Longer life could have a downside

By Ker Than

updated 2:37 p.m. ET May 22, 2006

Adam and Eve lost it, alchemists tried to brew it, and if you believe the legends, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon was searching for it when he discovered Florida.

To live forever while preserving health and retaining the semblance and vigor of youth is one of humanity's oldest and most elusive goals.

Now, after countless false starts and disappointments, some scientists say we could finally be close to achieving lifetimes that are, if not endless, at least several decades longer. This modern miracle, they say, will come not from revitalizing waters or transmuted substances, but from a scientific understanding of how aging affects our bodies at the cellular and molecular levels.

Whether through genetic tinkering or technology that mimics the effects of caloric restriction — strategies that have successfully extended the lives of flies, worms and mice — a growing number of scientists now think that humans could one day routinely live to 140 years of age or more.

Extreme optimists such as Aubrey de Gray think the maximum human lifespan could be extended indefinitely, but such visions of immortality are dismissed by most scientists as little more than science fiction.

While scientists go back and forth on the feasibility of slowing, halting or even reversing the aging process, ethicists and policymakers have quietly been engaged in a separate debate about whether it is wise to actually do so.

A doubled lifespan
If scientists could create a pill that let you live twice as long while remaining free of infirmities, would you take it?

If one considers only the personal benefits that longer life would bring, the answer might seem like a no-brainer: People could spend more quality time with loved ones; watch future generations grow up; learn new languages; master new musical instruments; try different careers or travel the world.

But what about society as a whole? Would it be better off if life spans were doubled? The question is one of growing relevance, and serious debate about it goes back at least a few years to the Kronos Conference on Longevity Health Sciences in Arizona.

Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Public Health, answered the question with an emphatic "Yes."

A doubled lifespan, Stock said, would "give us a chance to recover from our mistakes, lead us toward longer-term thinking and reduce health care costs by delaying the onset of expensive diseases of aging. It would also raise productivity by adding to our prime years."

Bioethicist Daniel Callahan, a co-founder of the Hastings Center in New York, didn't share Stock’s enthusiasm. Callahan’s objections were practical ones. For one thing, he said, doubling life spans won’t solve any of our current social problems.

"We have war, poverty, all sorts of issues around, and I don't think any of them would be at all helped by having people live longer," Callahan said in a recent telephone interview. "The question is, 'What will we get as a society?' I suspect it won't be a better society."

Others point out that a doubling of the human life span will affect society at every level. Notions about marriage, family and work will change in fundamental ways, they say, as will attitudes toward the young and the old.

Marriage and family
Richard Kalish, a psychologist who considered the social effects of life extension technologies, thinks a longer lifespan will radically change how we view marriage.

In today’s world, for example, a couple in their 60s who are stuck in a loveless but tolerable marriage might decide to stay together for the remaining 15 to 20 years of their lives out of inertia or familiarity. But if that same couple knew they might have to suffer each other's company for another 60 or 80 years, their choice might be different.

Kalish predicted that as life spans increase, there will be a shift in emphasis from marriage as a lifelong union to marriage as a long-term commitment. Multiple, brief marriages could become common.

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