The dream of some people has been that we can slow down, stop, or even reverse the aging process. Amelia Hill writes about recent research that argues that the aging process is unstoppable.
Backed by governments, business, academics and investors in an industry worth $110bn (£82.5bn) – and estimated to be worth $610bn by 2025 – scientists have spent decades attempting to harness the power of genomics and artificial intelligence to find a way to prevent or even reverse ageing.
But an unprecedented study has now confirmed that we probably cannot slow the rate at which we get older because of biological constraints.
The study, by an international collaboration of scientists from 14 countries and including experts from the University of Oxford, set out to test the “invariant rate of ageing” hypothesis, which says that a species has a relatively fixed rate of ageing from adulthood.
…“We compared birth and death data from humans and non-human primates and found this general pattern of mortality was the same in all of them,” said Aburto. “This suggests that biological, rather than environmental factors, ultimately control longevity.
…David Gems, a professor of biogerontology at UCL’s Institute of Healthy Ageing, said that the summary of the report suggested the research was “a very high-powered study proving something contentious and surely right”.
All the datasets examined by Aburto’s teams revealed the same general pattern of mortality: a high risk of death in infancy which rapidly declines in the immature and teenage years, remains low until early adulthood, and then continually rises in advancing age.
“Our findings confirm that, in historical populations, life expectancy was low because many people died young,” said Aburto. “But as medical, social, and environmental improvements continued, life expectancy increased.
“More and more people get to live much longer now. However, the trajectory towards death in old age has not changed,” he added. “This study suggests evolutionary biology trumps everything and, so far, medical advances have been unable to beat these biological constraints.”
Apart from the scientific aspect, there are the other aspects to consider. Declines in infant mortality is a good thing and as a result, more people are living to old age. Society has generally been able to adapt to that change. But the more affluent countries are already facing the problem of an aging population and increasing lifespans even more because of other changes will undoubtedly make it more acute.
The second issue is that it is not just age but the quality of life that is important. I suspect that most people are like me and would likely enjoy the prospect of living longer but only if they were able to retain their mental and physical capabilities.
There’s only one guaranteed way to stop aging.
“a species has a relatively fixed rate of ageing from adulthood”
This phrasing does leave a loophole, perhaps we can genetically engineer ourselves to stop ageing, but then we’d be a different species.
Perhaps this may be possible sometime in the future, but I doubt anyone alive today will live long enough to experience it.
On the other hand, you can find work like the following: Potential reversal of epigenetic age using a diet and lifestyle intervention: a pilot randomized clinical trial 8 weeks of lifestyle change, including diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, and supplementation with probiotics and various phytonutrients resulted in a change in DNA methylation patterns to one correlated with younger biological age.
Individual people age at different rates. This should be obvious to anyone who interacts with people in middle age and above. Smoking ages you faster. Meth abuse ages you even faster. There are several known lifestyle factors that are associated with greater longevity, and now there is some emerging evidence that this is related to a slower aging process rather than ability to stay alive while very aged.
I must be missing something, it seems to me that that study is begging the question.
They compared frequencies, times, rates or mortality, etc, with various creatures. Okay? And? Nothing in those patterns consists of new information. We know mammals naturally age and die. Pretty sure that’s been common knowledge for a while now.
While I am not convinced at all that ‘eliminating aging’ will turn out to be a viable goal, it is definitely something that is based on trying to understand and arrest the mechanisms underlying senescence. I don’t see how surveys of aging in populations that have already lived and died, human or not, even begins to address those sorts of questions. All they did is report on how, up until now, no primate has ever solved the underlying issues.
It’s like trying to prove an airplane is impossible by doing a survey of how high primates can jump and concluing “Won’t work because apes aren’t birds.” … yes? We know? What does that have to even do with it?
Remember the Greek myth in which some goddess granted a man one wish, and he wished for eternal life. He slipped up, and didn’t wish for eternal *youth*. So, he aged and aged and couldn’t die and eventually turned into, IIRC, a cricket.
So, yes, we want to live longer, but only if we retain our mental and physical capabilities. Always remember to put that into your wish, should some Greek goddess show up.
Besides, I don’t know if eternal life, even with eternal youth, is all that great a deal. This life is a vale of tears, and the purpose of death is to give us a rest.
garnetstar @#6,
The excellent comedy The Good Place that takes place in the afterlife wrestled with the problems caused by an eternal afterlife even if people are youthful and healthy and came to what I thought was a satisfying way to deal with it. I won’t spoil it for you.
#6: That would be Tithonus.
abbeycadabra @5,
1. Agreed.
2. To solve a problem, one needs to understand it. [2] helps achieve [1].
(Knowledge is power, a little knowledge is dangerous, but its application leads to more knowledge)
garnetstar:
It was the better choice. A young person can die, unlike an eternal person.
(What a shame, so young when she got run over by the bus!)
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BTW, the Struldbrug syndrome is voided by the wording: you must remain you, else you are not eternal. A senescent you would not be the you at the time the wish was made.
(I used to be a DM in AD&D)
John Morales @10: But ‘you’ are constantly changing anyway! How would you know if you changed enough to no longer ‘count’ as the same person?
The third and most important issue is that the planet already is overpopulated. Stopping aging obviously won’t help.
anat @11, as my mom used to say, “I look at the mirror and see an old woman”.
There are all sorts of way to grant a wish for long life, or immortality, or eternal life, and get something that wasn’t what you wanted, while technically being what you asked for.
I remember a story where a woman wished to a demon to be young, beautiful, and live for a thousand years. The demon turned her into a tree, that was young, beautiful, and presumably would live for that length of time.
If you asked to be as you were on the best, healthiest day of your life after the age of, say, 25, you might find yourself in an eternal loop based on how you were on that day — never getting older, but also never remembering anything past that day. Time progresses past that point, but your own memories don’t. I suppose you could write a journal for yourself, like Latro.
Thanks Mano, @7. I’ve always thought that eternal life, even with good health, would turn out to be a global production, with a cast of billions (see @12), of “No Exit”.
Another Greek goddess gave her lover eternal sleep. Now *there* is an offer worth taking!
Is anyone researching that? How we can increase our life span and sleep during all of it? Sign me up.