Who Wants to Live Forever?
Brian Trent
April 03, 2007
If you could, would you?
Death is natural, but not everything natural is good. We choose to imagine the natural world as a sort of Disney character filled with benevolence and tenderness, and in doing so we evade the more brutal, red-in-tooth-and-claw reality. In fact, we forget exactly how brutal nature is: the earliest human ancestors tread a very narrow threshold between survival and extinction, and ultimately could only hope for twenty, maybe twenty-five, years of life.
Today the average health-conscious human being can expect to live seven or eight decades; certain lucky few attain 116 years or more. But we’re quickly moving towards a new threshold when 116 might be the new adolescence. The first "immortals" are coming.
Brent Jones doesn't exist but one day someone like him probably will. Yesterday he celebrated his 800th birthday though he looks barely more than thirty. He has lived longer than the entire history of the Roman Empire. The biblical character of Methuselah is alleged to have reached the age of 969; Brent has already marked his electronic calendar for a special celebration when he himself reaches this milestone. Perhaps he takes a weekly dose of youth drugs, or maybe his own genes have been permanently engineered to keep him perpetually youthful. Whatever the tool, Brent is the living example of Homo sapiens' most enduring dream: he is an immutable being. Barring a cataclysmic event or horrendous accident, he may never die.
Today, the mechanics of aging and death are being laid bare in laboratories around the world. One of the frontrunners in this field is evolutionary biologist Michael R. Rose of the University of California at Irvine. In 1980 Rose managed to breed "immortal" fruit-flies by matching and mating long-lived specimens. While an average fruit-fly lives only weeks (at most), Rose bred flies (Drosophila melanogaster) that reached twenty years… and counting.
At very late ages, aging stops and never comes back,” he said. “You suddenly hit this point where not only the rate of mortality slows but the increase in mortality stops completely. This discovery was so radical that a lot of people, myself included, didn't believe it.”
Of particular interest is that Rose's surviving flies aren't feeble immortals quivering at the bottom of their jar. Instead, their daily metabolic rate is the same as normal flies and their total metabolic rate is far greater. The Holy Grail of this research will be to discover what enzymes are allowing the insects to enjoy these stellar life spans and then find an equivalent dose for human beings.
I don't think there's an absolute limit on the human life span,” Rose said. “The better biotechnology research and development you've got, the longer people will live. I think this is one of the most exciting things in all biology.”
It will also be a difficult thing. According to Rose (whose book, Methuselah Flies: A Case Study in the Evolution of Aging, was published in April 2004 by World Scientific Publishing Co.), this fountain of youth won't be linked to any one factor but rather to many. “The answer won't be one enzyme. It might be sixty-two enzymes plus DNA treatments. There won't be a single answer. It will owe to many things.” When asked about the likelihood of a real-life Brent Jones Rose responds, “I firmly expect that to be achieved despite the U.S. Congress.”
In the seventeenth century the poet John Donne wrote: "Death shall be no more; death, thou shall die." The eventual human application of Rose's research may fulfill this prophecy… and inspire a debate so thunderous that the abortion and stem cell controversies will pale in comparison.
For starters, the first chorus of objections will hail from a familiar source: the crowds of major political parties and religions. Not surprisingly, immortality will make strange bedfellows in every social strata, country, ideology, and faith. After all, religion's greatest strength is in providing hope for a life beyond the one we have now. But if science suddenly could give eternal life, then scientists would become the new priests, handing out eternity in pills rather than prayers.
But that isn’t likely to matter. The desire to retain youth spans from the oldest story in history (The Epic of Gilgamesh) to the cravings of Hollywood stars and the residents of your own neighborhood. Is it likely that the consumers who fuel this global market will back off if eternal youth comes in pill form? Certainly no law will dissuade this; if governments ban the fountain of youth it will simply be moved to black market menus.
Secular voices may point to overpopulation. Might we take Jackie Gleason’s suggestion in the Honeymooners? “To the moon!” The prospect of constructing permanent settlements on the moon and Mars has lately found its way into the political spotlight. This is hardly new. Just as prehistoric people spread from the fertile crescent into other lands, the gulf of space does represent new shores.
What of general social upheaval? What do you do when a company has an immortal board of directors? Or when you're married to someone for nine centuries and finally become bored with it all? Or when you have a senator who has lingered in the government for five thousand years? Marriage as we know it will vanish and become something more akin to a business contract, with both parties negotiating a term of service. “Till death do us part” will fade into antiquity.
