Three Score and Ten
The immortality threat.
August 20, 2003, 8:00 a.m.
By John Derbyshire (NRO Columnist)
photo credit: http://www.olimu.com/
James Boswell, during his London socializing, once found himself in the company of an aged peer of the realm. Never at a loss for a conversational opening, Boswell asked the old boy whether, looking back on his long life, he could see any pattern or purpose in it. No, replied His Lordship, it had all been "a chaos of nothing."
This came to mind when I read those news stories about recent advances in the understanding of aging, and hopes for dramatically extending human life. (For a sample of the stories, see here, here, and here.)
Now, in the first place, I am skeptical, not to say cynical, about science-news stories of this kind. My skepticism comes from having read too many of them over too many years. We have been on the point of conquering the aging process, to my certain recollection, since at least the 1960s; for about as long, in fact, as we have been on the point of generating affordable electric power via nuclear fusion. I can remember reading this stuff in the science magazines my high-school library subscribed to. Reading the same stories now, 40 years on, I can't help but smile in disbelief.
It's possible, of course, that this time there might be something to it. One of these researchers has quadrupled the lifespan of a nematode by altering a key gene. Hey! There are also a couple of different issues to be untangled here. There is, for instance, the Tithonus Option — that is, the possibility that all that can be prolonged is the decrepitude that every one of us sooner or later falls into if we live long enough. I doubt anybody really wants this. If we are going to live to be 150 years old, as some of these stories promise, we want it to be with joints, eyes, lungs, and brains in full working order.
And then there is the economics of it. Just look at how most people live. Some time in our late teens or early twenties we get a job. Probably it is a job for which our enthusiasm will soon fade, or which we never cared about much in the first place. We peg away at it for 40 years or so anyway, to bring in enough money to pay for things we do care about — our families, our hobbies, our retirement plans. Then we quit, and spend a few years gardening, or fishing, or hot-air ballooning, or just watching TV, reading spy fiction, and taking a cruise once in a while. Then we die. "A chaos of nothing," indeed. Now, if our lifespan is to go to 150, and in good health, how will it be filled? By working longer? How many of us want that? Most people work to live, they don't live to work. So then, instead of a 40-year working life followed by 20 or 30 years of retirement, we are to have a 40-year working life followed by 80 or 90 years of retirement? How on earth shall we pay for it? And in any case...90 years of fishing?
As you can probably tell by this point, I'm agin the whole thing. I don't want to live to 150, not even in good health. I believe, in fact, that the idea of prolonging life is awful in and of itself. Imagine a world full of old farts! You may say: Ah, yes, but they will have the bodies of 30-year-olds. Come on — that's the worst kind of old fart. Old-fart-hood is a state of mind, and no amount of fiddling with genes is going to change that.
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