Tech investors talk up reversing the ageing process with biotech, Is it possible? Is it desirable?
Could advances in biotech enable you to live for 200, 1,000 or a million years? I’m asking because some tech. billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman are pouring money into molecular nanotechnology and brain-computer interface in the hope of reversing ageing. And where the wealthy put their money, smaller investors follow. The quest for longevity and immortality is gathering momentum and it’s a massive investment opportunity for biotech and pharma. A new wave of startups from Silicon Valley is expected to grow the market value to more than £46 billion by 2026. The longevity gold rush is well under way. So there's the money and resources but is there wisdom in the biotech science of longevity?
To date there is little actual proof of concept. So far the oldest person in the world was (until August 2024) Maria Branyas (117). Neither she nor the world’s oldest man, John Tenniswood (112) have benefitted from advances in biotech. In fact Mr. Tenniswood puts his longevity down to eating fish and chips every Friday! And yet the tech. fund managers say the revolution is just around the corner.
They maintain that the sciences and AI will find a way to unpick the Second Law of Thermodynamics. For example one of the many well-funded companies states on their website that they are aiming to significantly improve the normal human aging and longevity process by enabling the creation of drugs that have been difficult to generate in the past without quantum and AI. At present much of the work focuses on preventing and repairing common age-related conditions such as myocardial infarction (heart attack) , stroke, high blood pressure, tissue stiffening, skin ageing, and loss of muscle function, but there's plenty of talk about old age and even death being a thing of the past. Should we rejoice? Should we be worried? Or is this mostly wishful thinking and hype?
And what if they do manage to double the human life-span? Or treble it? How would it work? Would there be the mother of all population explosions? Surely not. Any life-extending elixir will only be available to the super-rich and terrifying science fiction will become reality as uber-beings take total control of us mere mortals. Or am I catastrophising again?
Resistance to Change
Of course, it is part of human nature to question new science and progress. New innovations stimulate both excitement as well as fear of the unknown. When the rich started investing in railways in the 1830’s, the Luddites and the doom merchants warned of disaster. They said that if people travelled faster than a horse they would not be able to breath and would die of suffocation. They feared there would be social chaos and thousands would lose their jobs and that this new form of travel would only be available for the wealthy. But as it turned out no one suffocated. The railways met a basic human need. Everyone wanted to travel and eventually the doom merchants begrudgingly bought a ticket to ride.
Human Need
When the first railway tracks were being laid, the life expectancy of a man was 40 and a woman 42 and this has steadily increased every year although recently this upward trend has levelled off. Most of us want to live a long life. We want to survive. It’s hard wired into us through the reptilian part of the brain. Our nervous system is a complex tool that has evolved so that as a species we have become fairly accomplished at surviving for seven or eight decades. Surely, biotech for longevity is meeting a basic human need. It appears to be offering the logical progression of human development?
Quality Over Quantity
Hopefully millions of older people will physically benefit from the advances in biotech, but science cannot meet all the emotional and spiritual needs that we have. The psychology of ageing is complex. Many people such Zalman Schachter-Shalomi have questioned the wisdom of having extended life-span without expanded consciousness. Even with regenerated cells there will still be loss and grief and despite all the scientific breakthroughs, we, too, will die sooner or later. All plants die. All animals die. Even planets and stars die. Without death more complex organisms cannot evolve. Without death our planet would cease to function within a matter of days. Life and death are two side of the same coin.
If we are not fundamentally happy with life now, then the longevity pill may postpone the physical ending, but extend the existential suffering. Personally, I’m not that desperate to extend my natural life span. I want quality over quantity. I’m more interested in exploring the rich potential in each day rather than putting energy into living for as long as possible. Breathing in the present moment with gratitude is medicine. As the Harvard Gazette said in a paper about longevity; Good genes are nice, but joy is better.
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