The dawn of the ageless society. By Stephan Sigrist
Silicon Valley is setting out to fulfil man’s ultimate dream: it wants to banish death. The keys are data and an unshaken belief that technology can solve any problem. One by-product could be the rise of one of the biggest growth markets in human history. And another, the mission to rethink an ageless society.
The desire for immortality is as old as mankind itself. Kings, alchemists, not to mention big-screen villains have gone in search of the Holy Grail of eternal life – mostly with little success.
We have never yet succeeded in outrunning death. Nevertheless, the average life expectancy is steadily rising. While 17th-century European man was lucky to reach his 35th year, today’s survives to 80 or more. To a large extent, we have medical progress to thank. Drugs and antibiotics have helped to bring about massive reductions in infant mortality. It isn’t the only factor, however. Improved hygiene and the high-quality nutrition that comes with rising affluence have also made major contributions.
We expect medical science to go on delivering superlative performance in its work to increase longevity. Wrongly, perhaps. Biomedical research has set itself the ambitious goal of wiping out complex diseases such as cancer entirely, but is nowhere near achieving it. Studies by the Munich Cancer Registry, which analyses the outcome of cancer cases for the entire German region of Bavaria, reveal little improvement in the average probability of survival after chemotherapy for prostate or breast cancer over the last 30 years1. And that’s despite research investments in excess of 200 billion US dollars. If you place your faith in the early recognition and surgical removal of cancerous tissue, a more positive picture appears, with better prospects of a cure. The fact is, however, that despite having decoded our DNA we still do not understand biology.
MAN-MACHINE
New players have emerged in the longevity arena since the turn of the millennium – inspired by the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, which promised new game rules for business and a new paradigm of IT-driven medicine. These players include technology-loving transhumanists such as British software engineer Aubrey de Grey, who expects us soon to reach a life span of 120 years or more. De Grey assumes that the speed of medical progress will align with that of information technology and it will be driven by exponential growth. At the same time – inspired by the enlightening image of a biomedical mechanism – he compares the human body with a machine that can run forever if defective parts are repaired or replaced, and if it is maintained regularly. The human body is consequently not much different from a VW Beetle that is dutifully taken to the garage for servicing and therefore runs for a long time.
The wear and tear that appear in a machine made of metal and plastic are pretty well known. But how much do we know about the aging of the human body? According to de Grey and his followers, telomeres play a leading role in the biological aging process. A telomere is a kind of protective cap on the end of a chromosome. Every time telomeres divide they shorten a little and lose their protective function, similarly to the plastic tips on the ends of our shoelaces. Telomeres gradually drop off entirely and the ends of the chromosomes start to stick together – the cell can no longer function. If de Grey’s theory is correct, this could offer one starting point for finding ways to halt the aging process and enable cells to renew themselves ad infinitum. If his vision is true, we wouldn’t just take longer and longer to get older, but could stop the aging process altogether. We would then live as able-bodied 25- or 35-year-olds for as long as we wanted, but with the life experience of an old person.
ANTI-AGING ALGORITHMS
Experts doubt whether his theories can be taken seriously. So far, it isn’t clear whether de Grey is a genius or a lunatic. And as so often in cases where boundless hopes have been stirred up initially, in the past years all had become much quieter on the gerontological front where progress was so optimistically viewed in the 2000s. Until September 2013, when Internet giant Google caused a sensation by announcing that, with the formation of its subsidiary “Calico”, it would set out to fulfil humanity’s ultimate dream: immortality. And Google is not alone. A number of other Silicon Valley tech billionaires have set themselves similar goals: hedge fund manager Joon Yun set up the Palo Alto Longevity Prize of one million US dollars to hack the «code of life» and enable a life span of 120 years. It is driven by a simple statistic which assumes that a 25-year-old has a 0.1 percent risk of dying. In theory, if we succeeded in retaining the same low risk into much later years, we could reach the age of 1000.
These highly ambitious goals raise the question of what these tech billionaires with no medical experience have got that the international pharma companies with their decades of stored experience haven’t – they don’t suffer from a lack of talent or a shortage of funding either. Two reasons could speak for Silicon Valley’s ability to make a real contribution to anti-aging research:
Firstly: medicine will become data-based. We will have more and more information about the connection between our genes and proteins and their influence on diseases and life-impairing functions. It will take huge computer capacity and algorithms to extract useful findings from these immense volumes of data. Both are competences in which IT companies outstrip the pharmaceutical firms. The method of searching for similar patterns in an unrelated field’s databases appears particularly promising. This could break down the interdisciplinary boundaries that have been such a marked feature of medical research and have imposed limitations up to now. The new Cloud-based research networks would provide pathologists all over the world with immediate access to genetic information and support them in their diagnoses. Another advantage compared to traditional medicine is that the use of IT to promote longevity will take into account not only genetic data, but also personal behaviour patterns and information about a person’s lifestyle. IBM is currently using its intelligent high-performance computer system Watson to test applications in which algorithms identify, out of an enormous number of possible cancer therapies, the ones that match a patient’s individual characteristics best. And no other institutions in the world – apart from the NSA – are likely to have more data available for this purpose than the major Internet players.
