It’s 2035, and at your 60th-birthday checkup your doctor lays out an appealing menu of options. You seem to be getting the sniffles more often these days—how about some rapamycin to shore up your immune system? The second generation of senolytics has just come out, and your Aunt Sandra said they’re already doing wonders for her joints. Or how about some epigenetic smoothing? It’s supposed to completely do away with Alzheimer’s, and even though your polygenic score says your risk of developing it is only 7% higher than average, you can’t be too careful … And then, says your doctor, leaning in confidentially, apparently there’s a whole new class of mTOR inhibitors, and they’re looking for volunteers for the first human trial. Of course, it’ll be years before you know if it works, but just imagine—you could live to 115, or 120, or even more!
You’re torn. On the one hand, yes, it would be lovely to see the great-great-grandchildren grow up. And keeping yourself serviceable for a bit longer is certainly wise—after all, they just raised the retirement age again, and you lost a good chunk of your savings on that oceanfront property that’s now an ocean property. On the other hand, your kids (and their kids) will have it hard enough managing their own retirements without also taking care of you. Politics is getting ugly; some people think the solution to the national debt crisis is to stop Social Security and Medicare for anyone over 85, and everyone’s seen the footage from the age riots in Japan. And besides, do you really want to see what the world looks like after another few decades of climate change?
This issue of MIT Technology Review is about big advances in longevity medicine that may be coming soon—some of which I’ve alluded to above, and which you can read about in our stories on the biology of aging (start with What if aging weren’t inevitable, but a curable disease?)—as well as the challenges and opportunities of a world in which people live longer and healthier lives.
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