live a Thousand Years

Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis

Aubrey de Grey passionately presents his ideas on anti-aging during a TED Talk, highlighting his distinctive vision.

I recently watched a TED talk by a British bio-gerontologist and computer scientist, Aubrey de Grey. (TED.com is a nonprofit international website devoted to spreading ideas, in the form of short, powerful talks.)  I’m oversimplifying, but de Grey says that aging, like a disease, can be cured; that it is essentially a set of accumulating molecular transformations, caused by metabolism, that eventually lead to pathology and death. Therefore, it could be approached “as an engineering problem”: identify all the components that cause tissues to age and design remedies for each of them.  He projects that there is a child born today that will live to be 150 and that in the next two generations we could extend life expectancy to 1000 years!  Some of his peers are taking his theories seriously, and others say he is a quack. 

Food for thought…what would it mean if people could live 1000 years?  Notwithstanding Methuselah’s record, when humans were busy populating the earth, the prospect of the millennial life would eliminate, among other things, the need for obstetric wards.  Families could have 2.5 children every 1000 years! On a more serious note, what would be the advantage of living longer?  What is the business of life about anyway?  Is life about staying alive, or is it about living a meaningful life of love and compassion?  Researchers tell us that older people become more satisfied as they grow older. It is the Elders and Sages who finally grasp the meaning of life.  Having a “perceived time limit” presses us to address what is important in life.  Ask anyone who has faced a traumatic illness or loss; they quickly learn what is important!  If you could, would you choose to live for 1000 years?  Let me know what you think.