In 2000, Steven Austad, a biologist, made a provocative claim: “The first 150-year-old person is probably alive right now.”
It was a bold proclamation, but Dr. Austad, who studies aging at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, was (and remains) optimistic that science will find new ways to extend life. It’s a confidence shared by a seemingly endless stream of influencers and futurists, some of whom make even wilder predictions. Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and the founder of the SENS Research Foundation, claims that there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that a 40-year-old living today will never die of old age.
But how realistic are these tales of impending longevity? How far can we really extend the human life span?
…
Several drugs that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration have also shown hints they might slow aging-related processes, like inflammation. Studies are underway to test three diabetes drugs for longevity benefits — metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1s.
XPRIZE Healthspan is also funding work on drugs that affect metabolism, inflammation, tissue repair and neural protection. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is similarly backing research on biomarkers and protocols for testing anti-aging therapies.
So will we ever halt aging?
Exciting as this is, much of this longevity work focuses on health span — helping people to live more healthily into their 80s, 90s and even 100s — rather than extending the human life span. Researchers continue to debate how possible that will be in the future. The problem is that their answers are often hypothetical and impossible to prove.
“If somebody says they have something that’s going to make you live 50 years longer, then you have to wait 50 years to find out whether or not it’s actually true,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago.
In the end, aging is unlikely to be halted through any single breakthrough.
“There’s not just one way that people age, it’s a bunch of systems all stacking on top of each other,” said Coleen Murphy, director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. “If you cure one, there’s always going to be some next one,” she said.
Kidney, heart and knee replacements have become routine, for example, and it’s possible we’ll get better at swapping out other aging human parts, like bones or muscles. But there are limits to what cells and organs we can keep repairing.
“Some cells can’t replace themselves,” Dr. Murphy said, giving as examples most muscle and brain cells.
Read the full article: Will Anyone Actually Ever Live to 200? (NY Times)