When I was in high school as long ago as
the late 1960s, biology textbooks were just catching up to the breakthroughs
that had begun with the paper on DNA structure by Watson and Crick in 1953. The
new textbooks (and many contemporary popular publications) gushed over the
potential of genetic research for medical applications and bioengineering even
though the techniques at the time were undeveloped. It was an exciting and
aspirational time for the sciences generally. The world, after all, had been utterly
transformed within the lifetimes of people not yet 70. My grandfather, for
example, left Austria-Hungary before World War One in the back of a horse-drawn
hay wagon, but a half century later he flew back to Budapest in a 707 while
astronauts orbited overhead. There was every expectation among people of all
levels of education that the next half century would see just as radical a
transformation. Biotechnology (a term not yet shortened to biotech), we were
told, would be the most transformative science of all. It would change humanity
forever by eliminating disease, extending youth, and prolonging life. More than
one of my high school teachers confidently predicted, “Some of you in this
classroom will live to be 200.”
That prediction proved to be as much a
fantasy as the lunar colonies we were told would exist by 2001. (We did get
better phones, which is something, but commercial moon flights would be
cooler.) Life expectancy has nudged upward decade by decade, mostly because of
reduced smoking and better medical care, but all that means is that we aren’t
dying early quite as often from some avoidable disease or preventable accident.
Life expectancy at birth in 1900 in the US was 46, but that does not mean
adults commonly went belly-up at 46. High child mortality (mostly from
infectious diseases) accounted for that low average. If you made it to 21 back
then, you’d probably reach old age; if you didn’t, a bacterial or viral
infection was the most likely reason rather than an age-related illness. An
80-year-old in 1900 was much like an 80-year-old in 2021. Aging itself
continues for the present generation at the same rate it always has.
Officially, no one dies of old age in
the US anymore (that was disallowed as a cause of death on death certificates 70
years ago) but unofficially we do; the cause will be listed as heart disease or
kidney failure or stroke or something, but in truth after a certain age if one
thing doesn’t get us another will. At some point we just stop being able to
repair ourselves after which inevitably one organ or another irretrievably fails.
The uppermost possible limit for humans seems to be about 125, though (despite
a handful of inadequately substantiated claims) no one is known ever to have
reached 125. The longest lifetime that has been reliably documented (Jeanne
Calment, d.1997) was 122 years. It is nonetheless possible that someone
sometime has eked out (or will eke out) a few more years past that, but the
person would be the rarest of outliers. Hardly anyone gets close to that age:
the odds of reaching 100 are 1 in 10,000. The chances of reaching 110 are 1 in
7,000,000.
The high hopes of the 1960s have faded,
and biotech no longer looks likely to change our longevity potential in a time
frame that matters to anyone alive today. No one wants an extra 100 years in a
nursing home anyway, of course, so it is not just longevity per se that we are after but extended
youth. This, too, has proved elusive. It is true that people today in wealthy
countries by and large look younger than their grandparents did at similar
ages, but that is only because they strive to do so; beneath the surface, they
have the same age-related systemic conditions and illnesses as their
grandparents – in some ways (e.g. diabetes) they are worse off, mostly because
they weigh more. It’s pretty safe to say that none of my high school graduating
class (1970) of 27 students will reach age 200 – several are already gone. None
of the class of 2021 will reach 200 either. Many Generation Z teens seem to
believe the world will end before then anyway, which I don’t believe either; I’d
place a bet but I’m at a loss on how to collect on it.
Will lifespans of 200 or longer ever be
possible? Maybe. Not for us, but someday maybe. There is plenty of research
being done on everything from stem cells to immunology to telomeres – and, of
course, genetic engineering, the promise of which glimmered back in the 1960s.
Elon Musk’s transcendence initiative takes a different approach; he anticipates
a future blending of biology with computing and mechanical hardware (i.e.
cyborgs) to such a degree that you could shed your biological parts as they age
out and be left with an entity (a robot, basically) that is still essentially
you. This wouldn’t be human by usual definition, but some folks consider this
an advantage: hence “transcendence.” But what if purely biological fixes can
concocted? How would that affect our outlook on life?
This question was considered and
addressed by George Bernard Shaw in his 1921 play Back to Methuselah, which is worth a (re)visit. World War One and
the revolutionary (and counterrevolutionary) chaos of the postwar years led
Shaw to suspect that humans, regardless of the political system, were simply
not up to the task of rational and humane social organization. The problem, he
decided, was short-term thinking: short-term thinking that makes sense if you
won’t live long enough to face the consequences of your own actions and
policies. People, he decided, just need to live longer. This would alter their
approach to public life – and also to private life. You are less likely to go
in for daredevil stunts, for example, if you are risking centuries of life
instead of decades. The only hope for humans, he decided, was to evolve longer
lives. (Shaw proposed that biological evolution could be directed by force of
mind, a pleasantly wrongheaded notion that doesn’t undermine his basic point
that human life is too short.)
The play consists of five parts (with
subsidiary acts) set in different times. Part One features a nontraditional story
of Adam and Eve. The second Part is set in Shaw’s own time after World War One.
The third is in 2170 when ultra-long-lived humans are discovered to exist
secretly. Part Four is in 3000 and features a short-lived (normal-lived by
today’s standards) visitor to Britain, which is now occupied by long-lived
people; he struggles to make sense of the place. Part Five is in the year
31,920 when humanity has finally matured. All it took was virtual immortality
and the change in outlook that entailed.
This may be short-term thinking, but I’m
not inclined to worry much about the year 31,920 or even 2170. If my old high
school teachers (assuming they are still with us) follow through on their
promises and fork over that 200 year life span, however, I’ll endeavor to look
at the matter more maturely.
Melanie –
I Tried To Die Young
No comments:
Post a Comment