Methuselah Laughing: Liars, Suckers, and Human Mortality

An argument can be made that the human attribute that most drives human affairs is awareness of individual mortality, an awareness that pervades all human interactions, strategies, personal choices, all of human history and politics, and all of the arts.

The reality that one's life has a limited, even ephemeral, duration is unpalatable at best and terrifying at worst, and any notion, scheme, or vague promise of immortality or even of significant life extension is grasped and held tight to the chest with both arms. We're like poor rats caught in a sealed room filled with slowly (or quickly) rising water, panic always in the wings of our minds, and so since the beginning of human history the process of aging and death has been a focus of myth, mysticism, and twisted science.

On the 21st of February in the year 1888, the painter Vincent Van Gogh arrived in the town of Arles in the south of France to produce 300 remarkable paintings and drawings, go mad, and ten months later cut off his ear and wind up in a local insane asylum.

During the time he was there, Van Gogh was a familiar figure in Arles, an eccentric who was often nasty to children. One of these was a twelve year old girl named Jeanne, who later spoke of Van Gogh as "very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick -- a loco."

Van Gogh died two years later by suicide.

The little girl Jeanne, born and raised in Arles, died in Arles in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. She remains the oldest human on record in official documents. She rode a bicycle until she was past 100 years old. She also ate about two pounds of chocolate a week and stopped smoking cigarettes only at the age of 117. One of her famous bon mots was, "I've never had but one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it."

When Jeanne Calment was born, her life expectancy was about 40 years. She lived more than three times her life expectancy, and we have as little understanding of how that happened now as we did when she was born. We've learned a great deal about the biology of aging and longevity, but the great puzzle, the Holy Grail of biology, remains undiscovered: What precisely determines the aging and longevity of biological systems?

The question that occurs to each of us is simply stated: If it's possible for Jeanne Calment, why not me?

And if 122 years is possible, why not 244 years or 500 years?

Meanwhile, Jeanne Calment remains the oldest human being on record, a parameter of the human species.

The modern interest in longevity probably began with the publication in 1964 of Alex Comfort's book Aging: The Biology of Senescence. In addition to a detailed survey of current understanding and research in the field, Comfort, a biologist trained in medicine, also presented himself right off as a visionary with the following statement that engendered a mythology:

If we kept throughout life the same resistance to stress, injury, and disease which we had at the age of ten, about one- half of us here today might expect to survive in 700 years' time.

A striking statement, but there was no evidence to warrant that statement in 1964 and there is no evidence for it today. Comfort's idea was based on assumptions concerning declining "power of self-adjustment and self-maintenance" in humans and other animals -- processes which most biologists today would call homeostasis and tissue repair. These two processes are certainly involved in health and disease, and to the degree that health and disease determine life-span these processes are also involved in longevity. But to what degree are they involved and how is a life-span of 700 years arrived at? Comfort's conclusion was cavalier when he wrote it and remains so today. Unfortunately, his book was widely read around the world and used by others to tout an enormous variety of pills, potions, nostrums, and schemes to improve resistance to stress, injury, and disease and thus extend human life-span by centuries into the future. We are still experiencing the negative consequences of Comfort's widely read book.

People who grasp whatever is at hand in the hope that it will slow or stop the rising water of mortality are not to be faulted or derided. But there are those who exploit this vulnerability to achieve or maintain power, or for financial gain, who exploit with twisted science and do great harm in the process.

Given the raucous bazaar of ideas about how to live longer or even how to live forever, we want to know what's possible now -- in our own lifetime. It's reasonable that during any era the known and documented maximum life-span should be the primary goal of clinical and basic research. Certainly, what we know about the maximum human life-span as marked by the life of Jeanne Calment is that a life of 122.5 years is at least possible. Longevity mongers or immortality mongers who offer us many centuries or eternity should be dismissed, especially if they have one or both hands out with palms up waiting for cash up front. So far, what is possible now, is a longevity of 122.5 years, and I see no reason why a breakthrough cannot occur during this century to make it possible for many people to attain that age. Meanwhile, research on aging and longevity is underfunded, not overfunded. The cost to the U.S. taxpayers of one month of the Iraq war would fund a serious war against mortality for ten years.

