One of the themes on Future Blogger and for fans of accelerating
change in general is life extension and the prospect of relative
immortality. 
We covered this topic in our very first interview with
Aubrey de Grey and Dick
Pelletier has addressed it many times. One of the core
arguments in this debate is that, regardless of increasing life
expectancy rates, humans have an upper limit. This is probably best
categorized as the Hayflick
limit argument . That there is a maximum number of years that a
human can live and if nothing gets to you before reaching that
threshhold, when you do, that’s it – it’s over. That limit is about
120 years of age, with the oldest documented lifespan being the 122
attained by Jean Calumet
Increases in life expectancy are ultimately discounted by this
assumption. In response to Jack Uldrich’s
recent piece on the prospect of living to 1000, John
Frink correctly points out that the radical increase in life
expectancy that developed societies have experienced over the last
170 years or so (roughly doubling) is largely due to advances in
health/medicine and hygiene. He cites the vast reduction in the
infant mortality rate as being of particular note. But that is more
reflective of initial gains and merely part of a larger trend at
work. (cont.)
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Well it’s official, Big Pharma is in the anti-aging game.
Yesterday’s news of GlaxoSmithKline buying anti-aging biotech
company Sirtris for a whopping 84% premium over the share price
marks the cloaked entry of big pharma into the anti-aging arena.
Of course they won’t or can’t admit that that is their goal –
they will say that is in service of treating age related diseases –
but this is the beginning of an inevitable trend that will result
in billions of dollars being poured into anti-aging research.
The FDA
does not consider aging a disease that requires treatment. This
has stemmed the flow of capital into this area and what has come in
has always been (and continues to be) under the very real guise of
treating diabetes, metabolic disorders and other diseases
associated with aging. This is about to change.
The demographic bubble of aging Baby boomers combined with a
growing class of seniors ahead of them already benefitting from
life expectancy rates that continue to approach the magical
threshold of one year of gain for every year that transpires
(Ronald Bailey
quotes Ray Kurzweil as putting the current number at three months
per year), will lead to an explosion of investment into this area.
(cont.)
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By Dick Pelletier
Imagine playing basketball at age 200 with your
great-great-great grandchildren, or flying a spaceship to
Alpha Centauri in
the next millennium. If life extension scientists achieve their
goals, regardless of age, your “rejuvenated” body of the future
will always remain in perfect health, allowing you to experience
the many wonders predicted for this century and beyond. 
A growing number of researchers from around the world believe
that eternal health and youth will soon be realized. Aging is a
destructive biochemical event, scientists say, and we are on the
brink of understanding its life-destroying processes.
In a 60 Minutes interview, anti-aging guru Aubrey de Grey
said that science will soon develop the means to create indefinite
lifespans. “First generation therapies will give us maybe thirty
extra years of healthy living,” de Grey said; “new therapies will
then add another thirty years; always keeping us one step ahead of
the grim reaper.”
Futurist Ray Kurzweil, in a
recent C-Span2 broadcast confirmed that we are in early stages of
profound revolutions in anti-aging technologies. “Soon,” Kurzweil
says, “biotech upgrades will add more than one year of life
expectancy to our lives each year.”
British Telecom’s Ian Pearson makes an
even bolder prediction. This futurologist believes that advances in
the next three decades will be sufficient for us to make a
realistic stab at ending death. “Unless one is unfortunate enough
to die from accident or disease, many alive today have a good
chance of not dying at all,” Pearson says. (cont.)
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