely longer.
I think a lot of peoples first reaction to hearing about longevity science is one of disbelief. Nothing you can do can help you avoid aging. That's not a real thing. The cynism is understandable. History is littered with examples of people who sought out the fountain of youth. The one thing they all have in common is they failed. So why should this time round be any different?
Yet in the past decade:
We have experiments that have increased the lifespan of numerous species, including even reversing the signs of aging in mice.
Mice have been cured of blindness using cellular rejuvination techniques.
Human skin cells in a petri dish have been deaged using a similar technique to become much younger.
While there is some anecdotal evidence of things that slow down the aging process in humans, none of this has yet been proven in a clinical trial. Human clinical trials are lengthy and expensive. To complicate things further, most regulatory bodies don't consider aging to be a disease, which means you can't yet license a drug as being against aging. This has limited the number of companies being interested in treating it.
It's baby steps so far, with many steps to go, but at least progress is being made. On a scale with 0 being we have no idea what causes aging and so no idea how to fight it, and 100 being where we have treatment so effective that it can reverse everyone's age to some point in their twenties, I reckon we at are around 15. A long way to walk, but at least we see the path now.
After growing up believing in a paradise Earth where people wouldn't age, am I just subscribing to another version of a baseless fantasy? Should the mantra of 'if it sounds too good to be true it probably is' apply here?
It's not hard to see why I'd want to believe this, but this time round it's based on research that is making genuine progress. I believe longevity treatments are coming. I don't know exactly when they'll arrive or how effective the first ones will be when they do. But so long as humans have a motive to do something and it doesn't directly contradict the laws of pysics, they'll get to it eventually.
Perhaps the fantasy is that the first anti aging treatments will arrive in time to do me some good. I've become fascinated with the concept of longevity escape velocity (LEV). This is that at a certain time in history, and we can't even be sure that it hasn't arrived yet, most of the people under a certain age will live long enough to benefit from the first generation of antiaging treatments. This will enable them to live long enough to see the next generation of more effective treatments which will enable them to live even further. This increases their lifespan long enough to see the first true age reversal treatments, and from then they may never have to age at all.
At forty two, I reckon I have around the same number of years again to live. Technology moves fast, but will it move fast enough to allow me to see LEV? I can't be sure...but right now I feel probably not. Though if I'm ever proven wrong on anything I hope to be proven wrong on this!
Reading Lifespan and Ageless, alongside a whole slew of other articles and videos, has shifted my view of aging and death from an inevitable fate to be endured as best as possible to a problem that should be solved.
I've long been of the view that the future is something that will continue to improve over the past, and this made me even more optimistic for future generations in a way I'd never seriously considered before. On the other hand, it also made me angry that I've likely been born too early to truly benefit from what's coming.
Once you see biological aging as a problem to be solved, you can't unsee it. I'm not sure if this has left me any happier than my previous outlook, but even before I went down the longevity wormhole I was becoming increasingly troubled with the aging process. It's something that can't have been helped by living in a city with one of the highest aged populations in the world, where half the people are fifty or over.
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20240110000554
I imagined an alien insider looking at my home city for the first time and what they'd think. It's quite nice, they might say. The buildings, the landscape, it's really not a bad place to live. I know some of you worry about crime, but on the whole people go about their day to day unmolested. I know too you worry about the environment, and it is a problem, but there's still a lot of natural beauty out there. No system will ever be perfectly governed, but yours could be a lot lot worse. But the people... what went wrong with the people? They only have a few years at peak health and then they start slowly breaking down, in just a few decades reaching a point when they go all slowed down and crumpled looking and then it kills them. How many people are working on solving this? How is this not regarded as your species biggest emergency!
It's the kind of sentiment that I'd previously be embarrassed to voice out loud, and guessed what a common reply would be. Sure, you're not technically wrong, but it's a bit of a dick move to point that out, even if it's true. How would you like to be referred to as 'slowed down and crumpled looking' when you're older?
Once you see aging as a disease, it's a hard thing to shake. I'm showing the beginning stages of that disease myself, though thankfully only a few small signs so far. But being amongst Busan's incredibly aged population, I am surrounded by people who suffer from this disease to a far worse extent, and the results are not pretty.
