So You Want to Live to be 1,000?

Picture by Kevin Perrott

Looks can be decieving... This man is Dr. Aubry de Grey from Cambridge University, UK, with 14 years experience with the department of genetics. You may have seen him in the news or even on 60 Minutes last January, but for those of you who don't know, he is the co-founder of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) and founder of the Methuselah Mouse Prize (or MPrize). The "central goal of [his] work is to expedite the developement of a true cure for human aging."

Yes, that's right. His work's ultimate goal is to speed along the research for extending life beyond the boundries of what has previously been unthinkable, and even now seems slightly crazy.

When I first came across this information, I started to think that this is just another quest for the fountain of youth, and in some respects it still maybe. But here's a rundown of what my research has come up with.

First, how does he propose that we can live longer. Well, aging is caused because we live; apparently being complex beings has its side effects. Simply put, the very thing that keeps us alive also kills us, metabolism. de Grey proposes research into genetics (which are already underway, and have been for some time) alongside the already popular sciences of Gerontology and Geriatrics. Proposed methods suggest that we may be able to reverse damage on cells, in effect keeping us young and healthy. de Grey believes it is much more important to extend healthy life than frail life. If you can't already tell, stem cell research is obviously going to play a major role in this (way to go China!).

Does this sound nuts? Just wait. The Methuselah Mouse Prize is a foundation that gives a monetary prize to research groups that can extend the life of mice that have an average life span of 2 to 3 years, they can only start treatment on the mice once they have reached 20 months old (or 60 years in human terms). de Grey also calls this project Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (RMR). If you think that there is no holder of the prize so far, you're wrong. Dr. Stephen Spindler of the Unversity of California treated mice of an average life span of about 2 years, and the mouse that has claimed the prize thus far lived 5 years.

Hmm... that's around twice as normal life expectancy. Dr. Spindler and Dr. de Grey both seem to agree that it maybe possible to achieve a human life expectancy of 1,000 years. Yes, 1,000 years.

How soon would this kind of treatment become available? Well, de Grey believes that (money and researching pending) within the next 10 to 15 years there will be a suitable understanding done with the RMR project to move into Robust Human Rejuvenation. His guess-stimation is approximately 20 years before the first Human trials. However, the first treatments would not make life expectancy 1,000 years of age, but would be a gradual process. de Grey said in his presentation at the TedGlobal conference the first human to live to 1,000 maybe 10 years younger than the first to live to 150. He pointed to the evolutionary leaps in the science of flight over the course of the 20th century. If you think about it, at the beginning we weren't able to fly and by the end we have supersonic jets.

Should we do this? Aging is a natural process and will this create overpopulation? de Grey gave an interesting argument to this. He believes that humans are pro-aging because its our natural way to cope with aging and death. But he said that the fact is that aging is "ghastly". What's fun is being able to hike mountains and play sports, what's not fun is all the ailments that come from aging... e.g. heart disease, cancer, so on and so forth. In response to the overpopulation problem he said that the generation that had to deal with the problem would, and that we shouldn't go ahead and make the decision for them.

He's an interesting man with provocative ideas. If he's right, we'll see. I hesitate to believe in it fully, but I think that it is important to at least entertain the possiblity. And if you're interested in learning more he's written an article for the BBC and here is an "in a nutshell" interview by Bloomberg Encounters.

My question is... Would you want to live to be 1,000?

Stephen