HAPPY 150TH! SOME SCIENTISTS THINK IT'S POSSIBLE, OTHERS SAY IT'S BUNK
By Michael Lasalandra
Boston Herald
http://www.smalltime...ocument_id=6508
Aug. 19, 2003 - Some researchers say the day will come when most people will live to be 100 or 150, thanks to a stream of promising medical technologies, including microscopic robots that may enter the bloodstream and eat up cancer cells or deliver drugs to precisely the right spot.
"Every year, life expectancy ratchets up a couple of months," said Dr. Ronald Klatz, president and founder of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine.
In 1900, the average life span was 47. Today, it's 77.
"Half of baby boomers alive today will see 100 and beyond," Klatz said.
One day, the average life span could hit 150 or 200, he insisted.
But others say such predictions are pie-in-the sky dreams that never will become reality.
"You really have to get a grip on reality," said Dr. Thomas Perls of Boston Medical Center, who studies the genetics of centenarians.
"Even if the diseases of aging were able to be cured, we'd still be left with a chassis that is rusting away. And what about the brain? Until we can do brain transplants I can't imagine getting the body to live much past 100."
But Klatz said stem-cell technology and advances in gene-based preventatives and treatments will pave the way for most people living to the century mark and more.
And a strategy that seeks to turn off a "genetic switch" to mimic the healthful effects of eating a near-starvation diet is also promising to keep us youthful.
More conventional advances in medicine, such as improved treatments for heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's, as well as new discoveries in prevention, also will help most of us get to a ripe old age, Klatz said.
The potential for stem cells is almost unlimited, he said.
"We can repair damaged heart tissue with stem cells," he said. "Researchers in Israel are already repairing spinal cords with stem cell technology. Stem cells have the potential to cure or treat dozens of diseases."
Just turning heart disease and cancer into chronic conditions rather than killers will add 13 years to the average lifespan, Klatz said.
"And that's just the beginning," he said.
Nanotechnology, which involves the creation of microscopic robots to do such things as flow through the bloodstream eating up cancer or other damaged cells, also promises to help conquer fatal diseases. Nanodevices may also be able to deliver drugs to cells that need to be destroyed or repaired.
"It sounds like science fiction, but today it is fact," Klatz said.
Steven Austad, a longevity researcher at the University of Idaho, is so confident that the human lifespan will increase dramatically that he bet a colleague $150 that someone born by 2000 will be alive in 2150.
Since neither he nor his colleague is likely to be alive at that time, the two scientists put their money in a bank to go to the winner's descendants.
By that time, they estimate the $300 will have grown to about $500 million.
