Immorality in Nature

Creatures like mole rats, lobsters, crocodiles and many others do not show any signs of aging, meeting their ends through other means, such as predation, disease or simply growing too large to self-sustain (starvation). In the seas of Japan, the famous immortal jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii behaves much like a phoenix, turning back its biological clock to a newborn whenever it’s faced with a dangerous wound. While less prevalent in Nature, it’s clear that biological-immortality is as natural as mortality itself, neither inevitable nor universal. Perhaps aging should not be seen among humans as an untouchable law of life, but as a major disease that we should actively fight against. But on a biological level, what is aging?

Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal Jellyfish — created by Nature.

Aging, putting it simply, is nothing but the accumulation of damage in one’s body over time. In the first decades of our lives, it plays like a beautiful symphony, with all cognitive and physical indicators showing constant improvement. But as the years progress, the melody begins to change. Because our bodies weren’t made to live long periods of time, it makes mistakes — wrong notes are cast as we start to descend from order into chaos, giving way to a gradual biological deterioration that takes decades to unfold. By the end of our lives, our DNA looks very different from the way it looked before — genes that are supposed to be off find themselves active, the body is riddled with malfunctioning old cells and our number of active neurons are in a steep decline. We become weak, both physically and mentally, more prone than ever to age-related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s. Aging is a slow-but-violent disease that has killed all of our ancestors in the past.

However, mortality has played a huge role in Earth’s history — in many ways, it is one of nature’s best inventions. By cleaning out the old and leaving space for the new, countless species were able to rapidly evolve throughout the eons. And since throughout most of Earth’s history living things have died mostly due to predation, disease and injury rather than old age, natural selection has always favored genes that are beneficial at the early stages of life, keeping creatures alive for just enough time for them to reproduce. Evolution hasn’t addressed aging in humans because it never really had to. But in the modern human world, natural selection does not play the role it used to any longer. We’ve become good at staying alive collectively — we reinforce our immune system with vaccines, help our disabled carry on healthy lives and constantly create new treatments to conditions that our bodies would never be able to fight on their own. All evidence points to the fact that, for the most part, we have countered the role of natural selection as a species (although a new worldwide epidemic could change that). With that in mind, can something as monumental as aging be slowed down and even cured by scientists?

Dr. David Sinclair, one of the world’s leading scientists in the study of aging

Age-Related Research Today

The short answer is, theoretically yes. As we exposed earlier, aging is a biological problem, not a natural constant. Although research in this area (known as gerontology — the study of aging) is relatively poorly funded due to cultural biases more than technological limitations, many scientists have been making significant progress in aging-related research through a variety of distinct approaches. Dr. David Sinclair, for example, conducts research at Harvard Medical School and proposes tackling this issue by narrowing down which genes fuel the aging process. By the end of 2014, he was able to accelerate aging in mice by 300% by editing one single gene that’s also present in the human genome. These significant results prove that small genetic changes can have tremendous impact over the lifespan of an animal, knowledge that certainly can be used in people as we gradually increase our understanding of genetics.

Two mice, both with just one year of age. The difference between the two? A single gene.

Another pioneer scientist in this area is Dr. Aubrey de Grey (University of Cambridge), who is pursuing the development of an “anti-aging therapy”, aiming to clear out all age-related damage that occurs in a patient’s body over decades through a series of procedures. Dr. De Grey has received the financial backing of many industry leaders like Elon Musk and expects to begin human trials in the upcoming two decades. Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray (Stanford University) is also known for his age-related work, proving in 2015 that regularly transfusing blood plasma from young mice into old mice not only partially rejuvenates the organs, but also strongly increases their neurological response, showing improvement in cognitive function, memory and problem solving skills. Clinical trials are now being performed on humans with Alzheimer’s in hope of achieving similar results.

With all the progress being made on this front, giants like Google have also entered the race for immortality, investing $1.5 billion dollars in their new company Calico in 2013. Most scientists in this field firmly believe that the first forms of treatment for aging will be available to the public within this century, and with each passing day it seems to be clearer that curing aging is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. While we shouldn’t expect for a permanent solution for biological immortality to pop out out of the blue, it is all but unreasonable to expect that we’ll have access to basic forms of treatment within the next 80 years — and perhaps that’s all we need to call it a victory. If patients have access to medication that rejuvenates the body 10 years, for example, one can assume (giving the rate at which technology and medical science improves) that 10 years later patients will have access to improved versions of said medication that warrant them even more years of rejuvenation. Once there is more supply for lifetime than there is demand, the battle is officially won, and we will finally have access to the most important resource of all: time.

But it doesn’t come without its challenges. It is almost a certainty that to tackle aging fully we’ll need to edit our DNA, which brings up the unresolved ethical debates around genetic engineering. Ridding ourselves of all genetic diseases sounds like an easy choice, but should we make ourselves more intelligent? What about removing undesired physical features? Or designing how we want or children to look? Do we lose a part of ourselves in the process, or will it all be for our own betterment? Those questions remain largely unsolved, although it’s likely that the technology will be embraced — the benefits and opportunities are too grand to pass up —what’s left to see is how we will approach it.