Around 700 companies worldwide are engaged in various aspects of human lifespan research, spending tens of billions of dollars on such research.
That so many people are suddenly interested in solving aging is unprecedented, because aging has long been considered a kind of backwater in science
– says Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan in an interview with thehindu.com portal. Ramakrishnan’s book “Why we die: The new science of aging and the search for immortality” was recently published, in which he examines from a scientific point of view the efforts to increase human lifespan, hopes.
Investing in eternity
To live an eternal life, or at least as long and as healthy a life as possible – this is the desire of most people. Behind the current hype is clearly the fact that there are people who are able and willing to spend a lot of money on research related to anti-aging and eternal youth.
- Among the billionaires funding “time-stopping” or “age reversal” research is Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who donated 100 million dollars to establish the Allen Institute for Cell Science.
- PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel poured millions of dollars into Aubrey de Gray’s anti-aging research. If he could no longer achieve its success, then he would like to be frozen after his death so that he can live longer if the technology allows it.
- Jeff Bezos invested an undisclosed amount in the Altos Labs startup in 2021. The San Francisco biotech company focuses on “cellular rejuvenating programming,” a theoretical method for reversing disease, injury and disability.
- Russian media mogul Dmitry Itskov has invested at least 3 million dollars in the initiative, which aims to investigate how the entire contents of the human brain can be transferred and uploaded into a synthetic brain by 2045.
For the majority of the Earth’s inhabitants, not only such investments, but also futuristic survival techniques are out of reach, so the known anti-aging methods, which for the time being are at most a temporary solution, remain. However, we do not spare the money for these:
it is estimated that in 2021, the market for anti-aging dietary supplements was approximately $62 billion, and this is expected to grow to $93 billion by 2027.
How long do we live?
But how do we progress to eternal life, where are we now? The 2021 Global Burden of Disease study reveals that over the past 70 years – excluding the years of Covid-19 – the life expectancy of humanity at birth has increased continuously: from an average of 49 years in 1950 to 71.7 years in 2019. The average life expectancy at birth of European Union citizens increased by half a year in 2022, rising to 80.6 years compared to a year earlier, according to recently published data from Eurostat.
Life expectancy is calculated from the so-called age-specific death rates and since these are almost constantly improving, the average lifespan of current generations is expected to be higher than what was expected at their birth. The picture is further colored by the fact that the actual life expectancy is influenced by many factors, which is why, although the life expectancy at birth in 1901 did not reach 40 years, those (just over half of the population) who could still celebrate 40 . their birthday, they could expect another 27.33 years on average. A male child born at the turn of the millennium was “predicted” to live an average of 67.1 years and a female child 75.6 years, this increased to 69.4 and 79.2 years in 2016, respectively.
But there is one aspect that is perhaps even more important than life expectancy: the number of years spent in good health. Obviously, we are not talking about a perfect state of health here, but about the fact that the individual’s well-being is affected by as little illness and deterioration as possible. This is always less than life expectancy.
| Expected and healthy life expectancy at birth | ||
| Expected lifetime | Lifespan in health | |
| A boy born in 2006 | 69 | 54.7 |
| She is a girl born in 2006 | 77.4 | 57.5 |
| A boy born in 2016 | 72.4 | 59.6 |
| She is a girl born in 2016 | 79.2 | 60.2 |
| A boy born in 2022 | 72.5 | 63.1* |
| She is a girl born in 2022 | 79.05 | 64.2* |
| Source: KSH, *2021 data | ||
According to the above-mentioned Nobel Prize-winning scientist Venki Ramakrishnan, the main goal of researchers is not to stop aging, but to preserve health for as long as possible (which, of course, also includes the first goal). Aging is a huge problem not only at the level of individuals, but also in the developed world: people are living longer and fewer children are born, so it is really necessary for people to age as healthily as possible.
Billionaires aren’t the only ones who fear aging
says Ramakrishnan.
125, 150?
But let’s take a step back and see if we can only approximate life expectancy, how well can we estimate the maximum life, if it exists at all.
According to a study published in 2021 in the scientific journal Nature Communications
humans can live 120-150 years, but no longer than this “absolute limit” of human lifespan.
Based on mathematical modeling of the blood samples of 500,000 people, the researchers found that during this time the human body completely loses its ability to recover from diseases and injuries, which leads to death. According to the researchers, if therapies were developed that increase the body’s resistance, they could enable people to live longer, healthier lives.
A few years before this, another study, also on life expectancy, found:
it is unlikely that people can live more than 125 years.
Who wants to live forever?
According to UN forecasts, the number of people aged 65 and over worldwide will more than double, from 761 million in 2021 to 1.6 billion by 2050. With the increase in the number of elderly people, the interest in preserving health as long as possible and thereby extending life expectancy is increasing. At the same time, an article published in the journal Nature at the beginning of this year draws attention to the fact that, although more and more money is pouring into aging research and researchers are trying many different methods, they practically agree that one should not hope for a quick solution.
As the aforementioned Venki Ramakrishnan points out: we age throughout our lives, the process begins in the womb. The body has developed many mechanisms to repair age-related damage to proteins, but over time the damage exceeds our ability to repair it. However, according to the famous molecular biologist, this does not mean that they cannot intervene in the aging process, which could perhaps extend our lives. He told CNN:
Like many aging scientists, I believe it is possible. However, I do not share their optimism that such interventions are feasible in practice.
In the interview, they were even asked about the extent to which aging and longevity are influenced by genetics. To this Ramakrishnan replied that
there is a correlation between the ages of parents and their children, but genes only affect about 25% of lifespan.
The scientist believed that living beyond the age of 120 would lead to a strange and stagnant society. Moreover, the fact that our mental abilities remain until we die is unrealistic. The whole problem of cognitive decline and dementia is going to be a very difficult problem to solve even with modern tools; brain regeneration is currently not an option.
In relation to cloning as a possibility of “eternal life”, the scientist said: experiments so far show that adult cells can be transformed into embryonic cells and can be stimulated to grow again, but cloning is very inefficient due to practical difficulties. And he classified the freezing of the human body in the same category of science fiction as preserving our consciousness or the “contents” of our brain in any way. “We have no idea how the brain organizes information,” he explained.
Cover image source: Getty Images
