Interviews
Do we want to live so many years?? Advances in science to prolong human life under the gaze of three national awards
- March 15, 2024
- Publicado por: ACCDIS
- Category: ACCDiS in Media News
Illustration by Camila Cruz
According to some of the less optimistic predictions, It is very likely that the youngest population that exists today is alive, at least, 100 years. Maybe, 200... Maybe more. How long do we want to live? How much is enough? Three National Awards, one of Natural Sciences, another for History and another for Applied and Technological Sciences, They answer these questions and try to imagine a future with "super-elderly". Although the fictional exercise in the lives of the award-winning scientists and the historian leads to a background: The question is not how many years, but how. An eternal life but in precarious economic conditions or with some of your loved ones already deceased?
Some scientific predictions suggest that, In a few decades, It is not going to be strange that a woman at the age of 70 decides to rebuild her life "because she has half of her life ahead of her". Study another degree, Travel the world, Learn to play instruments, Remarrying, even having children. Or that 85 years from now, Whoever is reading this report today – in their thirties (or forty)–, You can tell your great-great-grandson 100 years younger, without forgetting any detail, As he climbs a hill, No knee pain, No glasses or hearing aids, How was the celebration of the new millennium. The Sensations, The Sounds, Odors. Or think that, If theScientific Advances would have arrived a little earlier, That father, That friend, That grandfather, That daughter or sister, He would not have died of that cardiac arrest that closed his eyes forever or of that cancer that chemo and radiotherapy could not exterminate.
"It's a natural process of living beings...", reflects the Chilean scientist and 2022 National Prize for Natural Sciences, Sergio Lavandero (64). "Some are born and die in a day, like dragonflies and there are animals that live longer... Death is always present in us, All the time our cells die. To live, Our cells have to die. For me, Death is a close process, We study it, I know as a living being that someday I'm going to die whole.".
From a cabin in the south of Chile, and through your computer's camera, Settles down to give the interview. Through the Screen, Shown in three graphs, side by side, the number of people in Chile in 1950, 2010 and a projection of 2050. 74 years ago, The population of boys and girls far outnumbered the older population; in 2010, It was young people and adults between the ages of 15 and 54 who contributed the highest density to the country's population; while, 26 years from now, A predominant population of people between the ages of 55 and 74 is expected. By that year, of all age and gender ranges, who are going to exist in greater numbers, will be women over the age of 79.
"When you read Romeo and Juliet, They were 14 or 15 years old. Life happened in very narrow periods of time, That you had to get married, Having children. Today, It doesn't occur to anyone to get married at 15. There are very big social changes.", The doctor in Biochemistry anticipates the other consequences of extending the duration of life. "In addition to aging, we have climate change and we have problems in Chile, and in other countries, of social coexistence".
Cardiovascular diseases, cancer, Obesity, Chronic Respiratory Diseases and Diabetes, These are the so-called "chronic non-communicable diseases". These are the main object of Sergio Lavandero's research, as well as the leading cause of death in the world. The first two alone are responsible for more than 60% of people. "There are eight risk factors: Three we can't control (still), because they are genetic, and five others that can delay the disease, depending on habits", explains. "But, to date, all are still incurable.", warns.
The factors are: whether the person smokes or not, How Much You Eat, How you eat, how much you exercise and how much sleep you get. The recommendation is to have healthy habits in each of them, affirms the National Award, But his emphasis is that it's no use living anymore, but better. By doing the exercise of thinking about scientific advances that have improved people's quality of life, He comes up with a dozen: glasses, Operations at a glance, Hearing aids for the deaf, Exoskeletons connected to the brains of people with spinal cord injury, and the connection of brains to computers offered by Neurolink, among others.
"I think the new generations that are being born are going to live easily 100 years", Says. "Today, We are discovering methods on how to regenerate tissues, We can create a pancreas in a mouse, Tissue engineering is a huge topic, we are regenerating cells that are dying...", Go on. "There are advances that we never dreamed of. They authorized genome editing for people who have sickle cell anemia and modified the gene that is defective. And your red blood cells are normal. We are testing the first vaccines for the treatment of cancer and to treat hypertension. We have scientific breakthroughs that are incredible.", concludes and stops. "The question we have to ask ourselves is who's going to have access to that.".
In the morning, Before you connect to this interview, Like every morning, Sergio Lavandero says he started reading the news: "I read in one that a married couple had an assisted death and they died hand in hand", account, referring toThe 93-year-old Dutch couple who underwent double euthanasia, due to the progressive deterioration of the state of health of both.
