Update on Western Quest for Immortality (hormones to telomeres) – good survey article

note: this article is good because it raises the question of the spiritual consequences of extending longevity for the planet. Do we need Death to give Life meaning?

Unfortunately, none of the western approaches (which are all bio-medical) deal with integrating their body-mind with their spiritual destiny. This is the key superiority of the qigong-inner alchemy approach, total integration of physical, energy, and spiritual bodies, so that longevity does not induce a crisis of meaning/”what is my destiny?”.

Will the biomedical approach merge with the Taoist energetic approach? I feel it is likely. It’s just combining external alchemy (=science) and inner alchemy (=spiritual science).

May we all live as long as we need to complete our worldly and spiritual destiny.
– Michael

HAS THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH BEEN FOUND?*

Raw food diets. Hormone injections. Chromosome-shortening microbes. Meet
the people hoping to ‘cure’ old age
By Julia Llewellyn-Smith
The Telegraph
October 25, 2011

http://nhne-pulse.org/immortality-before-end-of-century/

Original Link
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/8822879/Has-the-fountain-of-youth-been-found.html>

In a corridor of a London conference centre, Dr Marios Kyriazis,
chairman of the British Longevity Society, is outlining his vision of
the future. “Right now there are about 10 people aged 110 in the world,”
he explains in his native Cypriot accent. “Soon there will be 500
people, then 1,000. Slowly we’ll start living to 115, 120, 125. The
number of these people will slowly increase and before long, it’s
reasonable to say that we’ll be living for 500 years.” Five hundred
years? Dr Kyriazis shrugs laconically. “People will still die from
diseases, or in car crashes or being shot by a terrorist. But they will
not die of old age.”

The late Steve Jobs famously described death as “very likely the single
best invention of life… it clears out the old to make way for the
new”. Death defines our culture. The Neanderthals decorated their graves
and positioned the corpses as if for another life. All great religions
have promised some form of immortality. Today, we might no longer try to
confer death with spiritual significance, but we still desperately try
to defer ageing. American billionaire David Murdock, 88, is planning to
live to be 125 simply by drinking three smoothies a day packed with 20
fruit and vegetables, eschewing dairy and red meat, ensuring a daily
dose of sun for vitamin D and an hour of exercise — all things most
doctors would advocate.

His regime is positively conservative compared to the estimated 100,000
people worldwide who’ve embraced calorie restriction, cutting their
daily calorific intake by up to 40 per cent, inspired by a 1934
experiment on rats which saw them live twice as long as normal on strict
diets. Another 20,000 people follow the Primal Diet, that encourages
them to eat raw — preferably rancid — meat in the belief it will
encourage healthy intestinal bacteria — and thus extend their lifespans
to the max.

But soon such sell-by-dates will cease to exist, according to Dr
Kyriazis, who reluctantly tells me he is 55 (“I think all dates of birth
should be abolished”), though — surprisingly — his dark-rimmed eyes
and cadaverous frame make him look far older. “It’s nonsensical to
believe nature, God, whatever, created life only to allow it to end
after a set period of time,” he says. “A living being, once created,
should be allowed to live indefinitely, or — put it another way —
should not be allowed to die. Otherwise, what was the point of creating
it in the first place?”

A growing number of equally creditable scientists (Kyriazis has a PhD in
gerontology from King’s College, London) are convinced that humanity
will achieve virtual immortality before the end of the century. We’re
talking at the eighth British Anti-Ageing Conference, an annual event in
which international experts gather to propagate theories and peddle
wares designed to defeat all the nasties associated with old age.

“Our field is the only industry where people lie that they’re older than
they actually are,” chuckles Phil Micans, the dewy-skinned 50-year-old
vice-president ofInternational Anti-Ageing Systems
<http://www.antiaging-systems.com/>. Micans produces the latest wonder
supplement:TA65 <http://www.antiaging-systems.com/219-ta65>, which has
the anti-ageists all abuzz. These pills can, apparently, preserve our
telomeres, the protective tips at the end of our chromosomes. Once
telomeres fray, time’s up, making anything that can preserve them a holy
grail. “They’re £400 for 90 capsules and you’re supposed to take two or
three a day,” says Micans. “I didn’t think they’d sell at that price,
but in just a month, we’ve shifted 150 units.”