Secondly: Silicon Valley’s new anti-aging research bears the stamp of the Californian billionaires’ strong belief that any problem in the world can be solved if you throw enough boldness and cash at it: whether it’s mapping the entire globe, equipping the world with driverless or electric cars – or drawing a line that death would be powerless to cross. From that point of view it’s significant that Google’s “Calico” is announcing proudly to the world that its target is to add 20 or more years to human life. One of the few clues about its precise approach comes from a report in Time magazine that suggests that the core of the company’s work will be to gain a better understanding of age-related diseases through data processing and algorithms. Despite justified scepticism, this will to disregard the failures of the past decades and engage in fresh thinking could be the very way to take a decisive step forward.
GROWTH MARKET NANA TECHNOLOGY
Whether it’s successful or not, the fact is that an enormous market will grow up around prolonging life and enhancing our quality of life in old age – known in the jargon as the “silver economy”. This is about a lot more than new drugs and medical therapies. It is estimated that the “economy of longevity” could account for up to half the economic output of the U.S.A. by 2032. The same applies to Europe and the aging nations of Asia and South America. Apart from medicines, implants and healthy foods, new winners in the market for the elderly could be health-monitoring apps, carpets that sense when someone falls and alerts the clinic or jewellery that reminds people to take their daily meds – otherwise known as “Nana technology”. The focus is not only on the actual medical value added, but the direct benefit to people’s everyday lives. This includes technologies that will enable us to overcome the handicaps of growing older. Electric bicycles that enable senior citizens to make long tours would only be one small part of the conceivable options.
However, this kind of market forecast is based on a conceptual model which – at least if Aubrey de Grey turns out to be right – could also turn out to be wrong. Because if we could actually stop the aging process, we wouldn’t have an aged society, but an ageless one. In that case no one would need care homes, wheelchairs or drugs. Consumer goods markets and the leisure industry would multiply in volume, the traditional healthcare industry would probably collapse.
THE SIX-GENERATION COMMUNITY
Beyond the sense that a new era of extreme longevity is dawning, it’s amazing that among all the talk about new gadgets for old people and services for the “silver surfers”, there’s very little mention of the social challenges of a world in which we will reach the age of – let’s be modest – 120 and still be in good health. What would society look like, what about our social life?
On the one hand, we’d have a lot more time. We could watch future generations growing older, master new languages or musical instruments or voyage to countries all over the world. We would have leisure for all the things we find little time for in today’s everyday world. This would also benefit society, because we would be able to use more of our years productively. On the other hand, such extreme longevity would change society radically at almost every level. We would have to redefine our conceptions of families, marriages and the solidarity between old and young, for example. While unhappy 60-year-old couples are more inclined at present to seek consensus for the last part of their lives, more of them would presumably separate if they expected to live longer. Shorter marriages could become the rule, and every marriage could produce children. That means we would have significantly more half-siblings, who could have an age gap of up to 30 years or more. It would be realistic for up to six generations to be alive at the same time. Moreover, we would inevitably spend a large part of our new-found time not only on hobbies, but also on work, which could improve productivity based on employees’ long experience. And we would have the opportunity to pursue several careers in different industries or fields of activity. This, however, would be likely to increase competition and make it difficult for younger employees ever to get jobs. It isn’t clear what the consequences would be if people who don’t move on were to hold their jobs for up to 100 years. Companies, universities and the political arena could be dominated by individual leaders for very long periods. At the same time, organisations’ innovativeness is likely to flag without the influence of new, young employees.
On top of radical social changes, the challenge of resource shortages would become even more acute. The transhumanists once more see technology providing the answer: alternative energy sources would ensure that the world had sufficient energy and fresh water. If this best-case scenario did not come true, however, we would be faced with even more massive conflicts over basic necessities, territory and space. In the worst case, this could lead to restrictive birth control – an idea incompatible with the vision of more freedom and creative opportunities which is the true wellspring of the desire for very long life.
SHAPING THE AGED (OR AGELESS) SOCIETY
The goal of further increasing our life expectancy therefore has to be assessed by more criteria than just medical science and the direct gain of a few years of life. Possible opportunities and threats for society and individuals also have to be considered. Glaringly obvious as the negative consequences seem to be, it is also clear that medical progress, whether through pharmacology or algorithms, cannot be halted. And from the ethical point of view, measures to prolong life could hardly be prohibited.
So what are the areas where politicians, businesses and all of us have to take action? First of all, more advanced thinking or even fresh thinking has to be done about the long-lived society. We need a clear outlook on what’s possible and desirable from the point of view of the individual and society – including the coming generations. We have to work out which opportunities we will tap and what risks we have to avoid, what new creative opportunities will result for our lives and above all, which ones are really in line with human needs. Algorithms won’t provide these answers.
Building on this basis, it will become more important to start thinking about solutions that will help us to prepare ourselves for the life situation to come. We have to work out what value models or statutory frameworks will be needed to encourage the desirable and fend off the undesirable. From this position, we will also be able to get some idea of the emerging growth markets: in all likelihood, they will not be based primarily on prolonging life, but on quality of life.
Stephan Sigrist is the founder and head of W.I.R.E. and has focused for many years on developments in the life sciences and long-term trends in industry and society. He has also authored many books and publications, advises companies and political institutions on strategic issues and is a regular speaker at international conferences.
1 D. Hölzel, Tumorregister München, Deutsches Ärzteblatt