"If you could prolong your life, how much you would like, How old would you like to live? Would I live forever?
"I feel that when you did what you came to do, you fulfilled, that each one of us has a mission and I feel that I have already fulfilled what I wanted to come and do. The question you have to ask yourself is if you were missing something. Doing things with passion, I think that's something that... It's an energy that we have inside, In the soul, that allows things to be done that you couldn't explain otherwise. And he works hard.
Everything takes effort, It's not free, Falling many times in life, Learning from mistakes. We're Not Perfect. It's a continuous learning process that never ends, But it's helping you to serve. Personally, I think everyone has to define how much is enough. Forever, I, Personally, It would be very boring. Imagine being alone and not sharing with anyone else. Eternity is a very complex subject. The most important legacy you leave behind is the one you leave on other people. I feel that my legacy has been to train a generation of new scientists, And they're going to keep researching, May they have as their mission this task of healing these diseases. Ever dreamed that what was incurable, be curable now.
Life beyond 100 years: The "Super Elderly"
"There are two indisputable facts in this matter, in my opinion. One is the emergence of a new historical subject.", says Rafael Sagredo (62), professor and historian specialized in the history of Chile and America, and History of Science and Culture. Their contributions were rewarded, also, with the 2022 National History Prize. "What would these seniors be, Very old. They are an actor of our contemporaneity and inevitably, in my opinion, They're going to become actors in history. And we're going to have to make a story where they're included.".
In addition to protagonists, explains the National History Prize, Older people become new sources of it. "They are memory and all those memories are added up to become an input to make history, they are a source of experience.". Sagredo, explains that the story, Not so many years ago, He only talked about men and adults, for example. Then women were included, Children, girls and adolescents.
By doing the exercise of being able to meet a 500-year-old man who lived in his own flesh the main events of history, Sagredo widens his eyes and stretches out a smile. "A contemporary, isn't he?? From the facts that one studied. A contemporary of the time of the great Atlantic revolutions, from the French Revolution onwards", Let your imagination run wild. "If I knew a person who was in Chile in 1810, 20, 30... I'd like to ask you if you met Darwin, for example. What was it like? What were you interested in?? Things like that. I'm also interested in the history of private life, Ask him how he lived, What were the interests?, Feelings, What Family Relationships Were Like. These questions are always related to the topic you want to investigate.".
If we can make genetic modifications to prevent and treat deadly diseases, Progress in drugs to solve smoking, Poor diet and sleep habits, We create vaccines in record time, We provide solutions to spinal cord injuries, to mood disorders, dementia in old age and connect our minds to computers, as Elon Musk wants. Are we still human? Could we still call our existence "history"?? And, On the other hand, It also fits into the palette of possible scenarios, a dystopian one in which a person is punished by taking away their mortality, perhaps to bring them eternal suffering.
"I hope the story doesn't end", says the historian. "And that what we mean by humanity, Which is our ability to sift, To think, to express emotions. We are open to accepting all kinds of progress, Shift, In new ways, But I hope that what defines us as humanity is still present. So what, In my choice, It is given above all by this freedom of judgment, Acting, even in the midst of all the conditions in the world, Cultural, etc.".
By recalling historical breakthroughs whose paths diverge from the initial intentions of their forerunners, There are cases such as Darwin's theory of natural species in the book "Mein Kampf", Hitler's, becoming the so-called "social Darwinism" or that of Oppenheimer with the atomic bomb. "It's part of humanity, I'm not surprised. There he is, It doesn't mean I accept it. People say, You have to 'know history to avoid bad things happening again'. That doesn't happen, That's not true. Knowing the history doesn't prevent you from doing anything.", reflects. "But there are predictions that are fortunate. For giving you a story, The Founding Fathers in 1810 envisioned a republic of free people, They imagined a democracy. And here we are, Fortunately.", He laughs. "They gave us a legacy that Chileans try to make more real every day".
"If someone were to come along, No?, and offer you a vaccine or shot that will ensure a healthy life for the next 100 years, Would you accept it?
–Like this, spontaneously, The first thing that comes to mind with your question is that I wouldn't want to live 100 more years if I'm not going to live with those who are my affections, My loves,, my environment... It doesn't make sense to me.
What if they offer you 10 injections for those closest to you or if it's a more massive advance that is reaching everyone??
