- Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world.
But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon
extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why.
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- Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies,
so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful,
we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we
address many diseases today.
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- I claim that we are close to that point because of the
SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent
and cure ageing.
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- It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to
repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us
over time.
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- And each method to do this is either already working
in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies
that already exist and just need to be combined.
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- This means that all parts of the project should be fully
working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10
years to get them all working in humans.
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- When we get these therapies, we will no longer all get
frail and decrepit and dependent as we get older, and eventually succumb
to the innumerable ghastly progressive diseases of old age.
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- We will still die, of course - from crossing the road
carelessly, being bitten by snakes, catching a new flu variant etcetera
- but not in the drawn-out way in which most of us die at present.
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- So, will this happen in time for some people alive today?
Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable
to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage.
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- I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60
already.
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- It is very complicated, because ageing is. There are
seven major types of molecular and cellular damage that eventually become
bad for us - including cells being lost without replacement and mutations
in our chromosomes.
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- Each of these things is potentially fixable by technology
that either already exists or is in active development.
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- 'Youthful not frail'
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- The length of life will be much more variable than now,
when most people die at a narrow range of ages (65 to 90 or so), because
people won't be getting frailer as time passes.
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- The average age will be in the region of a few thousand
years. These numbers are guesses, of course, but they're guided by the
rate at which the young die these days.
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- If you are a reasonably risk-aware teenager today in
an affluent, non-violent neighbourhood, you have a risk of dying in the
next year of well under one in 1,000, which means that if you stayed that
way forever you would have a 50/50 chance of living to over 1,000.
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- And remember, none of that time would be lived in frailty
and debility and dependence - you would be youthful, both physically and
mentally, right up to the day you mis-time the speed of that oncoming lorry.
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- Should we cure ageing?
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- Curing ageing will change society in innumerable ways.
Some people are so scared of this that they think we should accept ageing
as it is.
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- I think that is diabolical - it says we should deny people
the right to life.
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- The right to choose to live or to die is the most fundamental
right there is; conversely, the duty to give others that opportunity to
the best of our ability is the most fundamental duty there is.
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- There is no difference between saving lives and extending
lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.
To say that we shouldn't cure ageing is ageism, saying that old people
are unworthy of medical care.
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- Playing God?
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- People also say we will get terribly bored but I say
we will have the resources to improve everyone's ability to get the most
out of life.
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- People with a good education and the time to use it never
get bored today and can't imagine ever running out of new things they'd
like to do.
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- And finally some people are worried that it would mean
playing God and going against nature. But it's unnatural for us to accept
the world as we find it.
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- Ever since we invented fire and the wheel, we've been
demonstrating both our ability and our inherent desire to fix things that
we don't like about ourselves and our environment.
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- We would be going against that most fundamental aspect
of what it is to be human if we decided that something so horrible as everyone
getting frail and decrepit and dependent was something we should live with
forever.
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- If changing our world is playing God, it is just one
more way in which God made us in His image.
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- - Aubrey de Grey leads the SENS project at Cambridge
University and also runs the Methuselah Mouse prize for extending age in
mice.
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- © BBC MMIV
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4003063.stm
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