PerspectivesAre you interested in submitting a Perspective Article? Be sure to read The Science Advisory Board's Editorial Guides for Perspective Articles. Click here. The Future of Human Health and Longevity by Leonid A. Gavrilov, Ph.D.  Did you ever wonder how long will you be around and able to enjoy life? Or are you assuming that this question is irrelevant because you are not old? What do you think about the promise of forthcoming life extension offered by some scientists? Or perhaps you have more trust in an advanced discount-offer from your local funeral director? Well, we may not know for certain what will be the future of human health and longevity, but we cannot avoid making assumptions about it. This is because our life today depends on how we envision our future. Yes, this is true because our everyday life, including our savings, taxes, insurance premiums, retirement age, pension size, and many other things are supposed to be balanced with actuarial forecasts of lifespan and health. Of course it is possible to ignore all these boring, troubling and potentially unpleasant questions, as many people do, particularly when they are young. In such a case, however, any decision, including an apparent lack of a decision is likely to be a foolish one with potentially painful consequences. Unwise decisions are particularly painful when they are made not just at individual level, but in a mass scale by the government. We all know that millions of “baby boomers” will begin to retire soon. We also know that the social support systems (including Social Security) are merely “transfer systems,” which means that the needs of older and/or sick people are paid for using incoming tax revenues taken from currently working people. This taxable workforce is shrinking precipitously now because of population aging--so what should we do? Well, it is easier to say what we should not do. We should not send the young generation to risk their health and lives in unnecessary wars, because they will be badly needed at home to fill in the jobs, which will be left by baby boomers soon. We also should not squander resources for expensive wars of choice, creating an unprecedented budget deficit, because these moneys are earned by baby boomers, and they will need them back very badly and fairly soon. Now some demographers predict that human lifespan will not increase much further in this century, and it may even start to decline. The health of our working generation in the United States is already declining – disability rates are increasing for all adults below age 60. Obesity, diabetes and asthma are on the rise, and this could destroy hopes that people will be healthier in the future. The drop in lifespan has happened in some African countries because of HIV/AIDS and in Russia because of mismanaged reforms. The United States is not immune from this threat, if the retiring baby boomers find themselves robbed of their hopes for decent pensions, being impoverished and neglected. Another growing threat to human life today is a pandemic of infectious diseases. The spread of epidemics depends critically on the proportion of vulnerable people with compromised immune system, who become disease vectors. This proportion of potential disease vectors is rising dramatically now because of population aging, HIV/AIDS epidemic, immunosuppressive drugs used during organ transplantation, and immunosuppressive effects of cancer therapies. The human population is becoming like a dense forest with a lot of dry wood ready to burn. Our global air transportation system aggravates this situation because it can facilitate the dissemination of almost instantly (as it became apparent in the case of our recent SARS epidemic). Future infections are likely to be resistant to treatment, because of global and long-term use of antibiotics. Do We Have Any Hope for a Better Future? Yes, We Do! Pessimistic forecasts are usually flawed because of one hidden assumption. This is an assumption that tomorrow will be more or less similar to what we have today. This, of course, is a reasonable assumption in the short term, but it is fundamentally flawed when applied to the progress in human knowledge and technology. Human technological power is increasing in an explosive, exponential manner. And there is a good mathematical reason for this: new knowledge and technology are obtained on the basis of already accumulated technological power, which itself grows over time. So, basically we have a simple differential equation for technological progress, which predicts an accelerated exponential pace for human technological empowerment. So, pessimistic forecasts are valid to the extent one believes in stagnation and a human inability to do new and worthwhile things. For centuries, people only knew about horses as a means for transportation, candles for light, or woods for heating. Visionaries speculating about future cars and aircraft, electricity or nuclear power would be considered by our ancestors as irresponsible chatterers, on the fringe at best. Now a new generation of visionaries is coming with futurists who believe that it will be possible to maintain human health at high, youthful level for many extra decades by employing new methods of