Even the scientific community could raise hated objections. Immortals, some would argue, could represent an affront to and the end of evolution. Yet this also is nothing new. The brutal sieve of natural selection is something we spite every time we take medicine or buy glasses for nearsighted children. We don't surrender to nature. We fight back.
Ah... but what happens to our creative and social evolution? Will immortal nations enter a state of torpor, devitalized by a lack of ambition and innovation? Will artists find all the muses dead? Or will limitless horizons be seized with new force and passion? Will a poet's lament not be over death but, like the ageless elves in the Lord of the Rings, be over the vastness of eternity?
There is no such thing as not dying,” the philosopher Yang-tsze once told a student. When the student then asked if it was wise to try and extend one's lifespan as much as possible, Yang-tsze replied, “One hundred years is more than enough. Why would I wish to protract the pain of living through a longer life?”
It's a somber but valid point even now. Life isn't always pleasant. If eighty years is difficult to cope with, how would Brent Jones handle eight hundred? When he's scrambling to pay bills or succeed in love while the newscasts show him the latest wars, disease, and human cruelty, does there ever reach a point when he decides to cancel his dose of eternity? Or do he and his society crumple into apathy? In Anne Rice's vampire novels, the immortal bloodsuckers have a habit of getting stuck in their old ways of life. The result is a decadent community that never changes. Progress is arrested. Dreams are replaced by stale nostalgia.
It remains to be seen whether the naked ape who dreamed of forever and stands to harness it will survive. On the one hand, we might perish like bacteria in a petri dish. On the other, an undying race might achieve a perennial Golden Age even the most inspired Greek poet dared not imagine.
Either way, the immortals are most likely coming. "Everything fears time," an Arabic expression goes, "but time fears the pyramids." One day we might add, "and the people who built them." There may be people alive right now who could live to see endless sunrises. Dreaming of this reality for so long, humanity won't back away when the creeping dawn of attainment can already be seen brightening the horizon.
How we deal with it will be up to us.
Copyright 2007 Brian Trent
(A lengthier version of this article appeared in the May/June 2004 issue of The Humanist)
Death is natural, but not everything natural is good. We choose to imagine the natural world as a sort of Disney character filled with benevolence and tenderness, and in doing so we evade the more brutal, red-in-tooth-and-claw reality. In fact, we forget exactly how brutal nature is: the earliest human ancestors tread a very narrow threshold between survival and extinction, and ultimately could only hope for twenty, maybe twenty-five, years of life.
Today the average health-conscious human being can expect to live seven or eight decades; certain lucky few attain 116 years or more. But we’re quickly moving towards a new threshold when 116 might be the new adolescence. The first "immortals" are coming.
Brent Jones doesn't exist but one day someone like him probably will. Yesterday he celebrated his 800th birthday though he looks barely more than thirty. He has lived longer than the entire history of the Roman Empire. The biblical character of Methuselah is alleged to have reached the age of 969; Brent has already marked his electronic calendar for a special celebration when he himself reaches this milestone. Perhaps he takes a weekly dose of youth drugs, or maybe his own genes have been permanently engineered to keep him perpetually youthful. Whatever the tool, Brent is the living example of Homo sapiens' most enduring dream: he is an immutable being. Barring a cataclysmic event or horrendous accident, he may never die.
Today, the mechanics of aging and death are being laid bare in laboratories around the world. One of the frontrunners in this field is evolutionary biologist Michael R. Rose of the University of California at Irvine. In 1980 Rose managed to breed "immortal" fruit-flies by matching and mating long-lived specimens. While an average fruit-fly lives only weeks (at most), Rose bred flies (Drosophila melanogaster) that reached twenty years… and counting.
At very late ages, aging stops and never comes back,” he said. “You suddenly hit this point where not only the rate of mortality slows but the increase in mortality stops completely. This discovery was so radical that a lot of people, myself included, didn't believe it.”
Of particular interest is that Rose's surviving flies aren't feeble immortals quivering at the bottom of their jar. Instead, their daily metabolic rate is the same as normal flies and their total metabolic rate is far greater. The Holy Grail of this research will be to discover what enzymes are allowing the insects to enjoy these stellar life spans and then find an equivalent dose for human beings.
