Shattering the inevitability myth of senescence
Ask yourself this: why do you think of senescence (the process of deterioration resulting in becoming elderly, and eventually, dying of it) as inevitable? I ask why, not if, because universally nearly everyone seems to have simply accepted it without question. Yes, it may be true that death due to old age has been inevitable for all of human history, but then again, until very recently, so was the possibility of death due to other sorts of diseases (polio, the bubonic plague, etc.). Yet science has continued marching on at an exponential pace, achieving breakthroughs so groundbreaking and revolutionary that we couldn’t even dream of them just decades prior. Thus, it is inevitable that the inevitability of old age itself will be overridden.
Old age is the number one cause of human death in western societies. It manifests itself in all sorts of different forms — heart disease, organ failure, weakening bones and muscles leading to increasingly prevalent and dangerous accidents, etc. We have been doing some research on the problem, and we have some intriguing leads on one of the possible causes of senescence (shortening telomeres after each cellular division) and some possible ideas on how to delay it (reduced calorie diets, probably mimmickable using drugs without the constant hunger). Yet we aren’t putting nearly the same effort into curing old age as we are into all sorts of lesser diseases that don’t kill anywhere near the same number of people. This point is made very elegantly in the form of a parable called The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant; I highly recommend that you read it.
The only reason that we aren’t putting more effort towards curing old age is because all too many people think it is inevitable. They see it as part of being human, something to be accepted rather than overcome. Religion arguably exists to get people to accept that their time on Earth will come to an end, spinning all sorts of fairy tales in the process about infinite, perfect afterlives in heaven or reincarnation. But why look for consolation in myths when we can get rid of the reason for the creation of those myths in the first place? Death is bad; it kills people, and those who depart are sorely missed by the many who are still living. Don’t over think it; death is bad, thus solving the number one cause of death is good.
Imagine how much better the world would be if people didn’t suffer from old age. Instead of growing old and eventually becoming useless, you would simply continue being yourself, extending your productive life for decades, if not centuries. You could forget those ever-present fears in modern society of becoming unable to do things you once enjoyed, and becoming a drag on your loved ones. Is this not a worthwhile goal?
The only possible objection anyone could have to this plan is a concern over overpopulation. But consider that many western societies are already below replacement rates; having people live longer might actually be the only thing that would keep them from collapsing. And once lifespans are measured in centuries rather than decades, birth rates will go down. If you have centuries of fertile adulthood ahead of you, what’s the rush in having kids now? And don’t go assuming that all the humans that there ever will be will all have to be crammed onto just this one planet. We are eventually going to spread to the stars and beyond, so being able to live productive lives stretching across many centuries will be exactly what we need.
The next time that someone tries to claim that senescence is inevitable, that it is part of the human condition and not something to be overcome, gently tell them that they are wrong. The more minds that we educate, the more consciousnesses that we raise, the closer we will become to curing the worst plague ever to afflict humanity. And the stakes are depressingly urgent: for each further year that we dally and do not focus our full attention on the problem, millions more people will unnecessarily die.
January 20th, 2008 at 18:02
Having discussed this topic with other people in the past I’ve found some pretty good points that I end up making in most discussions of the subject.
Some people argue that we need youth to break the status-quo. That if we know we could live for a very long time we will take fewer risks… I think there may be some merit to these points, but substantially prolonging of life doesn’t mean there is no more room for youth, or no more reasons to take risks. Besides that our species has adapted to many changes and challenges, … living a long time hardly seems like the worst.
Death by old age might, in fact, turn out to be good. But even if we discover that it was good, it remains hard to argue that it should be entirely outside of our control. If we were to somehow eliminate death by old age but still decided needed it we could implement a compulsory age of death, like in logan’s run. It sounds horrific, but if you think about it some I think you will agree with me that it could be no worse than our current practice of allowing people to age-to-death and it is a more honest approach.
Modern medical science has actually done very little to increase our lifespans. People often throw about numbers indicating fantastic improvements in life expectancy, but these are always expectancy from birth. This graph tells a more complete and more disappointing story.
I can’t find a graph of it, but the life expectancies of the *oldest *people have changed even less over time. I think that really puts all the healthy lifestyle crazes into perspective. While living healthy *will* impact your life expectancy and quality of life, the improvement between a typical lifestyle and a very healthy one are not that substantial and do not justify the huge amount of time and money which are sunk by people into those sorts of programs. The money would be better spent on figuring out how to extend people’s lifespans.
Anti-aging science is pretty hard, or it will become hard quickly once we’ve bothered to solve the low hanging fruit. Aging occurs slowly and it can be hard to separate it from beneficial processes. It’s quite likely that as we solve some aging related issues we will discover that the next set are exponentially harder. Say we solve the cell death clock, genetic deteriorations (and the resulting cancers), buildups of arterial plaques, and the most common neurodegenerative disorders.. perhaps then people will comfortably live to 150 years old, but then gradually go insane because evolution never selected for a mind that lasts that long.
But even slight improvements, so long as they are increases in the amount of time we spend healthy, would be of enormous benefit, far more so than the treatment of many serious diseases especially since many of them could be avoided by a dampening of the aging process.
January 20th, 2008 at 19:26
Ich bin ein Singulatarian.
Have you read Cory Doctorow’s work, especially Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom? It’s mostly an exploration of human nature, once the problems of material and lifespan scarcity have been solved. Everything’s not perfect, of course, but it’s one of the more convincing arguments I’ve seen for research in this area.
January 22nd, 2008 at 04:45
I agree that there is almost a taboo against immortality—it’s usually achieved at the cost of something bad, and ultimately fails, in science fiction.
But that being said, I think you’re treating this a little one-sided. First of all, I think overpopulation is a huge problem, and underlies many of the problems facing the environment, including global warming. I wouldn’t mind seeing a third to a sixth of our current population. Even if we eventually develop the ability to establish off-world colonies (and I really hope we do), we’re going to do a lot of damage to the environment, not to mention experience a lot of suffering for scare resources, in the time we’re all crammed together on Earth.
There’s also the issue that Gregory Maxwell brought up. In Isaac Asimov’s Robot series, he deals with the Spacers, those of have colonized other worlds. They’ve also used genetic engineering to increase their lifespan to around 3 or 4 centuries, and in the novels, the dragging out of their lives greatly affected the pace of innovation on their worlds. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, man’s mortality is his gift, rather than lingering forever like the elves.
Of course, these writers and I could all be falling into the very trap you describe. I just feel, though, as part of a broader principle, that change, while difficult, is ultimately good.
January 22nd, 2008 at 14:44
Overpopulation is only a problem because there’s currently so much of a pressure to have children. But with unlimited lifespans, society will be much more stable — fewer people exciting means fewer people entering. Just look at the trend with developed nations such as Italy and Japan, which have negative population growth rates (not including immigration). The lower birth rates are caused by people living longer and decreased societal pressure on having children, which of course will only grow into a stronger force when humans live for centuries.
Even assuming if longer lives did lead to less innovation (a stance which I have some qualms about, because there’s something to be said for synthesis of large bodies of knowledge), who are you to make the choice of picking innovation over billions of lives saved? The pace of innovation beyond really long lives really only matters if we are facing extraterrestrial competition. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be better to reach Awesome Technology X in 1,000 rather than 750 years if many fewer billions of people die along the way?