Humans have it pretty good these days. Our offspring and theirs will have it even better still. Our life expectancy is hovering around the eighty year mark on average for a developed nation and it is heading upwards. The longer we can remain above ground, the better the odds are that we will be walking about for a longer period of time on that same ground. It reminds me of walking along a side walk as the next section of concrete is set in front of us and we continue walking – there seems to be just enough new side walk to keep us moving forward.
As remarkable as the changes have been in the last hundred years or so, a period of time we have added a number of decades of longevity to our life expectancy, as a species we have not changed in any significant way. We certainly are not making great strides in evolution. The reason for this increase in life span is that our life conditions have improved, dramatically. Take the simple field mouse; it has a life expectancy of about one year in a feral environment. Take that same mouse and put him in a controlled space with everything it needs and it should last about three years.
Humans have had it pretty good in the last half a century especially, factory farms pumping out our groceries to modern supermarkets, Water purification pumping stations and sewer treatment facilities, central heating and air conditioning, not to mention medical resources like antibiotics for infection. A simple wound could have killed an unlucky person 100 years ago from infection and gangrene. We are living our life the same way that fat and happy mouse is. Where once our ancestors struggled only a few centuries ago to make it too middle age, we have increased that life span nearly three times.
Longevity is under intense scrutiny, being researched and investigated by the brightest minds in the science and medical research communities, scholars and theorists abound in the field of senescence. Only several decades prior to today, there were few biologists willing to make a career out of longevity research. It was not an exciting opportunity and had lost its luster after many centuries of study from the academics and intellectuals from various cultures like the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Babylonians. Societies in the Far East also gave it their all to find the secret to immortality as did many European cultures; all to no avail.
These days it is entirely different. Longevity is a hot science and rapidly gaining both in popularity and significance. It is also being pulled into a whirlwind of confusion and perhaps even some misdirection; too many Generals and not enough non-comms! That in itself makes it exciting and vibrant. There is much new and younger blood in the field of longevity bringing with it fresh debate and billions of dollars. Post graduate students are scrambling to get into the longevity game. It reaches into many areas of bioscience, medicine and technology. The field is vast indeed.
Professionals in this field of longevity refer to themselves as gerontologists, rooted from geron which in Greek means “old man”, that in fact is a slightly misleading description of a profession with such a broad syllabus. Aging can be a cruel part of life and caring for the elderly, when they are in such an obvious decline is indeed part of the job description, but it transcends these final years of life. It is important that gerontologists understand the human life span from beginning to end. Medical specialties range from pediatrics for children to geriatrics for the old. Gerontologists endeavor to learn why our physiology changes when we age from our youth to old age, how it occurs and why we have to die period. Where longevity is concerned the issues are immense since to truly appreciate the problems and to be able to overcome any of them, there are certain significant obstacles to figure out.
It is necessary to learn why we are mortal in the first place and why we perish? Why is it that we gradually age in a steady progressive process toward death? When does this process actually begin; at what age does our decline start and where exactly does this decline originate? Is it a cellular issue or do our vital organs stop responding to one another or maybe they listen very closely to each other conspiring in the process of our mortality. Understanding what aging really is all about is the most noteworthy of all biological questions. Answering this question makes explaining our human awareness simple; at least we understand what part of the anatomy is responsible for it.
Since gerontologists have begun to score some victories and mortality is given more clarity, states of near inconceivable exhilaration surrounds the business; and make no mistake, it is a business with billions invested. So far the oldest individual on record has reached one hundred twenty years old, perhaps even more but faulty record keeping means anyone claiming to be older would be speculative at best. Frustratingly, even those people who reach super centenarian status seem to top out at a particular age with many in the extended life community all but accepting this as the end of the frontier, so to speak. There is fervent hope however that with their research, many more of us will attain this benchmark while easing much of that aforementioned cruelty while they are at it.
What the science of aging and longevity requires is some kind of major breakthrough. Gerontologists collectively agree that the chances of moving past our present life expectancy or moving beyond our highest life span will necessitate a more thorough knowledge of the origins of mortality. They must learn what causes aging and how they can alter its advance before another meaningful spike will appear in the life spans of humans. The bad news is many of these longevity experts do not foresee this occurring in their own natural lives.
There is one well regarded, if not conservative sector of this profession who have made the proposal that our ambition ought to be the addition of seven healthy years to the current human life span. Some of the more eager members of the profession believe that this figure is too low and we should strive to achieve a good deal more. Now we are talking in biblical time spans since it was written that Moses lived to age one hundred twenty, Just a kid compared to Noah, who it is said lived to nine hundred fifty years old; outdone by a mere nineteen years by the bible’s supergenerian, Methuselah, at nine hundred sixty nine years young-ish.
Renowned gerontologist and Cambridge scholar, Aubrey de Grey, believes there should be no restriction. He is certain that we could add to our life span by two or three times as much while continuing to add to it exponentially. Imagine designing a life span that is made to order, even immortality if that was our wish. This line of thought concerning life extension is not the popular theory by any means. That does not really matter too much within this community, where trying to reach a consensus these days is akin to herding cats.
There is so much disagreement within the ranks of gerontologists on many obvious issues such as a standardized method of measuring senescence or even an exact definition of aging for that matter. Even more absurd, since the ball is being carried for the most part by American and British experts, a proper spelling of their main science cannot even be agreed upon – is it spelled aging or ageing?
Heated debate continues over the correct description of the terms – health, longevity, life span, life expectancy, maximum life span and yet the vastness of the basic question continues to fuel imagination and expectations. Urgency though, should trump personalities and egos because as aging reaches critical-mass while the fiddles play, the risk is investors could lose their patience.
Fri, Jun 25, 2010
Anti Aging Theories, Gerontology, Immortality, Longevity