I don't think there's an absolute limit on the human life span,” Rose said. “The better biotechnology research and development you've got, the longer people will live. I think this is one of the most exciting things in all biology.”
It will also be a difficult thing. According to Rose (whose book, Methuselah Flies: A Case Study in the Evolution of Aging, was published in April 2004 by World Scientific Publishing Co.), this fountain of youth won't be linked to any one factor but rather to many. “The answer won't be one enzyme. It might be sixty-two enzymes plus DNA treatments. There won't be a single answer. It will owe to many things.” When asked about the likelihood of a real-life Brent Jones Rose responds, “I firmly expect that to be achieved despite the U.S. Congress.”
In the seventeenth century the poet John Donne wrote: "Death shall be no more; death, thou shall die." The eventual human application of Rose's research may fulfill this prophecy… and inspire a debate so thunderous that the abortion and stem cell controversies will pale in comparison.
For starters, the first chorus of objections will hail from a familiar source: the crowds of major political parties and religions. Not surprisingly, immortality will make strange bedfellows in every social strata, country, ideology, and faith. After all, religion's greatest strength is in providing hope for a life beyond the one we have now. But if science suddenly could give eternal life, then scientists would become the new priests, handing out eternity in pills rather than prayers.
But that isn’t likely to matter. The desire to retain youth spans from the oldest story in history (The Epic of Gilgamesh) to the cravings of Hollywood stars and the residents of your own neighborhood. Is it likely that the consumers who fuel this global market will back off if eternal youth comes in pill form? Certainly no law will dissuade this; if governments ban the fountain of youth it will simply be moved to black market menus.
Secular voices may point to overpopulation. Might we take Jackie Gleason’s suggestion in the Honeymooners? “To the moon!” The prospect of constructing permanent settlements on the moon and Mars has lately found its way into the political spotlight. This is hardly new. Just as prehistoric people spread from the fertile crescent into other lands, the gulf of space does represent new shores.
What of general social upheaval? What do you do when a company has an immortal board of directors? Or when you're married to someone for nine centuries and finally become bored with it all? Or when you have a senator who has lingered in the government for five thousand years? Marriage as we know it will vanish and become something more akin to a business contract, with both parties negotiating a term of service. “Till death do us part” will fade into antiquity.
Even the scientific community could raise hated objections. Immortals, some would argue, could represent an affront to and the end of evolution. Yet this also is nothing new. The brutal sieve of natural selection is something we spite every time we take medicine or buy glasses for nearsighted children. We don't surrender to nature. We fight back.
Ah... but what happens to our creative and social evolution? Will immortal nations enter a state of torpor, devitalized by a lack of ambition and innovation? Will artists find all the muses dead? Or will limitless horizons be seized with new force and passion? Will a poet's lament not be over death but, like the ageless elves in the Lord of the Rings, be over the vastness of eternity?
There is no such thing as not dying,” the philosopher Yang-tsze once told a student. When the student then asked if it was wise to try and extend one's lifespan as much as possible, Yang-tsze replied, “One hundred years is more than enough. Why would I wish to protract the pain of living through a longer life?”
It's a somber but valid point even now. Life isn't always pleasant. If eighty years is difficult to cope with, how would Brent Jones handle eight hundred? When he's scrambling to pay bills or succeed in love while the newscasts show him the latest wars, disease, and human cruelty, does there ever reach a point when he decides to cancel his dose of eternity? Or do he and his society crumple into apathy? In Anne Rice's vampire novels, the immortal bloodsuckers have a habit of getting stuck in their old ways of life. The result is a decadent community that never changes. Progress is arrested. Dreams are replaced by stale nostalgia.
It remains to be seen whether the naked ape who dreamed of forever and stands to harness it will survive. On the one hand, we might perish like bacteria in a petri dish. On the other, an undying race might achieve a perennial Golden Age even the most inspired Greek poet dared not imagine.
Either way, the immortals are most likely coming. "Everything fears time," an Arabic expression goes, "but time fears the pyramids." One day we might add, "and the people who built them." There may be people alive right now who could live to see endless sunrises. Dreaming of this reality for so long, humanity won't back away when the creeping dawn of attainment can already be seen brightening the horizon.
How we deal with it will be up to us.
Copyright 2007 Brian Trent
(A lengthier version of this article appeared in the May/June 2004 issue of The Humanist)
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