Is this a good way to view things. Is it mentally healthy to think of everyone around you as suffering from disease? You think old aged people are diseased? Charming! Isn't that totally ageist and kind of offensive?
If there were truly nothing that could be done, it may be wiser to tell ourselves whatever philosphies help us accept the aging process. But as soon as there's a hint that there could be something we can do about it, we should call aging out for the horror that it is, for then we may be motivated to do whatever is needed to fight it. 'Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light'.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2015.00212/full
As the above article puts it: 'To achieve the best outcomes in terms of the future health of older people, it is vital to adopt a frank and rational attitude to aging. We must draw aside the rosy veil of tradition and face aging for what it is, and in all its horror: the greatest disease of them all..'
Some might try and frame such an outlook as being ageist. I'd argue it's the opposite. There can't be many elderly people who wouldn't trade everything they have for the health, looks and years ahead of them of their youth. The elderly deserve better than to suffer the aging process. The longevity community hopes for a future in which as many future generations as possible will be spared from it.
The hard truth is that the aging process is quite simply the largest cause of human suffering on this planet. Some things can happen on an individual level that are worse, but due to the vast number of people who will suffer and die due to aging (i.e. most of us) there is really nothing else that comes close in the degree of global misery caused.
The opening chapter of Ageless puts this fantastically, so to save myself time I'll just take some photos straight from my kindle.
I can understand the doubts of people who claim that defeating aging simply can't be done. I take more issue with those who claim it shouldn't be done. There are numerous arguments as to why even if we could end aging, perhaps we still shouldn't end it. You may even subscribe to a few of these arguements yourself. I don't think it would be big spoilers to say I don't think much to these arguements, and I will be back in a couple of days with an entry dedicated to giving them a good thrashing!
OK, this isn't exactly about living forever. That was just an excuse to namecheck a Queen song. None of the breakthroughs that I've read about hint at being able to make you immortal. You'd still be vulnerable to accidents, crime and the rare disease that can fell even a young bodied person. But they do suggest that the aging process can be slowed down and even reversed. With senescence (biological aging) no longer occuring, our lifespans could be hugely longer.
I think a lot of peoples first reaction to hearing about longevity science is one of disbelief. Nothing you can do can help you avoid aging. That's not a real thing. The cynism is understandable. History is littered with examples of people who sought out the fountain of youth. The one thing they all have in common is they failed. So why should this time round be any different?
Yet in the past decade:
We have experiments that have increased the lifespan of numerous species, including even reversing the signs of aging in mice.
Mice have been cured of blindness using cellular rejuvination techniques.
Human skin cells in a petri dish have been deaged using a similar technique to become much younger.
While there is some anecdotal evidence of things that slow down the aging process in humans, none of this has yet been proven in a clinical trial. Human clinical trials are lengthy and expensive. To complicate things further, most regulatory bodies don't consider aging to be a disease, which means you can't yet license a drug as being against aging. This has limited the number of companies being interested in treating it.
It's baby steps so far, with many steps to go, but at least progress is being made. On a scale with 0 being we have no idea what causes aging and so no idea how to fight it, and 100 being where we have treatment so effective that it can reverse everyone's age to some point in their twenties, I reckon we at are around 15. A long way to walk, but at least we see the path now.
After growing up believing in a paradise Earth where people wouldn't age, am I just subscribing to another version of a baseless fantasy? Should the mantra of 'if it sounds too good to be true it probably is' apply here?
It's not hard to see why I'd want to believe this, but this time round it's based on research that is making genuine progress. I believe longevity treatments are coming. I don't know exactly when they'll arrive or how effective the first ones will be when they do. But so long as humans have a motive to do something and it doesn't directly contradict the laws of pysics, they'll get to it eventually.
