Global Trend

From Here to Immortality

Until recently, only a tiny fraction of Americans reached their 100th birthdays. Yet, with technologies available today or already in the pipeline, this number has already begun to increase dramatically. For example, in 1990, there were 37,306 Americans who were at least 100 years old. By the year 2010, there will be 131,000. And, by 2050, projections by the U.S. Census Bureau anticipate there being 834,000 centenarians.

To put that figure in perspective, those 834,000 people who will be at least 100 years old in 2050 would outnumber the current populations of cities such as Baltimore, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Boston, or Denver. In fact, they would surpass the populations of all but the top 11 U.S. cities counted in the 2000 Census, according to our research.

It’s easy to misinterpret these statistics to conclude that there are more elderly people simply because the population is growing. That’s certainly true, but the primary reason is more subtle ?and more spectacular. More people are reaching the age of 100 because the average person in the U.S. population, regardless of the population’s size, is living longer than ever before.

In 1776, the average life expectancy at birth for a U.S. citizen was 35 years. By 1900, life expectancy grew to 47.3 years. By 2002, it climbed to 77.4 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Breaking it down by gender, females born in the U.S. can expect to live to the age of 77.9 years, while males can expect to live 74.5 years. Based on conservative assumptions for health care improvement through 2065, demographics researchers Ron Lee and S. Tuljapurkar, cited in a Census report, project average lifespans to reach 88 for women and 83 for men.

But that strikes the Trends editors as a very conservative projection ? and a dangerous assumption that could lead to faulty planning by government officials and corporate leaders.

Consider that it took only six decades for the average life expectancy to improve by roughly 50 percent, from age 47 in 1900 to age 70 in 1960. In another 60 years, an increase of 50 percent would boost the lifespan of the average American born in 2020 to 105.

Of course, this argument ignores the fact that the lifespan increased by only eight years between 1960 and 2002 ? which would seem to suggest that modern science has grabbed the low-hanging fruit of life extension, and that progress is slowing down. To date, the biggest contributor was a reduction in both infant and adult deaths due to infectious diseases.

We would point out, however, that the most rapid advances in gerontology are still ahead of us. And just as in the field of information technology, where Moore’s Law and other forces are constantly unleashing more computing power at cheaper prices, human life is theoretically capable of being extended almost indefinitely.

A major enabling technology is DNA sequencing, for which costs are plummeting by 50 percent every year. While it took 15 years to sequence HIV, SARS took just 31 days, according to one expert. And, this is just the beginning. As we’ve explained in past issues of Trends, a combination of enabling technologies and fundamental discoveries has laid the foundation for dramatic life-extension in much the same way that discoveries in quantum physics during the early 20th century laid the foundation for the atomic bomb.

And much as Albert Einstein and Leo Szillard convinced U. S. government skeptics to launch the Manhattan project, several esteemed 21st century researchers are trying to build interest in a major project aimed at prolonging the human lifespan to the point where we’d practically conquer death. Before you scoff, consider some of the experts who are involved in this effort:

Peter Diamandis, the entrepreneur who funded the Ansari X Prize that led to the first privately launched manned space flight, is now backing the Institute of Biomedical Gerontology, or IBG. The IBG is focusing on raising funding for projects to prove that aging can be conquered. According to its Web site, the IBG’s mission is to “promote, co-ordinate, and fund a range of projects leading, jointly, to a genuine cure for human aging.”

Inventor and scientist, Ray Kurzweil, who in the 1980s was among the few experts who foresaw the global impact of the Internet, is now predicting that the next great change in society will be the ability for people to live practically forever. Keep in mind that Kurzweil is no quack. He invented the flatbed scanner and won the U.S. National Medal of Technology.

Marvin Minsky a professor of artificial intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of the MIT Media Lab is part of the IBG.

Aubrey de Grey a professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge is one of the most outspoken champions of this movement. He combines a background in computer science and genetics. De Grey believes he can apply the discipline of engineering to discover why living things age and die.

Gregory Stock, director of the program on medicine, technology, and society at UCLA is another key proponent.