But are such pills necessary? Recent figures from the Office of National
Statistics show we’re doing fine without them. More than a quarter of
British children under 16 will live to 100. Average life expectancy rose
by 44 days last year alone. Even so, our lifespans have a sell-by-date
of around 120 years (the oldest recorded human being died at 122)
because at this point our cell-repair mechanisms shut up shop. Micans
and many of his colleagues simply want to help us see out those years in
peak condition.

But others, like Kyriazis and Aubrey de Grey, the 48-year-old founder
ofthe Methuselah Foundation <http://www.mprize.org/>, are convinced that
within the next 50 years, ageing will be defeated. De Grey, an
autodidact who campaigns tirelessly for research into immortality,
thinks a lifespan of 1,000 is entirely possible. His hopes are pinned
mainly on the recent discovery in a mass graveyard of a microorganism
that composts lipofuscins, the goo that accumulates in our cells like
plaque on teeth, gradually stopping them functioning. The challenge now
is to insert that microorganism into the body.

“I don’t see the reason for ageing,” Dr Kyriazis continues crossly. “I
don’t see why we are so intelligent and we can go to the moon but after
a few years we just die and become worms’ intestines. Is that really our
fate?”

But if most of us are scared of being eaten by worms, the alternative is
even more terrifying. With immortality now a tangible possibility,
popular culture is responding with dystopian tales reflecting the unease
about the prospect of eternal life. The new novel The End Specialist, by
American author Drew Magary, set in 2019, relates how “The Cure” — two
sets of injections — allows everyone to become “postmortal”. Initially,
the world rejoices, then resources deplete, leading to government-backed
euthanasia. China has to nuke cities to keep populations under control.

Then there are the existential questions. “Death gives our life
meaning,” says Magary, 34, over the phone from his home in Maine. “It’s
our story arc — from humble beginnings, to a peak, to gentle
retirement. Without it, ambition becomes pointless and so does marriage.
If you knew you were going to spend 500 years with someone instead of
50, would you be prepared to say: ‘Until death do us part’?”

In The End Specialist, the Pope excommunicates all postmortals. But
immortality advocates like de Grey insist that their goals are
completely ethical. “It’s not remotely difficult to justify our aims
morally,” he snaps. “What we want to do is keep people healthy and we
have to do this as quickly as possible, and the longevity is purely a
side effect. It is clearly our obligation to society to let humanity use
these theories if they want to. You can’t say: ‘But then a dictator
might live forever,’ because imposing our values and assumptions on
humanity in the future is not moral.”

De Grey acknowledges immortality would have unimaginable repercussions
on society. “But there are an enormous amount of variables,” he warns.
“It’s quite probable future technology would reduce our ecological
footprint.” As for overpopulation, de Grey, who is childless, thinks the
threat is exaggerated. “Women are already having fewer children and
later in life, so the result of longevity might mean they delay having
children even longer.” I disagree. With 960 fertile years left, I’d have
dozens of children. But Dr Kyriazis — also childless — thinks such an
attitude preposterous. “Children are useless in nature!” he exclaims.
“You have to waste 10 years teaching them things. Why don’t you learn it
yourself? It’s what nature intended. Why have children?”

Because I love them, I suggest. Dr Kyriazis snorts. “I love my dogs.
Look, already nature is telling us we don’t need to have so many
children. We should achieve intelligence and complexity through
ourselves, rather than through our offspring, otherwise we’re bypassing
natural laws. It’s one theory why we’ve seen such an emergence of
homosexuality in recent years, because nature knows that we no longer
need to populate the planet. Children are a drain on resources, but soon
we won’t have to rely on our children being more intelligent than us.”
My six year-old certainly showed more intelligence than me when I told
her what I was writing about. “But then you’d have to do your job
forever, Mummy. Wouldn’t you get bored and tired?”

Well, quite. My grandmother just died aged 105, her mother lived to be
101 and her mother 100 — meaning the genetic odds of my living to at
least the eve of AD3000 are exceptionally good. I worry incessantly
about how I’m going to fund another 60 years of life; the prospect of
having to find the cash for another 800 is intolerable.