Perhaps the fantasy is that the first anti aging treatments will arrive in time to do me some good. I've become fascinated with the concept of longevity escape velocity (LEV). This is that at a certain time in history, and we can't even be sure that it hasn't arrived yet, most of the people under a certain age will live long enough to benefit from the first generation of antiaging treatments. This will enable them to live long enough to see the next generation of more effective treatments which will enable them to live even further. This increases their lifespan long enough to see the first true age reversal treatments, and from then they may never have to age at all.
At forty two, I reckon I have around the same number of years again to live. Technology moves fast, but will it move fast enough to allow me to see LEV? I can't be sure...but right now I feel probably not. Though if I'm ever proven wrong on anything I hope to be proven wrong on this!
Reading Lifespan and Ageless, alongside a whole slew of other articles and videos, has shifted my view of aging and death from an inevitable fate to be endured as best as possible to a problem that should be solved.
I've long been of the view that the future is something that will continue to improve over the past, and this made me even more optimistic for future generations in a way I'd never seriously considered before. On the other hand, it also made me angry that I've likely been born too early to truly benefit from what's coming.
Once you see biological aging as a problem to be solved, you can't unsee it. I'm not sure if this has left me any happier than my previous outlook, but even before I went down the longevity wormhole I was becoming increasingly troubled with the aging process. It's something that can't have been helped by living in a city with one of the highest aged populations in the world, where half the people are fifty or over.
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20240110000554
I imagined an alien insider looking at my home city for the first time and what they'd think. It's quite nice, they might say. The buildings, the landscape, it's really not a bad place to live. I know some of you worry about crime, but on the whole people go about their day to day unmolested. I know too you worry about the environment, and it is a problem, but there's still a lot of natural beauty out there. No system will ever be perfectly governed, but yours could be a lot lot worse. But the people... what went wrong with the people? They only have a few years at peak health and then they start slowly breaking down, in just a few decades reaching a point when they go all slowed down and crumpled looking and then it kills them. How many people are working on solving this? How is this not regarded as your species biggest emergency!
It's the kind of sentiment that I'd previously be embarrassed to voice out loud, and guessed what a common reply would be. Sure, you're not technically wrong, but it's a bit of a dick move to point that out, even if it's true. How would you like to be referred to as 'slowed down and crumpled looking' when you're older?
Once you see aging as a disease, it's a hard thing to shake. I'm showing the beginning stages of that disease myself, though thankfully only a few small signs so far. But being amongst Busan's incredibly aged population, I am surrounded by people who suffer from this disease to a far worse extent, and the results are not pretty.
Is this a good way to view things. Is it mentally healthy to think of everyone around you as suffering from disease? You think old aged people are diseased? Charming! Isn't that totally ageist and kind of offensive?
If there were truly nothing that could be done, it may be wiser to tell ourselves whatever philosphies help us accept the aging process. But as soon as there's a hint that there could be something we can do about it, we should call aging out for the horror that it is, for then we may be motivated to do whatever is needed to fight it. 'Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light'.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2015.00212/full
As the above article puts it: 'To achieve the best outcomes in terms of the future health of older people, it is vital to adopt a frank and rational attitude to aging. We must draw aside the rosy veil of tradition and face aging for what it is, and in all its horror: the greatest disease of them all..'
Some might try and frame such an outlook as being ageist. I'd argue it's the opposite. There can't be many elderly people who wouldn't trade everything they have for the health, looks and years ahead of them of their youth. The elderly deserve better than to suffer the aging process. The longevity community hopes for a future in which as many future generations as possible will be spared from it.
The hard truth is that the aging process is quite simply the largest cause of human suffering on this planet. Some things can happen on an individual level that are worse, but due to the vast number of people who will suffer and die due to aging (i.e. most of us) there is really nothing else that comes close in the degree of global misery caused.
The opening chapter of Ageless puts this fantastically, so to save myself time I'll just take some photos straight from my kindle.
I can understand the doubts of people who claim that defeating aging simply can't be done. I take more issue with those who claim it shouldn't be done. There are numerous arguments as to why even if we could end aging, perhaps we still shouldn't end it. You may even subscribe to a few of these arguements yourself. I don't think it would be big spoilers to say I don't think much to these arguements, and I will be back in a couple of days with an entry dedicated to giving them a good thrashing!