assistance in performing the activities of daily life, at least until extreme old age.
The increase in the numbers of elderly people throughout the developed world is already having serious consequences, which will only increase in the future. Leon Kass, who has been chairman of the US President’s Council on Bioethics, has questioned whether the resulting overpopulation problems would make life extension unethical. ‘Simply to covet a prolonged lifespan for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose… Desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one’s life and keep it; it is also an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity.’ He highlighted the importance of lifespan limits in making room for new generations who deserve to take their rightful place in the world.
Francis Fukuyama, who predicted the eventual global triumph of political and economic liberalism, argues that efforts to increase human longevity risk undermining social security schemes, damaging family structures, and rendering the United States vulnerable to assault by countries with more youthful populations. He suggests that it could lead to a ‘posthuman future’, where human existence would be radically different from what we currently experience. This may be an alarmist view, but the problems associated with increasing human lifespans are still severe.
What impacts might a much further increase in age in the population have? Would immortality be a benefit or a disaster? In Kurt Vonnegut’s 1998 story ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ a grandfather aged 172 takes an anti-ageing potion; he drives his descendants mad by taking the best food and space. Many fear that extending lifespan without reducing illnesses would increase the time living with limited physical and mental abilities, but it could nevertheless offer new opportunities. Superlongevity, radical life extension, would require every citizen to learn new skills. There would probably be a craving for novel experiences. Even now, many of those who have retired feel much younger and wish to have an active life that can include new work and learning. Living longer would enable people to find out what the future is like, but they would need to be healthy and cared for—and not be bored. And note again that in spite of all the research, no way of preventing ageing other than by a healthy lifestyle has yet been discovered.
Nevertheless there are several organisations devoted to extending lifespan and even superlongevity. Leon Kass apparently believes that if our bodies don’t grow old we will become even more fearful of death. He also thinks we will feel unhinged and lack the sense of purpose that supposedly comes with growing old. Superlongevity would make time of no consequence and this could have bad consequences due to the increase in population size. The emerging picture of perhaps many hundreds, or even thousands, of small effects and tissue-specific damage provides a sobering challenge for those aiming to engineer reduced senescence. Controlling behavioural and environmental exposures to reduce cell damage may be a more realistic priority, as the great majority of people are likely to have large numbers of genetic vulnerabilities for one or another disease not related to ageing. A
In Shakespeare’s
9. Preventing
‘To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable’
If we cannot be immortal, can at least our youthful looks be maintained? Almost everyone wants to look reasonably young while still living to a respectable old age without serious disabilities. Youth’s attraction is no mystery: evolution wants us to reproduce and so has selected us to find young people attractive, since they are the best reproducers. The same principle has resulted in us finding old faces unattractive. What could we do to avoid changes in our appearance with age? Having the right genes is a good beginning, as is keeping fit and active, and eating the right foods—staying slim is one of the key factors to looking young, but it does not hide wrinkles.
Efforts to hide and prevent ageing are far from being a modern obsession. In Ancient Egypt cosmetics were applied to the face and eyes, and cosmetic implements, particularly eye-makeup palettes, have been discovered in the earliest graves. Honey as well as various herbs and plants were used in an attempt to devise anti-ageing treatments. The aloe plant was commonly used as an anti-wrinkle treatment and is still with us today. Cleopatra is known to have used lactic acid in order to peel her skin, believing it made her appear more beautiful. The arid desert climate of Egypt led to the widespread use of body oils as moisturisers. It is believed that all classes of Egyptian society were concerned with their appearance, both men and women.
This pattern is repeated throughout the ancient world. As now, the focus was on the youthful beauty of women rather than men. The Roman poet Ovid despaired of time’s encroachments: ‘The years will wear these charming features; this forehead, time withered, will be crossed with wrinkles; this beauty will become the prey of the pitiless old age which is creeping up silently step by step.’ Other writers saw the comedy as well as the pathos of the situation. ‘The Man and His Two Mistresses’ is one of Aesop’s
A man of middle age, whose hair was turning grey, had two mistresses, an old woman and a young one. The elder of the two didn’t like having a lover who looked so much younger than herself; so, whenever he came to see her, she used to pull the dark hairs out of his head to make him look old. The younger, on the other hand, didn’t like him to look so much older than herself, and took every opportunity of pulling out the grey hairs, to make him look young. Between them, they left not a hair in his head, and he became perfectly bald.
In a recent survey many men and women said that they are, will be, or were, at their physical peak not during their youth but during their early middle years around the age of 40. Those aged 65 and over said 46 was their personal best age. But in terms of appearance, youth remains the golden age. Marie Helvin, at 54 still a supermodel, said: ‘Please shoot me if I’m doing this in my 80s. Anyway, one day I won’t be able to. My mother always said that Japanese women look youthful for years and then one morning they wake up and they’ve aged like 100 years. And she’s right. It happened to her when she was 79.’
Celebrities and many others have fallen prey to the cloned-youth look. The American anti-ageing magazine
