Life-extending drugs take humanity into new territory

 

The reasons to be cautious about taking longevity drugs probably won’t hold us back. They will just be too tempting to turn down

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN once wrote that "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". That has not deterred a good many people – usually wealthy, ageing men – from trying to dodge one, or the other, or both.

Tax avoidance is one thing, but as yet nobody has achieved immortality, or even modest life extension beyond the apparent upper limit of about 120 years. The well of human optimism runs deep, though, and on a fairly regular basis somebody with deep pockets unveils ambitious plans to tackle or end ageing. The latest is Google, which a year ago announced plans to get into the longevity business with a biotech start-up called Calico.

It is easy to be cynical about such ventures. Around a decade ago there was a similar flurry of interest from Silicon Valley as the backers of the Ansari X Prize – fresh from awarding $10 million to aviation pioneer Burt Rutan for putting a private vehicle into space – announced plans for an institute to solve the "problem" of death. The science of ageing was sufficiently advanced, it claimed, for us to be able to intervene to slow or even stop it.

Like so many quests for immortality, this one proved quixotic. But one of its main goals – to extend human lifespan by reducing the rate of ageing – appears to have unexpectedly been achieved (see "Everyday drugs could give extra years of life"). A number of drugs that were developed for other purposes seem to have the happy side effect of increasing lifespan in animals. Some researchers who work on them are now so convinced of their potential to add about 10 years to a human life that they have started self-medicating.

The appropriate warnings need to be wheeled out: the history of life-extension research is virtually defined by cycles of hype and disappointment. The evidence is little more than suggestive and the side effects unknown. But if the drugs work as the researchers believe – by slowing the ageing process itself – humanity is about to enter new territory.

There will be many scientific and regulatory hoops to jump through – the inevitable rise of a black market notwithstanding. There are also important political and ethical issues to chew over.

A critical one concerns overpopulation: if everybody alive today added a decade to their life expectancy, the world's already bloated population would inevitably rise even further. Quality of life is another concern: life extension could lead to a nightmarish "nursing home world" full of decrepit people who need to be supported by an ever-dwindling supply of youngsters. Yet another is inequality: drugs cost money, so could exacerbate the divide between haves and have-nots.

These are important questions. But it is hard to see them standing in the way. The temptation of extending our lives is too great.

It need not lead to a dystopian future. There has long been a strand of thought within gerontology that rejects radical life extension or immortality in favour of more modest goals. If we could slow ageing by about seven years, the argument goes, people would live longer, healthier lives, and then decline and die quickly with minimal decrepitude. The effects on population would be negligible, and the drugs are as cheap as aspirin and statins.

Some bioethicists will retort, do we really want this? Should we not just accept the lifespans that nature (or god) gave us? To which most people will surely respond, yes, and no.

This article appeared in print under the headline "A life extended"