"You're part of something, of a community, and for me life has meaning in that context. If it's just with my family and loved ones, No. We are part of a country, of a community. I don't want to make that change all, Hopefully everyone can participate, It's a fiction that at this moment would be... I can't imagine it, The truth. I can imagine it, But to the extent that it is part of the evolution of humanity.
Eight hundred years before Christ, Homer already knew from the epics sung by the aedos in the streets of Greece, that death was a special quality. "The gods envy us because we are mortal and all our moments are unique and unrepeatable", was what Achilles said to Hector, by way of consolation after he begged for mercy, Just before I kill him. Four Centuries Later, Plato said that the exercise of the search for wisdom is, precisely, "Learning to Die".
The question is not how much, but how
Without going that far back, at the beginning of the last century, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung arrived at the same place: How We Chew and Digest Death. The Father of Analytical Psychology and Freud's Collaborator, He came to pathologize the absence of the fear of dying. However, He secured only a year and a half before doing it himself, in an interview with the BBC, that fearing him wasn't helpful either, since it only makes us die early. Although, The trend is (Not to not fear him, but) Not to think about her: "Life behaves as if it's going to go on. So I think it's better for older people to keep living, Let them wait for the next day to come as if they were going to live for centuries.", Jung told British presenter John Freeman in 1959.
"Is the big issue whether we're going to live longer or whether we're going to live better?”, part by saying the National Prize in Applied and Technological Sciences, Ricardo Araya (67). "It's very important to make that balance", Adds. He is the first psychiatrist to receive the award in that category and has spent most of his life studying, researching and generating models to treat mental health in the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the world. From his home in England, Take this interview to talk about longevity numbers, But the numbers hide much more and he knows it better than many.
"I'm an epidemiologist by training, But I'm not an expert in demography. Yes, I keep up to date with the trends in life expectancy.", says. Mortality figures are easily accessible, explains, But knowing how people live is a much more complex issue. "I imagine that, When you ask people in your report how much they want to live, They should tell you: 'It depends.'".
"I was talking very recently with a colleague, for another reason, of this and, The reality is that there is a biological limitation.", account. "There was a paper two or three years ago that came out in Nature, which is a very famous medical journal, It seems to me that the author was a Russian name. It's a pretty complicated article, But, well... They said: 'How much is the longest you could live?'. And they based this on a series of parameters of what the body's endurance capacity is, biological. And they came to the conclusion that more than 150 years is already impossible.".
For Araya, who is informed of the latest developments in science through the most trusted and influential medical and scientific journals at a global level, Certain controversial data arouse strangeness (and unbelief). The average life span of a population is nothing more than the sum of everyone's ages, Divided by all, So an increase in infant mortality greatly affects that number, Explain and exemplify. But when asked what he thinks of some predictions, Apparently scientific, Who say we'll live more than 100 or, even, 200 years, It's a little funny to him. "This thing about life expectancy, Just to make you a section, It has economic implications, Calculating Your Pension, for example. And many of the insurance companies say that you're going to live longer because that way they distribute more of your capital and, eventually, You die anyway and they keep a good part of it.", Distrusts.
Then, While he sees the record as these 150 years that body can endure, He sees it as difficult for anyone to achieve it in the short or medium term. "Maybe, Maybe it can at some point.", Admits. "I'm not going to see it, I'm sure. Maybe someone will make it to 150, But it's going to be an exception.". He thinks it's more likely that someone can freeze and that the scientific advances of the future can wake them up.
Ricardo Araya has worked on the ground for decades in the poorest countries in the Americas and Africa to provide affordable mental health treatment, with minimal resources. Wars, malnutrition and poverty, Not just death, but premature death in events that are not fortuitous. On the other hand, Elizabeth Parrish, for example, She is an entrepreneur dedicated to the longevity industry and invests millions of dollars in the pursuit of biological rejuvenation. According to The Economist, The Woman, currently, It has 52 chronological years and 21 biological years.
Does it make sense to you that the search for longevity with quality of life or anti-aging is a million-dollar industry??
–Resources are limited. There are a lot of resources that are available for something and if you give me both options: Would I try to get some people to reach 150 or would I put them to improve the quality of life and increase the years of people who live in places of scarce resources and high vulnerability? I have no doubt that I'm going for the second.
"How old would you like to be or how old would you like to be?"?
"I'm willing to sacrifice length for quality of life. And if I get to the average life span of Chileans with the quality of life I have now, 81 or 82 years old, I consider myself lucky. I have no interest in setting any records, I want you to live, with a good quality of life. That's my goal on a personal level.