Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

"So, Ramakrishnan is a world-famous Nobel-prize-winning scientist, a former President of the Royal Society, writing about his area of expertise. He’s one of the people who fundamentally established our understanding of the ribosome, a structure within the cell that helps ‘print out’ our proteins (“protein synthesis”), so to speak. Ramakrishnan puts together all the evidence we have about the molecular and cellular biology of ageing and of cancer—and how this relates to mortality, and makes a very interesting point that I had never thought about, which is that there is a tension in the way our cells work in holding off ageing, but also holding off cancer. The two work at loggerheads; you don’t want to get cancer, but also you don’t want your cells to grow too old and to get too damaged to function. Preventing one can enable the other. Hence there’s this constant tug of war, and a multitude of repair mechanisms are active all over the place trying to prevent ageing or cancer. Ultimately, they are not perfect mechanisms. So damage or mutation accumulates, cells become non-functional or cancerous, and so on and so forth. We age, and that is what that is. Ramakrishnan’s point along the way is: well, what can we do with this information? Can we use this growing body of evidence about how we age in each domain—how the ribosome works, how DNA repair mechanisms work, and so on—to help us live longer? And: how long could we live if we do? The oldest people today reach about 120 years. Is that a hard limit for us? Or could we get to 150? 1000? Some people have made bold claims, like perhaps the first person to reach 1000 years old might even be alive today. Ramakrishnan looks at the evidence, and, basically, it’s promising that we can live better, at least. We can probably do some good things, tweak these limits, help people live healthier lives into their old age—maybe not live longer , but at least be healthier when they are older. That has some promise. But Ramakrishnan explains why Methuselah-like outcomes, where people live into their thousands—or even past 200—are probably over-optimistic. A disturbing thought is that quite a few people funding this research are billionaires hoping to become immortal themselves. So there is some likelihood that these technologies, as they emerge, will be so cutting edge and expensive that they remain the province of the extremely wealthy and privileged. Thus we might have a separation of the people that are healthier, living longer, squandering their money; versus the people who can’t do that; much more so even than today. And that will create even worse social inequality, potentially, if this kind of thing continues unfettered. The technologies are great, and there is great promise. But Ramakrishnan is also sounding a warning. Like: Hold on, we’ve got to watch out for how this knowledge is actually used. Which reminds me of the Clearview AI book about facial recognition. You have to wonder where this train is headed. Indeed."