Hi everyone! In one of my recent posts, we looked at many different depictions of the technological future of humanity portrayed in some well-known sci-fi films. However, we should really look at current scientific trajectories, that are more likely to shape our medical, astronomical and technological future. Let's step into our "Time Capsule" and take a day trip - into the future!
But every day trip needs some planning! Here is our itinerary:
-00:08:00 - Reading the intro (we've done this already!)
-00:03:56 - Reading the itinerary (we're about to do this - why is this timestamp special?)
00:00:00 - Our trip begins! First Stop: The Anti-Aging Revolution.
02:00:00 - Cryostasis (for time travel intermission): A (very) silent reflection
03:00:00 - Stop 2: The "Sweet" Epoch (where we have conquered diabetes)
05:00:00 - Stop 3: Platonic Fuels, Incorporated.
07:00:00 - Breakfast
08:00:00 - Stop 4: A Rebirth on CyberEarth: Mind uploading!
10:00:00 - Stop 5: The Dawn of the "Electromic" Age.
12:00:00 - Lunch
13:00:00 - Stop 6: Let's take a trip to RingWorld, the ultimate resort! (Space infrastructure needed)
15:00:00 - Stop 7: Pathogens - EXTERMINATE PATHOGENS!
17:00:00 - Stop 8: The Rise of the Planet of the Transhumans.
19:00:00 - Stop 9: Life will find a way (around death)!
21:00:00 - Dinner
22:00:00 - Last Stop: EnerFuse, the company that brings the future of energy today!
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ITINERARY TIMESTAMP: 00:00:00__________________________________________________________________________________
Destination: The Anti-Aging Revolution
Estimated Time at Arrival: 2057 AD
Progression of time manifests itself with an unavoidable certainty in the living world. A common condition all humans - actually let’s be more inclusive - almost all organisms, are afflicted with, is aging. Aging seems inevitable and unidirectional. But is it really?
We have reached a promising point in our longstanding quest for youth. But let's consider: why would we want to counter aging, and what problems could there be with this new movement?
Benefits of countering aging. (Timestamp: 00:06:06)
With aging comes very many degenerative, wasting and cumulatively complex, sometimes progressively quality-of-life destroying disorders. Stopping, or even reversing aging, could reduce the prevalence of these diseases. This would also ease the strain on healthcare, both fiscally and more importantly, in terms of the care deliverable.
Not to mention the social benefit: who wants their older family and friends to suffer for months, and even years, on end with accelerating health issues that slowly erode away their dignity, self-esteem and potentially their personality? To add a poisoned cherry on top, while this horrible sequence of events is happening, they would fall into a pit of stigma (ageism is a problem that, although identified, doesn’t seem to go away in an increasingly utility-based, efficiency-driven society). Surely we should try to reverse this suffering, or at least stop others from reaching the same fate?
Research into aging-related health problems is progressing, but these are often severe and there’s a multitude of them. It would be more efficient to target the root cause – aging itself.
Also, it would not be bad in terms of the opportunities available both to individuals and society. Stopping biological aging could mean that a person would be able to pursue potentially many different careers (each for a satisfactorily long time) in their lifetime, with retirement breaks in between, depending on how much we can extend our lifespan. Just picture the benefit of experience that 200-year-olds (with the biological and mental age of a 30-year-old) can bring to companies, healthcare services and society in general! The world might shine in ways we cannot imagine, - because such a society has not been established yet!
The dependency ratio (non-working pop. : working pop.) may decrease significantly after an anti-aging movement.
However, there might be some reasons to curb our enthusiasm for slowing down aging. Let’s dive into the cons of this movement…
Arguments against reducing aging. (Timestamp: 00:31:46)
The global 8-billion strong human population is already facing difficulty in terms of feeding itself. Imagine if we put the figurative ‘stopper on death’ ( #harrypotterreference) and the population rises to unsustainable levels. Things could become very bad very quickly. Food and fuel shortages could make the cost of living rise very steeply (just like we saw very recently). This could drive significant proportions of the population to poverty, as basic essentials become hard to access.
To respond to this problem, we might have to cut down more (rain)forest hectares to meet a greater agricultural demand. The world climate could destabilise because of this move, to an even greater extent than it is now! And all of the people that we have effectively saved from death by old age could face a literal hell on Earth (intense widespread wildfires, stronger hurricanes and typhoons at potentially higher frequencies than ever observed, cities being flooded due to sea levels rising etc.). All because we hate being old.
