Immortality – Hype or Hope?

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The elixir of youth

We can begin see a world in which our diseased organs are replaced and our aching joints are rebuilt. But it seems that the cell biology revolution knows no bounds. The general physical sagging and slow down caused by ageing is the latest target of regenerative medicine. Although anti-ageing has not been a specific objective for stem cell research, it has come under the microscope as a by-product of the whole biotechnological boom.

Put simply, the chromosomes in all of our cells get shorter as we grow older. And when they reach a certain critical length, the cells stop dividing and we develop saggy skin and weakened muscles and bones. Dr Xu Rong of the Geron Corporation has been working on an enzyme that actually reverses the ageing process in cells – it rebuilds the ends of the chromosomes and returns them to their youthful length. He has tested the enzyme in cultures of ageing cells and claims that 'the end products are youthful, robust cells that frankly may outlast the life of the patient.'

Dr William Haseltine predicts that 'the systematic application of the tools we now have or can acquire over the next 10 or 20 years can increase the average lifespan by another 20 or 30 years, so that most people can expect to live a healthy life of 110 to 115 years.' Even this might be a conservative estimate. If we add anti-ageing therapy to stem cell research and anti-cancer drugs we have an even more staggering statistic. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC predicts that a female born today will have a 40% chance of surviving until she is 150 years old.

Utopian dream or dystopian nightmare?

There is a whole biotech industry worth billions of dollars and it's focussed on regenerative therapies. Before the new medicine smacks us in the face we would do well to think about the implications.

Will our beleaguered pensions see us through 50 or 60 years of retirement? Will people of developing countries be offered the same treatments, and if not, what kind of two-tiered society will we be creating? Can we use this technology to benefit humanity as a whole and if so, how? By the time immortality is on offer we need to have the answers to these questions.

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