Scientists in the US and Australia are hoping to conduct trials of an anti-ageing compound that has reversed the ageing cells of mice in such a way that, if tried on humans, would make a 60-year-old feel like 20. They hope to use the experience of age reversal to treat diseases like cancer, dementia and diabetes.
Is this is a good idea, really. We all have our moment on the stage of life and are then, quite appropriately, forgotten. Do we want our more disagreeable relatives to live forever? And those greedy bankers and multi-millionaires – at least the world will in due course see the last of them. Yes, many men would like to be twenty again for personal reasons you don’t mention in a polite blog, but if you have nothing much going on in your life now, you will have nothing going on in your life even longer. And all those people living forever and still producing offspring? A world population of 15 billion!
No, I think when I die it will be at an appropriate moment (but not too soon!) and I will at least be freed from the daily incredulous question, “What? You don’t have an I-phone?”
What do you think about being 40 years younger?
Have these scientists though through the implications of all this? Will anyone have the money to life to, what, 130? Or have I misunderstood? Maybe you will feel great at 85, play a game of basketball and drop down dead at the usual time? All a little silly. But I believe there really are people out there that would give their right arm to live an other 40 years. The rest of us already feel like beached whales, not because we are ill, but because the culture is changing so fast we cannot keep up. You can keep the body alive but can you do the same thing to the brain?
An anti-ageing “compound” can shift the body of a 60 year-old to feel like that of a 20 year-old? Too many imponderables. No. Settle for an iPhone :