I'm an optimist about aging and longevity. I believe science and technology will continue to change the circumstances and details of human life in ways that are not imaginable. No one who lived 500 years ago could have predicted what human life is like today, and no one who is alive now can predict what human life will be like in the 26th century. Don't even try; you cannot do it. The science-technology spiral is essentially unpredictable. In understanding the nature and impact of science in the modern world, it's important to realize that science and technology cannot be separated. The reason is simple: basic science produces new applied science (technology), and new technology in turn produces new methods of doing basic science, which leads to new science that produces new technology, and so on. The science- technology spiral is unending, and because of this spiral it's not possible to predict with any certainty where science and technology will go in the future. So if we want to be reasonable, we need to admit that as far as aging and longevity are concerned, anything is possible. Maybe not now, not soon, but imagine us a thousand years from now, ten thousand years from now. Ten thousand years is hardly any time in a species destiny of maybe millions of years. Is it a consolation for our present relatively short existence? Why not? The great adventure of the human species will continue, and the connection of each of us to that species and to the human adventure is our bond to eternity.

Comments

[Mikael]

Comfort's estimate of a 700 year life expectancy after medicine had cured aging was a straightforward mathematical extrapolation. The main limit on life expectancy in the developing world today is the progressive annual increase in death rates caused by the biological aging process. Comfort simply extrapolated out the life expectancy that would result based on the annual risk of death of a person who had survived the main causes of death unique to childhood, but who was not yet experiencing an *accelerating* death rate due to biological aging) outward into the future to simulate what would happen if aging were brought under complete control.

Such a a population does not risk death from the molecular rot of accumulating aging damage, but primarily from age-independent causes such as accidents, homicides, and some (not all) infectious diseases (eg, biologically young people rarely die of influenza, which is routinely deadly in the elderly). The risk of death from these causes, in the absence of biological aging, remains constant over time, rather than imperceptibly increasing with every passing day.

Similar calculations have subsequently been made independently by other biogerontologists, such as Roy Walford, Aubrey de Grey, and Steven Austad, with similar results. In fact, Austad's is even more optimistic than Comfort's, yielding an average life expectancy of 1200 years, with a 1% chance of surviving for 10,000. This higher number results primarily from the fact that death rates amongst very young people had fallen in the intervening decades between Comfort's calculations and Austad's, as a result of things like mandatory seatbelts and public health measures, and could likely be increased even further by more of the same.

Norge, it's true that there are no *immortal* organisms, but there are certainly many that live a great deal longer than we do, including some (lobsters, some rockfish, and possibly turtles) that don't *age*, their bodies remaining physiologically youthful indefinitely. That's what a complete biomedical cure for aging -- such as that proposed through the SENS platform -- would achieve for us.

[jamesinraro]

Over the past five years the science of aging has shifted its approach. Most scientists now look at aging as a disease that can be cured, not an inevitable consequence of living. The most promising recent development is the discovery by Dr. Sinclair of Harvard that biotivia resveratrol extended the life span of small mammals by about 31%. This is more than calorie restriction of any other drug or strategy. Resveratrol is commonly found in red wine but not in sufficient quantities to be useful. Researchers use transmax extract in their studies which equates to about 250 glasses of red wine per dose.

With massive increases in funding and computer power devoted to "curing aging" a 50 yr. old person in good health can soon expect to extend his life span indefinitely.

[Norge]

Is it not a bit rediculous to have the earth's population wake up one morning learning that all on earth will now live to 150 years of age regardless who they are.

The cosmos is not structured in such a way and neither are life forms on earth. There are no imortal creatures on earth though very very long lived organisms. Bacteria. Trees. the ocean. And the earth. One organism

If the life expectances on earth were extented,
humans would become extinct much more quickly than what is intended for them as the earth is not in it's present condition sufficiently supplied with life support systems to maintain them.
Humans would eventually die in mass on a vast scale.