Anti-Aging Medicine, and even through new methods of rejuvenation. A year ago an international team of researchers (i.e., several hundred scientists including myself) met at the Cambridge University in England at the scientific Congress entitled, "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence: Reasons Why Genuine Control of Aging may be Foreseeable." Detailed proceedings of this meeting (110 articles, 597 pages) has been published recently in scientific journal The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2004, vol. 1019 (available online at http://www.annalsnyas.org/content/vol1019/issue1/). So, what is the bottom line from this meeting? Many scientists now believe that, for the first time in human history, we have come close to understanding the nature of human aging and possible ways to defeat it. One of these scientists is a biologist and a computer expert, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, from Cambridge University, who organized this anti-aging scientific Congress and publication of its proceedings. He is now advocating for the establishment of a new special Institute of Biomedical Gerontology in order to take control of aging, and a story discussing his efforts has been published recently in the June 2004 issue of the "Fortune" (Europe) Magazine with the title: “The End of Aging: Aubrey de Grey Would Have You Live a Really, Really, Really, Really Long Time” (available online at http://www.methuselahmouse.org/MFBoard/cache/FortuneArticle1.htm ). The idea of engineered negligible senescence assumes that human body is not a perfect creation of God, but rather a failure-prone mechanism that was formed over the stochastic process of biological evolution. This mechanism can be further improved (i.e., through genetic engineering) and have a better maintenance through preventive, regenerative and anti-aging medicine following the repair and replacement of worn-out body parts. As a result of this approach, the rate of senescence (i.e., falling apart) could be decreased, hopefully to negligible level. A new scientific peer-reviewed journal "Rejuvenation Research" has been established to promote these studies and the first issues of this journal have been already published this year (it’s available online at http://www.liebertpub.com/eboard.aspx?pub_id=127). Of course it is not difficult to mock or make fun of these enthusiasts looking for the Fountain of Youth. Still, I believe they deserve a fair chance to try, since their efforts could dramatically improve the future of human health and longevity. We all can benefit, if they succeed! ### "Interested in discussing this topic? Visit our Discussion Forum Dr. Leonid Gavrilov is one of the world's leading experts in longevity studies, and the author of a well-respected scientific book, "The Biology of Life Span" (1991), listed in the Encyclopedia Britannica as a recommended reference. He has Ph.D. in genetics and M. Sc. in chemistry, both from the Moscow State University, Russia. Dr. Gavrilov is the founder of a new reliability theory of aging and longevity. Leonid Gavrilov is a Principal Investigator of the scientific project "Biodemography of Human Longevity", funded by the National Institute on Aging (USA), and the author of over a hundred of scientific publications on related topic. Dr. Gavrilov is the Associate Editor of scientific journals "Experimental Gerontology" and "Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling." He is also an Editorial Board member of scientific journals "Rejuvenation Research", "The Scientific World Journal" and "Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine." Leonid Gavrilov is a referee for over 20 scientific journals on aging and longevity studies including AGE (Journal of the American Aging Association), Annals of Human Genetics, Biogerontology, Biology Letters (Royal Society), BioMed Central, Demography, European Journal of Population, Experimental Gerontology, Genus, International Journal of Epidemiology, Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, Journal of Gerontology, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Mathematical Population Studies, Population, Population and Development Review, Rejuvenation Research, Social Biology, Sociological Methodology, The Scientific World Journal. He is also an Expert for the National Institute on Aging (USA), the National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Dr. Gavrilov has been a keynote speaker at several conferences including the International Conference on Longevity (Sydney, Australia, 2004). He gives invited scientific lectures worldwide: England, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Russia, and of course in the United States (including invited presentations at the National Institute on Aging, NIH). Dr. Gavrilov is a member of the Gerontological Society of America, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Population Association of America, and the Science Advisory Board (Steering Committee). To read more about Dr. Gavrilov please visit his Science Advisory Board Profile Brief Biosketch Curricula Vitae Expertise Profile ### << Previous Next >> [ View All Perspectives ] |
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