But let’s hold our horses! This prediction of a cascade of cataclysmic events assumes two things: a) countering aging to significant levels will lead to a significant increase in population and b) this increase will necessarily lead to a greater agricultural demand. For b), although this trend has been observed in recent years, there’s no telling what the future brings. By the point in the future at which anti-aging technologies become publicly available, the public may shift to greener, more sustainable lifestyles. For a), we need to consider what exactly leads to an increasing population. Well, simply put, birth rate must be greater than death rate. However, as countries become more developed in the future, birth rate (after staying above death rate in the middle) actually swoops down below death rate. This can be seen in Rostow’s model of development (shown below):
From Population Education
Also, in the decades before these technologies achieve any significant effect, vertical farms may be developed, giving us the opportunity to expand our population size even further.
So let’s suppose we do decide to counter the biological process of aging. How should we set about doing it?
There’s been a storm of research in the recent past that have clearly identified some of the mechanisms of aging and in doing so have opened up the possibility of tinkering with these various pathways. One aim being to figure out whether aging is truly one directional.
Something in the blood. (Timestamp: 01:04:47)
Almost 20 years ago, Rando and colleagues carried out a groundbreaking experiment. They were asking whether the sluggishness of muscle repair with age was due to the inefficacy of muscle-resident stem cells or due to a circulating inhibitor that did not allow the recruitment of muscle stem cells for repair. To address this directly, they linked up the circulation (scientifically called parabiosis) of all combinations of an aged mouse and a young mouse and inflicted discrete, ethically approved, wounds in one of their thighs. Their data showed that old mice healed better when linked to young mice (heterochronic) compared to when linked to mice of same age (isochronic) and conversely the healing of the wound in the young was delayed if parabiotically linked to an old mouse. Clearly there was something in the young blood that promoted muscle resident stem cell (satellite cell) activation and something in the aged blood that hindered satellite cell activation. The success of this parabiosis experiment set the stage for many crucial experiments that subsequently allowed researchers to interrogate the aging circulation and identify “progeroid” (age-inducing) factors and whether they can be inhibited. The experiments also sought to cleverly induce anti-aging factors, identifiable in young blood, in aging subjects.
Conboy and colleagues have recently shown that even a single dose of aging blood induces aging in young mice. Importantly, they go on to demonstrate that purging the aging circulation of senescent cells rejuvenates the aged circulation and improves health. Armed with the ability to identify changes in the transcriptome (a collection of all transcribed cellular RNA) at a single cell level, the Wyss-Coray lab showed a global reduction of gene expression with aging, mimicked by transfusion of aged blood while young blood restores gene expression. In a similar vein, the Liu laboratory has identified genes that are involved in the rejuvenation of a large number of tissues in aging mice upon heterochronic transfusion of rejuvenating factors present in young blood. Taken together, therefore, these studies demonstrate that blood-borne factors might be involved in regulating gene expression that can be controlled bidirectionally to modulate, and even reverse, aging.
But is this aging intervention practically possible in the real-life scenario?
The fountain of youth. (Timestamp: 01:35:14)
In a large-scale, deep, investigative study, the Gladyshev laboratory has now shown that biological aging is turned on by stress and that removal of that stress reverses aging. They arrived at this using several models, - looking at epigenetic regulation of gene expression, changes in the transcriptome itself and how that affects the total chemical output, or the metabolome. Pharmacologically changing the make-up of the circulating factors might, therefore, help combat aging. Indeed, these researchers propose that increase in biological age by stressors may be “a quantifiable and actionable” target for reversal and rejuvenation therapies.
To this end, taurine has been identified as one such metabolite, the deficiency of which in mice, humans and monkeys appears to drive aging. Crucially, supplementation of taurine reverses the aging process in monkeys. Taurine is a sulphur-containing amino acid which is normally present in an omnivore diet, particularly in meat and fish, but if you are not into consuming meats, not to worry, acute endurance training increases taurine in the system. Going one step farther, Sinclair and colleagues have identified 6 different combinations of chemicals that restore youthful epigenetic modification of chromosomes leading to a youthful transcriptome. This provides evidence that rejuvenation can be achieved by pharmacological age-reversal.
Concluding remarks (Timestamp: 01:52:44)
There is, therefore, hope of rejuvenation. Perhaps the secret of Nosferatu’s long life was the heterochronic blood he periodically collected from unsuspecting youthful necks and perhaps the infamous Dr. Fu Manchu produced taurine in his life-extending, elixir vitae.
Well, that’s all for now, folks! We shall now be moving on to snack time, the next stop in our day trip: The Sweet Epoch!
However, during cryostasis, we can take a quick pause for thoughts and reflection (please share in the comments below). I’ll see you when I’ll see you – in the future!
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