Monday, November 17, 2025

MODULE 6: The cure for old age

MODULE 6: MAKING LIFE LONGER

0  CHILDHOOD                MIDLIFE               OLD AGE  100

Module 1-4: How is wellbeing related to age?
Module 5: Which age-related inequalities are unjust, which are just?
Module 6: Should we cure old age and alter the human lifespan?

PLAN
  1. Could there be a cure for aging? Should such research be pursued? (Nov 17)
    • Reading: Andrew Steele, excerpt from Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old)
  2. Should you choose to live forever? (Nov 19, 21, rest of semester)
    • Reading: Stephen Cave and John Martin Fischer, excerpts from Should You Choose to Live Forever: A Debate
    • Fischer: YES
    • Cave: NO
    • Next time: Fischer 
      •  notions of immortality and extreme longevity in religions, novels, movies, plays
      • the notion of extreme longevity that he will focus on
      • we'll talk about extreme longevity in the four movies you watched
_________________________


Andrew Steele, Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older without Getting Old
  • Could there be a cure for aging? 
  • Should such research be pursued?

Senescence--physical process of developing markers of old age

Galapagos tortoise has negligible senescence
  • "1-2 percent change of dying every year" (p. 2)
  • just as likely to die in first year as in 100th year

Galapagos Tortoise
Negligible senescence, lifespan: around 175 years


Human senescence 
  • grey hair, wrinkles, balding, elongating noses and ears
  • hearing loss, sight loss, weaker muscles, memory loss
  • heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, etc.
  • risk of death doubles every 8 years (p. 2)
Old age as an underlying risk factor for diseases (pdf page numbers)
  • "being old is the single biggest risk factor for all of the diseases just mentioned" (p. 3)
  • "An 80-year-old is 60 times more likely to die than a 30-year-old--so, too are they 30 times more likely to get cancer, and 50 times more likely to get heart disease." (p. 3)
  • "aging is responsible for more than two-thirds of deaths--and over 90 percent in rich countries" (p. 4)
But we take aging for granted and don't seek a cure for aging itself 
"A natural disaster on this scale would be utterly unprecedented. A huge and immediate international relief effort would be mounted, even if success was uncertain. If a disease with these symptoms were to suddenly arise in a previously ageless civilization, Herculean efforts to cure it would begin as soon as possible.

 But its ubiquity also means that aging is the default; its inevitability makes it invisible. We see individual tragedies as friends and relatives age, and acknowledge the horror of the specific diseases that afflict them but society is collectively casual about aging itself. This rolling worldwide pandemic of death and suffering goes unrecognized, too large to grasp, obscured by its own enormity.

We humans are beset by a cocktail of cognitive biases." (p. 5-6)

Cognitive biases that stop people from seeking a cure for old age

  • Can't imagine every being old, or what it might involve (p. 5)
  • Old people hidden away in hospitals, retirement homes (p. 5)
  • status quo bias (p. 12)
  • adaptive preference (Nussbaum discusses)
Curing old age will lead to some problems, but that's not a good reason to be satisfied with aging

"The consequences will be profound and wide-ranging, for all of us personally, for our friends and families, and for society and humanity as a whole, and the benefits will far outweigh the costs. Many people's initial reaction to the idea of treating aging is cautious, or even hostile: we wonder what the consequences of longer lifespans will be for population growth or the environment; if treatments for aging would primarily benefit the rich and powerful; or whether dictators could live forever, imposing endless totalitarianism. However, almost any objection can be answered by turning the question around and replacing it with a simple hypothetical alternative: if we lived in a society where there was no aging, would you invent aging to solve one of these problems?" (p. 11)

The goal: negligible senescence 

"what we should aim for is negligible senescence: a risk of death, disability, frailty and illness which doesn't depend on how long ago you were born. Our chronological age would no longer be the defining number by which we live our lives--we would, as individuals and as a civilization, be ageless. That is what a real cure for aging would look like, and it's something we could and should aim for as a species." (p. 12)
Is finding a cure really possible?
  • Atul Gawande, Being Mortal p. 46-47 -- all complex systems deteriorate, a cure for senescence isn't possible
  • Steele and others--yes it is possible