“We wouldn’t retire, but we would change careers,” rejoinders Dr
Kyriazis. “We’d take big chunks of time off, we’d learn to do things
like play the piano.” And how would we fund this time off? “A manual
labourer could start a restaurant or a bed and breakfast. He could sell
oranges in the marketplace. The point is, people won’t be stuck building
walls or digging up the street until they’re 50 and retire.”

With the baby boomers now flexing bus passes, a lot of consumers would
like to believe Dr Kyriazis. In the United States, in the past 10 years
the anti-ageing industry has grown from virtually nothing to one
estimated to be worth $88 billion. “Longevity Clinics” are franchising
busily, designing tailor-made “youth” regimes for the ultra-rich.

The industry’s poster boy is Dr Jeffry Life, whose startling image — a
head of a white-haired septuagenarian seemingly Photoshopped onto the
frame of a 20-year-old bodybuilder — has been used for years to
advertise his rejuvenation plan. Aged 72, Dr Life (he swears this is his
real name) was until 13 years ago a “typical out-of-shape middle-aged
doctor”. He began watching his diet, exercising regularly and — more
controversially — regularly injecting himself with testosterone and
human growth hormones (HGH).

“I’m not against ageing,” he tells me in a strikingly deep voice from
Las Vegas, where his lucrative practice is based. “I’m against getting
old.” Those of us who can’t book an appointment can read his book, The
Life Plan, which advocates these injections — at a cost of around
$1,000 a month. What about the fact many doctors warn they might cause
tumours, diabetes, heart attacks and cancer?

“There’s a vast amount of literature on the subject that shows hormone
therapy, if practised when necessary, under medical supervision, is
perfectly safe,” Dr Life retorts.

That’s what the public wants to hear, meaning the use of hormone
injections is soaring. Heather Bird, one of the conference’s organisers,
and the MD of HB Health, which offers everything from cosmetic surgery
to hormone therapy, is 41 but — in these bizarre surroundings — could
be any age from 25 to 50. US-born Bird admits regular Botox helps the
Dorian-Grey appearance but that occasional HGH doses can be very handy.
“I’ve used them twice,” she says, then tries and fails to frown. “The
problem with you Brits is you still haven’t realised prevention is
better than cure. I was shocked when I first came to this country and
people said to me; ‘I want to party all night but still look 20, can you
help?’ But now I’ve decided it’s up to them if they want to live life
that way.” Murdock, the smoothie advocate, is a sworn enemy of
injections or medicines of any kind (he won’t even take aspirin), and
has spent $500 million on a research centre dedicated to unlocking the
life-enhancing benefits of, say, blueberries and apple skins. But at the
anti-ageing conference, hormone injection fans are ubiquitous.

“If you use hormones like athletes, of course you’re going to get into
trouble,” says Dr Richard Lippman (“I’m 67, but you gotta agree I look
40”). “If you use them to maintain your hormones at the same level they
were in your twenties, then you can stay young until you die.”

Who wouldn’t be tempted by such a prospect? And who, if the fountain of
youth is invented in our lifetimes, will be noble enough to refuse to
drink from it? For all my terror of living to be 125, when it came to
the crunch, perhaps the prospect of death would terrify me more. As Drew
Magary says: “I’ve painted a very negative picture of a world without
ageing. But if there was a cure, would I take it? Hell, yeah.”

…………………..

RELATED LINKS:

.The Secrets To A Long Life
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8627933/The-secrets-to-a-long-life.html>
.Sex Helps Cope With Effects Of Ageing, Study Finds
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/8725334/Sex-helps-cope-with-effects-of-ageing.html>
.John Healey: We Can End Fear Of Ageing
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8615183/John-Healey-we-can-end-fear-of-ageing.html>
.Immortality ‘Only 20 Years Away’
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html>
.Could There Be A Cure For Ageing?
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/6175693/Could-there-be-a-cure-for-ageing.html>
.Vegetarian Diet ‘Key To Long Life’
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6710896/Vegetarian-low-protein-diet-could-be-key-to-long-life.html>