News published in various media have recently informed us of new victories in the eternal battle of the human being against old age and death. Spanish scientists at the Salk Institute in California have worked with mice which, very briefly, reprogramming their cells have managed to reverse its aging process from 18 to 24 months.
In 2045, man will be immortal. Neither AIDS, nor cancer, nor hunger. Nothing. In just over 30 years, no disease will kill the human species because aging is a curable disease. This assertion is based on an increasingly widespread trend: the "technological singularity". It points to technological progress and the advent of artificial intelligence as the tools that will put an end to 'human age' and give rise to the 'post-human age'. A milestone hitherto unimaginable in a world where the digital divide and social inequalities remain an evidence in the different countries that populate the planet and in which there is still unequal access to health or technology.
Between the year 2029 and 2045, we will have computers with more transistors than neurons have our brains. And that will be the beginning of the technological singularity, when the artificial intelligence reaches the human intelligence.
In the next 30 years all diseases will be cured and we are part of the first human immortal generation. And, as the English philosopher and draftsman William Blake put it, "all that we see today was imagination one day, everything we imagine today can be true tomorrow."
Eternal youth has been a permanent imaginary of man, was the main objective of the alchemists in the Middle Ages, characters such as The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde who resorted to negotiate his soul with the Devil, or Ponce de Leon and his explorations in Florida in search of the myth of youth fountain. Cosmetic companies invest millions of dollars and earn a lot more, in getting back the signs of aging, but now the quest is to understand that cause. Although the fundamental problem is that scientists still do not understand that it causes the cells to stop reproducing.
175 years ago most people died from infections not from old age. Thanks to vaccines, better nutrition, and improvements in public health and medicine, life in rich nations has doubled, going from 40 years to 80, life expectancy increases by an average of 2.5 years per decade. But now that we live longer, we face a new group of killer diseases that have been more complicated to eliminate: cancer, heart failure, strokes and dementia. In all these diseases, the risk factor is aging. At age 80, you are 40 times more likely to die of cancer than someone at age 50, and the risk of developing Alzheimer's increases by 600 times. It is estimated that for the new generations it will be normal to have to deal with more than one cancer in your life.
Calico Labs (anachronistic from California Life Company) was founded in 2013 by Larry Page co-founder and CEO of Google, with a long-term purpose: to classify the causes of aging to do something with them. With more than 100 employees and resources of $ 1.5 billion in the bank (50% Alphabet and 50% of the pharmaceutical company AbbVie) Calico Labs is working to identify aging biomarkers in mice and new therapies for patients with diseases related to old age, including neurodegeneration and cancer. In April 2016 the company hired Jackson Labs to identify an age marker in human blood whose properties change with biological age (which is not necessarily the same as the person's age). This marker could determine how much longer life a person has except for any other unforeseen event.
One of the major problems of these investigations is that the Food and Drug Administration does not recognize old age as a disease, therefore, although old age is the main risk for several diseases, requests for authorization of tests are Orient towards the manifestations of the diseases produced as they are cancer, Alzheimer, etc.
Different experiments have shown that the cells make compensations: in good times, with a lot of food, they grow fast, but in times of stress such as starvation or aging, they slow down and live longer than normal. Other experiments have managed to double the life of worms from three to six weeks by modifying a letter from their DNA.
Larry Ellison has donated $ 335 million to scientific studies on old age. Bill Maris has invested two trillion dollars in companies that delay aging, increase longevity and, if possible, reverse disease. Unity Biotechnology, funded at $ 127 million by a group of investors including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, is trying to be more aggressive in the development of drugs that eliminate the cells that have stopped dividing. The assumption is that these cells release some signs of aging that allow them to be identified, and by eliminating them, only good ones could rejuvenate the tissues. The company plans to start with knee tissue recovery tests to address osteoarthritis problems.
Peter Thiel has made strategic investments in 14 healthcare and biotechnology companies focused on extending life through regenerative medicine, and created the $ 500,000 Palo Alto Longevity Prize Award for anyone who can dramatically extend a mammal's life. It has also donated 3.5 million to scientific researcher Aubrey de Gray of the SENS Research Foundation, whose goal is regenerative medicine to prevent aging, also focused on eliminating old cells through gene therapy. The objective of the foundation is to make 90 years the equivalent of the new 50 by 2030.
Craig Venter, known for decoding the human genome, founded "Human Longevity Inc - HLI" whose goal is to create a database to predict diseases. The company has collected more than 70 million dollars. According to Venter rather than prolong life, it is sought to extend it in a healthy way, with high performance, a more productive life expectancy.
Finally I just want to put a last example, in this case one of the National Cancer Research Center where Triple was born, a transgenic mouse capable of living 40% more than normal. It was created by María Blasco, molecular biologist and one of the greatest experts in the world in research against aging. And under this whitish light, thanks to genetic manipulation, Blasco managed to make Triple be healthy all that time. This superconduct would be the equivalent of a human living young more than 140 years. In short, and after seeing all the investments and progress being made in this regard, we can guess that the first person who will live to the 1,000 years may be alive today, and it is possible that that person soon will get 50 years old.