Kurzweil is a baby boomer and is typical of the leaders of this anti-aging research movement. His personal strategy is to do all he can to stay healthy long enough to exploit the scientific advances that will keep people alive longer. For now, he advocates avoiding little vices like coffee and taking 250 nutritional supplements each day.

People like him, who stay healthy, should be around long enough to jump on what Kurzweil calls a “bridge” to the next life-prolonging technology. The next bridge is the current technology already being developed, such as genetic tests that reveal if a person is likely to develop a particular type of cancer, and which treatments are likely to work best to prevent it from developing.

The bridge after that will be built on today’s pioneering work in nanotechnology. For example, New Scientist reports that Tao Mei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing has created a tiny robot that is three millimeters long and capable of swimming. If this invention were downsized, it could become the precursor of swarms of nano-bots that could be ingested into the human body and used to deliver drugs to cancerous tissues, to clear blocked arteries, or to maximize the nutrition that organs absorb from food.

De Grey believes that on-going research on mice could reveal ways to stop the aging process in humans. With enough funding, he predicts that the major breakthroughs will be realized within 10 years.

At the University of California at Irvine, biogerentologist Michael Rose has devoted the last three decades to studying aging in fruit flies, and he has demonstrated that he can extend their lives. “The concept of natural death is bogus,” he has said.

For these scientists the big pay-off is seen in the form of a big-time research project to extend the maximum human lifespan beyond 120 years. As we alluded to earlier, fundamental scientific discoveries imply that life extension is “possible.” Consider Roy Walford, who has researched calorie restriction in rodents for decades, and has also experimented on himself. His theory, which is supported nearly unanimously by his colleagues in the scientific community, is that reducing the number of calories that mammals consume leads to a longer lifespan. In landmark studies, he proved that rats and mice lived twice as long when he severely limited their food intake.

Walford has been following the same approach in his own pursuit of a longer than normal lifespan. He estimates that his “set point” ? the weight at which he would be considered healthy and not overweight ? is 150 pounds. The theory of calorie restriction argues that people could live longer if they kept their weight at 10 to 20 percent less than their set point. In Walford’s case, the ideal weight for longevity is right around the 132 pounds he currently weighs at the age of 76. More recent research at MIT has linked the anti-aging effects of reduced calorie intake to activities of the Sir-2 gene. It’s quite possible that these benefits might be achieved through genetic engineering, without having to starve oneself.

Another approach to anti-aging research is the study of telomeres. As we’ve reported previously in Trends, telomeres are sequences of nucleic acids extending from the ends of chromosomes. Every time our cells divide, the telomeres shorten. Ultimately, once the telomere end pieces of the DNA become too short, cell division slows and stops.

Researchers led by Richard Cawthon of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City conducted pioneering studies on how the lengths of telomeres affected the longevity of a random group of 143 people age 60 and older. As they reported in Lancet, when they compared their subjects to a control group, they found that the mortality rate for people with short telomeres was 300 percent higher for heart disease, and 800 percent higher for infectious diseases. Cawthon proposes, “What if we stopped telomere shortening totally? It’s possible we could significantly increase the number of years in a healthy lifespan.”

Past studies show that cells simply stop reproducing and functioning well when telomeres grow too short. Rapidly dividing cells in the blood, skin, and intestines are hit hardest, adding up to the common ailments of old age. Cawthon and other researchers are working on using an enzyme called telomerase as a way to lengthen telomeres ? and lengthen a person’s lifespan.

This research, and much more we can’t go into here, puts us at a point analogous to when physicists found out that the atomic bomb was “possible.” After they learned that neutrons could trigger a fission chain reaction, it was clear that anyone who could produce the materials and assemble them properly could create a weapon that would change the course of history. However, just as it took six years for the Manhattan Project to go from concept to application, it will take a comparable five- to 10-year effort to make life extension a reality for the baby boomers.

