Aubrey de Gray, a regenerative medicine researcher with the support of businessman Peter Thiel, believes that some modern man will live to be a thousand years old, and wonders why his confidence is taken with disbelief.
Silicon Valley is built on the idea that technology can optimize and fix almost every aspect of our lives: according to some scientists, human life expectancy will be no exception. An increasing number of "transhumanists" are convinced that over time, people can be transformed through bioengineering, and aging will be curable like any disease.
With the rapid advances in gene editing, nanotechnology, and robotics, some futurists expect biohackers now living to be able to double their lifespan. Aubrey de Gray, a regenerative medicine researcher supported by tech tycoon Peter Thiel, is confident that one of today's people will live to be a thousand years old, and wonders why his confidence is so skeptical …
Korean physician and financier Joon Yun has offered a $ 500,000 bonus to anyone who can restore a test animal's heartbeat and increase its lifespan by 50 percent. Yun believes that for humans, the death rate at age 20 is 0.001 percent, "so if you could maintain the homeostatic capacity of that age, the average life span would be 1000 years."
At Harvard Medical School, they believe they are close to solving this problem. As people age, the number of blood vessels in the muscles decreases, which is believed to lead to the gradual destruction of vital organs. The same picture is observed in mice. In 2018, Harvard researchers fed rodents with a chemical to manipulate a gene associated with blood vessel growth and found that older mice were subsequently able to run 56 percent longer on a treadmill. Until this research is completed, a market is emerging for so-called smart drugs - amino acids and other supplements that supposedly enhance cognitive abilities and prevent brain aging. The market for these drugs is expected to exceed $ 11 billion by 2024.
One of the most famous biohackers is Bulletproof Coffee founder Dave Asprey. Last year, the doctor removed stem cells from Asprey's bone marrow and injected them into organs and joints throughout the body, a process that Asprey intends to repeat twice a year, believing that he "refreshes" the body with new cells. He recently turned 45, but he is sure that he will live to 180. However, not everyone in the world community thinks so optimistically.
Most scientists are either skeptical or vehemently opposed to any attempt to reverse the aging process or extend human life indefinitely. Professor Richard Miller of the University of Michigan (Richard Miller) in his article calls De Gray's life goal "so far from plausible that it does not command any respect in the informed scientific community." The oldest people lived to be 120, a record that has not been reached in decades despite significant improvements in healthcare. This fact has led many experts to believe that this is largely the "biological ceiling" of human longevity.
Dmitry Mazalev
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