A few days ago, the world’s media spread information about an accidentally recorded conversation between Kremlin and Chinese dictators Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to extend human life expectancy. In this article, we try to figure out whether this is really possible now or in the future.
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Every dictator dreams of living forever
On the sidelines of the meeting in Beijing, microphones accidentally recorded a fragment of this conversation. By information Bloomberg, C Jinping told Putin that people used to barely live to be 70 years old, but today you can feel like a child at 70.
Of course, if we’re talking about ordinary people, not dictators and world leaders with lots of money and unlimited resources, this is a big exaggeration. Currently, life expectancy in China does not exceed 77.6 years, while Russians rarely live to be 70 years old.
At the same time, the Kremlin dictator made an even more astonishing statement that, allegedly, thanks to organ transplants, people will be able to live forever. Xi Jinping told him that by the end of this century, life expectancy could increase to 150 years.
What dictator does not dream of living and ruling forever? Later, during a press conference, Putin confirmed his statements and added that life expectancy would increase significantly in the near future and that we should prepare for this.
It is a little strange to analyze such speculative statements by Putin against the backdrop of thousands of deaths in the criminal war he has unleashed against Ukraine, but are there any real grounds behind them?
Will we live longer?
In his statements, Putin has emphasized organ transplants, which he believes will increase people’s life expectancy. However, organ transplantation procedures still have significant limitations, remain risky inaccessible to the vast majority of people on the planet, and there are huge waiting lists for donor organs.
Science, of course, does not stand still, and attempts to increase human life expectancy are being made, though not in Russia or China. In January of this year, the tech giant OpenAI said about the development of LLM GPT-4b micro in cooperation with the American startup Retro Biosciences.
This AI model, according to OpenAI, is trained to suggest protein modifications that turn human skin cells into stem cells. In turn, stem cells can be used to form any other cells in the human body. If this project is successful, it opens a direct path to restoring organs directly in the human body, without any transplants, or at least — artificial organ cultivation.
Retro Biosciences is a startup investigating how to extend human life and has offered OpenAI cooperation in the field of protein engineering. Retro Biosciences aims to extend human life expectancy by at least 10 years The company is studying the so-called Yamanaka factors. This is a set of proteins that, when added to human skin cells, turn them into stem cells.
However, despite the promise of this area, the process has not yet been highly efficient, as only 1% of cells have successfully transformed into stem cells. The OpenAI developers said that after starting cooperation with Retro Biosciences, their AI model GPT-4b micro has already improved the effectiveness of certain transformation factors by more than 50%, which can be considered a real breakthrough. The model has been trained to using examples of protein sequences from many species and information about which proteins tend to interact with each other.
However, it is not yet clear how GPT-4b makes its assumptions, which has become commonplace in the case of AI. As the CEO of Retro Biosciences Jo Betts-LacroixAccording to Mr. Kuznetsov, scientists from his startup are still trying to understand what algorithms are used to guide OpenAI’s LLM. He also called the approach of the scientists themselves only a superficial study.
How the rich extend their life expectancy
Wealthy people and billionaires with lots of money and unlimited technical capabilities spend millions of dollars on so-called “biohacking” to rejuvenate their bodies and slow down aging. This includes personalized diets and supplements, regular high-intensity physical activity, stem cell transplants and genetic cellular correction drugs, procedures such as plasmapheresis and sessions with hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
For example, the famous American IT entrepreneur and billionaire Brian Johnson has recently devoted his life to finding the secret of longevity and slowing down aging. According to the 47-year-old billionaire, his heart is like that of a 37-year-old, and his lungs — correspond to the condition of an 18-year-old.
His day starts at 4:30 am. Johnson turns on a 10,000-lux light to synchronize circadian rhythms before the sun rises By 5:30, he is already at the gym, where he does high-intensity and endurance training for about an hour. Then he spends 20 minutes in a sauna at 93°C, 6 minutes under red and infrared light, and an hour and a half in a barocamp. According to him, hyperbaric therapy helps to restore blood vessels and improve bowel function.
At the same time, the billionaire takes more than 30, and according to some reports, more than 100 different vitamins, minerals, supplements and medicines aimed at optimizing biological processes in the body
In particular, among the things that Johnson takes polyphenols, lycopene, curcumin, zinc, and the anti-diabetic drug metformin, which is also supposed to prevent the development of polyps in the intestine and inhibit the aging process at the cellular level. Growth hormones to maintain muscle mass, small doses of lithium (a drug prescribed for bipolar disorder) to rejuvenate brain cells and maintain memory, and many others.
The billionaire follows a strict diet and consumes exactly 1,977 calories per day. He eats in 3 meals before 11:30 am. Johnson notes that he eats more than 30 kg of vegetables per month, mostly in the form of mashed potatoes and smoothies.
He goes to bed at 20:30 and always sleeps alone in a room completely isolated from light. The billionaire’s bedroom is kept at a cool temperature, and a high-tech mattress regulates its surface temperature throughout the night depending on the billionaire’s body temperature.
The entrepreneur also wears a baseball cap with integrated red light emitters, which are supposed to stimulate hair growth. He also transfuses the blood of his 18-year-old son, conducts laser skin polishing of the face.
At night, Johnson wears an electronic device on his penis to record nighttime erections The duration of nocturnal erections is a biomarker that shows the state of sexual function and the cardiovascular system.
According to Johnson himself, he now has the heart of a 37-year-old man and the skin of a 28-year-old, lung volume and fitness are — that of an 18-year-old, gum condition is — that of a 17-year-old, and the level of inflammation in the body is 66% lower than that of a 10-year-old.
However, all of this requires the billionaire to spend 5 hours a day on introspection and $2 million a year. Over the past 3 years, he has already spent more than $6 million on rejuvenation. A team of 30 specialists takes care of his health, by developing, adjusting, and honing a special regimen of his life designed to combat aging.
What do scientists think about all this?
On opinion Most healthcare professionals believe that even if it is indeed possible to slow down the rate of biological aging, this does not mean that a person will live longer, let alone become immortal.
In particular, as the dean of the School of Gerontology, University of Southern California Pinchas Cohen, death — is not an option, it is written in the human genes. He does not rule out that in the future people will indeed be able to increase their life expectancy, just as it increased during the 20th century from about 50 to 80 years in developed countries, but it is impossible to live forever.
“We have absolutely no scientifically based data that this is possible in principle, and there are no technological methods that would even suggest that we, as a species, are moving in this direction. If you want immortality, go to church If I believed that this would be possible someday, I would be happy. But these are just empty dreams,” says the head of the The Buck Institute for the Study of Aging’s Eric Verdine.
According to an aging expert, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois Stuart Olshansky, all this hype around aging and immortality can be called the second oldest profession.
“Two thousand years ago, people were looking for a magic elixir that would make them healthy and help them live forever. The only difference is that now this “fountain of eternal youth” is served by people with a lot of money to make even more money with it,” Olshansky summarizes.
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