Interview with Aubrey de Grey
By Simone Achermann
Before humans will be able to extract themselves and put themselves into a machine, they will be able to become as old as they want in their own biological bodies. At least, this is the opinion of Aubrey de Grey, founder of SENS Research Foundation, which specialises in scientific research concerning postponing age-associated diseases. In our interview he explains why longevity is just a side-effect of health and what people will do with their lives when they become 1000 years old.
How old will we become in the future? And when will scientific progress enable us to postpone ageing?
The key breakthrough will be when we reach what I’ve called longevity escape velocity. That’s the point where, even if we have only added a few decades to longevity so far, we will be adding additional time faster than time is passing. When we reach that point, there will no longer be any limit on how long someone can live, so long as they avoid causes of death that are unrelated to age. I think we have a 50% chance of getting to that point within 20-25 years, just so long as the early-stage research is necessary to get people to believe it’s possible is well funded for the next 5-10 years.
So we will no longer die?
Eventually, yes. This is the rate at which the comprehensiveness of damage repair therapies needs to be improved, following the development of “first-generation” damage repair, in order to keep damage levels below the pathogenic level as people get older. The first-generation therapies, which SENS Research Foundation is working on today, are likely to postpone the ill-health of old age by 30 years or so. During those 30 years, we will need to make improvements to SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) in order to be able to “re-rejuvenate” the same people when they get back to the biological age that they were when they received the first therapies. If we can do that - which I’m virtually certain we will be able to - we will be at longevity escape velocity.
Until recently the focus in prolonging life was on medical and biological progresses. Now it is shifting towards algorithms with which we should be able to make life longer: What do you think about this?
I don’t think what you say is true. The focus is the same as it has always been: to keep people healthy with increasingly powerful medicine. We are not working on longevity, actually - that’s only a side-effect of health.
In the South African film ‘Chapie’ immortality will be reached through extracting the human soul/self through algorithms and inserting it into a machine. Will we need the human body for the goal of human immortality?
That idea, which is normally called “uploading”, is not as crazy as it sounds at first - it may be possible, and some of the ideas for doing it do not have big philosophical ramifications, for instance concerning whether the uploaded person is still the same person. But it is really, really difficult, so I think we will probably achieve longevity escape velocity using normal medicine first, and then there will be not much motivation to develop uploading - especially if by then we also have very powerful artificial intelligence to keep us safe.
Why do we want to prolong our lives – knowing that it is accompanied with less life quality and more dependence?
Today, we can’t control ageing, neither can we extend life. In the future, as we will be able to maintain youthful levels of health, the longevity side-effect will not be accompanied with less quality of life and more dependence.
Is a long life or even immortality attractive? Or is it rather boring as everything is repeating itself?
Speak for yourself. I have at least 1000 years of backlog already. Seriously - the problem of boredom exists already, and it comes from poor education, not from long life.
Besides the common wish to extend our life span there is a new countertrend: more and more people prefer to die early, to decide when they want to die (increasing suicide at old age, registration at euthanasia institutes, etc.) and to celebrate their death as something positive. What do you think about this? Will we also «design» and plan our death when we have seen enough of the world?
This, again, is a consequence of our inability to prevent the decline in physical and mental function that occurs as we get older. Once we have that ability, people who want to die early will be considered suicidal, however long ago they were born, and we will make the same effort to change their minds as we do for suicidal young people.
What would a world of very old or even immortal people look like? And how would such a society work?
There are lots of implications, and it’s very hard to predict how we will address them, not least because so many other advances will be made in other technologies (such as renewable energy) that will help to solve problems such as depletion of natural resources. But the thing is, anyone who even asks these questions is just missing the point - they are ignoring how huge the problem we have today is - the problem of ageing, which kills over 100,000 people every day, mostly after a long period of ill health and misery.
What will be the impact on the economy? Will it lead to more productivity or to more jobless people?
To more productivity, obviously, because seriously sick people are not productive and there will hardly be any sick people. But the whole concept of a job is probably going to change completely before the arrival of these therapies, because of increasing automation.
Which businesses will profit from the ageing society, which will be at risk? Where would you invest money today?
The anti-ageing industry today is huge, even though it’s based on products that essentially don’t work. When it is based on things that do work, it will be by far the biggest industry that the world has ever seen. So, obviously, invest in biomedical research!
What is your advice for people to reach very old age: five tips?
That depends how old you are, so my first tip is not to think in terms of yourself in the first place, but to think in humanitarian terms - in terms of saving lives, whether or not they include your own. Other than that: eat a balanced diet, don’t smoke, don’t get overweight, and do everything you can to hasten the research that will give everyone a long and completely healthy life (financial support, biology research, and above all advocacy).
For you personally: what would be great about becoming 120 years old or older? What would you dislike? And: how old do you think you will become?
I don’t think about the long term very much - I need to get us there first. I don’t know whether I will live long enough to benefit from these therapies, but whether I do or not, I am saving lives every day by bringing those therapies closer. Everyone should be doing that.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK and Mountain View, California, USA. He is founder and currently the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, which aims at preventing age-related physical and cognitive decline. He received his BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000 respectively, with his original field being in computer science. De Grey is an international adjunct professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the American Aging Association and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
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