May 12 2008 / by Jeff Hilford
Category: Health & Medicine Year: General Rating: 12 Hot
One of the themes on Future Blogger and for fans of accelerating
change in general is life extension and the prospect of relative
immortality. 
We covered this topic in our very first interview with
Aubrey de Grey and Dick
Pelletier has addressed it many times. One of the core
arguments in this debate is that, regardless of increasing life
expectancy rates, humans have an upper limit. This is probably best
categorized as the Hayflick
limit argument . That there is a maximum number of years that a
human can live and if nothing gets to you before reaching that
threshhold, when you do, that’s it – it’s over. That limit is about
120 years of age, with the oldest documented lifespan being the 122
attained by Jean Calumet
Increases in life expectancy are ultimately discounted by this
assumption. In response to Jack Uldrich’s
recent piece on the prospect of living to 1000, John
Frink correctly points out that the radical increase in life
expectancy that developed societies have experienced over the last
170 years or so (roughly doubling) is largely due to advances in
health/medicine and hygiene. He cites the vast reduction in the
infant mortality rate as being of particular note. But that is more
reflective of initial gains and merely part of a larger trend at
work. (cont.)
Advances in the knowledge and technology of medicine are
succeeding in getting larger and larger percentages of people to
higher and higher ages. And they are increasingly improving health
and function along the way. I don’t think it is a big stretch of
the imagination to believe that this trend will continue. I think
most people would agree that the dramatic advances in biotech and
healthcare that Jack and others are referring to will (or at least
could) persist in moving that number towards its
‘natural’ limit of about 120, but that’s it.
When looking at the exponentiality of the increase in life
expectancy, the growth in the 19th century from 37 to 47 and then
the dramatic gain in the next century from 47 to 77 informs us that
we will reach that upper limit quickly. I would argue that
technology that will be available in the very near term future, say
the next decade, should get the average lifespan close to its
‘natural’ limit. But given the incredible advances underway in
GNR, NBIC, GRIN (insert
your favorite acronym here) I think it’s reasonable to consider
extension beyond these natural limits.
How and why would this happen? The best way to frame the answer
might be the cascading
S-curves of exponential change that Ray Kurzweil has
illustrated across many fields. He has theorized and demonstrated
that when the upper limit of a technology within a category has
been achieved, something more advanced comes along to replace it
and the overall exponential growth curve remains intact. I think
that is a good bet to happen with regard to aging. That we will
soon reach the top of the S-curve of maximum human life expectancy
and that a new one will kick in that will effectively lead to
indefinite life spans in one form or another (and that’s a whole
nother topic for discussion).
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