Cheating death dream series#

That is the suspected mission of Altos Labs, a new Silicon Valley start-up that has pulled together a team of renowned scientists, including Horvath, to rage with renewed vigour against the dying of the light. The worldвЂ™s oldest recorded person, Jeanne Calment, died at 122 in 1997.ДЄ bigger prize, though, glitters unclaimed in the distance: radical life extension, promising human lifespans that potentially unspool over centuries rather than decades. That figure has been arrived at by extrapolating the risk of different diseases by age, or tracking the age-related rate of organ decline. Its approach, focused on combating neurodegenerative disease and cancer, is aimed at nudging us closer to the theoretical maximum human lifespan, estimated to be about 140-150 years. In 2013, Google set up a longevity research unit: Calico, an abbreviation of California Life Company, boasts tie-ups with pharmaceutical companies and institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).ДЇrench woman Jeanne Calment lived until 122, making her the longest-living human being. Is it possible to stay happily married to the same person for 200 years? If life extension therapy becomes routine, will refusal equate to suicide? Will a world that grows gradually older become trapped in stasis, lacking the fresh ideas of the young that characterise progress?

Leaving aside the issue of overpopulation, if people can survive for two, three or maybe many centuries, society faces profound questions. Others might contend that all healthcare is targeted at exactly that: delaying the final moment for as long as possible. вЂњBioconservativesвЂќ argue that it is morally wrong to postpone death by dramatically re-engineering the human body. People disagree over how long human life should be. The drive to extend our expiry date beyond the incremental is not purely a matter for biology it also has profound and potentially divisive social implications. Is it possible to stay happily married to the same person for 200 years? If human cells can be made young again, goes the logic, why must we age at all? The revision, essentially redefining advanced age as a disease, rams home the idea that вЂњhealthy ageingвЂќ is an oxymoron. The quest to make death optional - or at least meaningfully defer it beyond current norms - is no longer a fringe pursuit as it was when the Horvaths made their pledge, but a multibillion-dollar biotechnology endeavour attracting top scientists, including Nobel laureates.ДЄgeing even has its own code, MG2A, in the recently revised International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the bible of medicine.

Cheating death dream series#

The Horvath clock, a widely used biomarker of ageing, is one of a series of discoveries over the past two decades that are invigorating the science of life extension.Д«iologists have found ways of reprogramming old cells to make them young again, using these techniques to help restore sight to ageing mice one company is chasing longevity by rejuvenating the immune system, an intervention designed to fend off diseases such as COVID-19 that prey on older, weakened bodies. Steve stayed truest to the cause, developing a technique to measure the biological age of cells. Markus became a psychiatrist and JГ¶rg a researcher into artificial intelligence (AI). The breakthrough that will make death optional or at least defer it beyond current norms - is no longer a fringe pursuit. вЂњIвЂ™ve always felt that human life is too short,вЂќ says Steve, now 54 and a geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nearly 40 years ago, growing up in Germany, Steve Horvath, his twin brother Markus and their friend JГ¶rg Zimmerman pledged to dedicate their careers to extending human lifespans.

The three teenagers called it the Gilgamesh project, after the epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia in which the eponymous king searches for the secret of eternal life.