The question is, will the efforts to extend the human lifespan gain the needed momentum as the baby boomers age? And if so, how might it play out over the next few decades? We can’t say for sure, but we’d like to offer the following six forecasts for your consideration:

First, through private and public funding, leading scientists will increasingly focus on conquering the problem of aging. Just as the Manhattan Project did not produce immediate results, it just takes a few years for the effort to yield visible breakthroughs. However, today’s scientists have the advantage of powerful information technologies that will allow them to conduct research rapidly, and will allow them to collaborate with each other despite living anywhere in the world.

Second, despite the seemingly universal benefits of such a program, some governments and activist groups will oppose the project. For example, Michael Rose, the biogerentologist at UC-Irvine, suspects that the U.S. and other nations won’t fund research into life extension because they can’t afford to support populations in which most people would live twice as long as they live now. Other observers foresee that the citizens of countries that do not have access to the latest breakthroughs in anti-aging will be further disadvantaged because they do not live in developed countries. This could lead to increased political unrest.

Third, even without a Manhattan Project dedicated to conquering death, the Trends editors are convinced that science will find a way to stretch the lifespan of Americans and Europeans turning 60 within the next two decades to 120 and beyond. This seems entirely reasonable because many Americans are already reaching the age of 100, and some have gotten to 110. Advances in materials science, nanotechnology, and molecular science have brought us man-made replacement organs, joints, and heart valves. Stem cell research offers the promise of growing new cells, tissues, and hearts to replace diseased and worn-out body parts. According to Dr. Stephen Livesey, chief scientific officer at the Australian Stem Cell Centre, even if stem cells do not extend the average lifespan, they will make the advanced years healthier than we can imagine today. Livesey predicts that Westerners in their 40s today can expect that when they reach their 60s and beyond, they will not have to suffer from heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or diabetes. Undoubtedly, the removal of these diseases that often accompany aging will improve the quality of life for the elderly, allow more of them to live longer, and improve their psychological well-being.

Fourth, by 2050, the average human lifespan in developed countries could easily reach 140. Many of the areas of research that are already underway today, including nanobots that could enter the bloodstream, promise to eradicate diseases, improve treatments for cancers, and counteract the chemical changes that lead to aging.

Fifth, while it’s hard to see beyond the next 50 years, some experts assert that conceivably, by 2200, the theoretical human lifespan could reach to one thousand years or even beyond. According to Michael Rose, “Two or three centuries from now, we may well be able to make humans live for thousands of years. The basic biology says we can do this.” Aubrey de Grey is even more optimistic. He believes that the first human who will live to be 1,000 years old is alive today.

Sixth, even if aging can be conquered to the point that the human body will last virtually forever, it is not yet known how people will react psychologically to their unprecedented longevity. Whether they want to or not, humans expect to die. The certainty of death underlies spirituality ? people lead virtuous lives in the hope of a reward in the afterlife, which becomes moot if their lives never end. There are also enormous implications for wealth creation and transfer ? to name just a few, people who don’t die will need to work for hundreds of years; they won’t need retirement homes; and they won’t leave inheritances for their children. What will this mean for Social Security, for social institutions like marriage, for the birth rate, for the growth in the world’s population, for the balance of global power, and for the exploration of space? Keep listening to future issues of Trends as we examine these and many other subjects!

References List :
1. For information on U.S. cities by population and rank, visit the Information Please website at:www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html2. New Scientist, April 9, 2005, “Welcome to the Immortals Club,” by Greg Klerkx. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by Reed Business Information, L.L.C. All rights reserved.3. ibid.4. The Guardian Unlimited, June 30, 2001, “A Lease on Life,” by James Meeks. ⓒ Copyright 2001 by Guardian Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved. o To access the article “A Lease on Life,” visit The Guardian Unlimited website at:www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,514390,00.html5. The Lancet, February 2003, Vol. 361, Iss. 9355, “Association Between Telomere Length in Blood and Mortality in People Aged 60 Years or Older,” by R.M. Cawthon, K.R. Smith, E. OBrien, A. Sivatchenko, and R.A. Kerber. ⓒ Copyright 2003 by The Lancet Publishing Group. All rights reserved.6. The Advertiser, March 26, 2005, “Science Searches for That Fountain of Eternal Youth,” by Maria Moscaritolo. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by Advertisers Newpapers Pty. Ltd. All rights reserved.