As I age, I’m becoming more and more interested in how I can prolong a healthy life. I hope I have a long life but more importantly, I want a healthy one. I’ve witnessed the other side. My father died in his late 80s; his final years ravaged by Parkinson’s. He was infantile and had bolts of anger and confusion. It wasn’t pretty. In her early 90s, my mother had a stroke. She passed away from heart complications after being aphasic for nearly a year. This 30-plus year English teacher lost all ability to converse in the final year of her life; she was reduced to incoherency. As I held their hands or fed them, I kept on telling myself, not me. This is NOT how I want to live my final days.
In recent years, aging research has been turned upside down. As Stanford bioethicist Christopher Scott, PhD, and his co-author, Laura DeFrancesco, PhD, write in Nature Biotechnology, it has a new face and it’s longevity:
How science approaches the questions of aging has changed. Lifestyle, environment, epidemiology, nutrition, genetics and the tools of big data are coming together in a host of new ways. The new approach – called longevity research – is an effort to extend the period of healthy life by slowing the biological process of aging.
I can see the scrawl on the wall: Aging research is dead. Long live longevity research.
Penn bioethicist and public-policy guru Zeke Emanuel, MD, stirred a recent debate about how long a viable life when he thrust his body up against today’s immortality zeal of the baby boomer. In an Atlantic article entitled “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” he theorized that post-75, it’s all a pain. His article is a great read that might depress you if 75 is within focus, yet it poses one question clear for each of us: How do we want to live our final days on earth?
Will longevity research produce answers that quell the anxiety stirred by the belief that the aging process means everything is headed south? Scott and DeFrancesco signal that while aging research “failed to come up with any viable approaches, let alone therapies to forestall the ravages of aging,” longevity research in animal models “have shown that life span is indeed malleable, that it can be manipulated by genetics or the environment…” Is there a stairway to longevity emerging in science?
The Nature Biotechnology paper poses some fascinating questions as the science of longevity joins with a new generation of commercial entities that hope to seize its potential. To be sure, longevity research will need to avoid inflated hype. The authors say that Craig Venter, PhD, who has started a company, Human Longevity (HLI) is “….frustrated that the handful of fully sequences human genomes, including his own, has provided little insight into aging.” But I assume, as do the authors, that Venter’s bet is that there’s an abundance of sunshine down this path and science will emerge with ways to manipulate aging that will lead to better health and disease management. But when?
In my latest 1:2:1 podcast I take up these questions with Scott as the longevity era of science develops and matures. My colleague Krista Conger also authored a blog post earlier this week on Scott’s feature.
Previously: Golden years? Researcher explores longevity research and the companies banking on its success, Exploring the value of longevity with bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, Tick tock goes the clock – is aging the biggest illness of all? and Researchers aim to extend how long – and how well – we live
Photo by Michael Himbeault