NYT Interview with Michael Rose

The New York Times’ Claudia Dreifus recently interviewed longevity researcher Michael Rose. In the 1970s Rose managed to extend the average lifespan of fruit flies by forcing them to breed at relatively old ages, thereby providing a selection event for longer life (since only older fruit flies would be able to reproduce in this experiment).

In response to a question from Dreifus, Rose explains why longevity research should embrace an evolutionary biology perspective,

Because the common assumption is that young bodies work and then they fall apart during aging. Young bodies only work because natural selection makes them healthy enough to survive and breed.

As adults get older, natural selection stops caring about them, so we lose its benefits and our health. If you don’t understand this, aging research is an unending riddle that goes around in circles.

The problem, of course, is that fruit flies live very short lives, and extending lifespan this way with other animals is not quite so easy (Rose notes that the increasing age at which women give birth in the West could eventually have the same effect, but that it would take centuries to see any significant effect).

Because of his evolutionary perspective on longevity, it was not surprising to read that Rose believes there is no high end limit on how far human longevity can be extended, but I was surprised to see that Rose expects significant life extension technologies in a relatively short time period,

There’s not going to be one magic bullet where you take one pill or manipulate one gene and get to live to 500. But you could take a first step, and then another so that in 50 years’ time, people take 50 or 60 pills and they live to be 200.

Leaving aside F.D.A. approval, it looks like we are about 5 to 10 years away from therapies that would add years to our present life span. For now, pharmaceuticals will be the primary anti-aging therapy.

After another 10 years or so, the implantation of cultured tissues will become common — especially skin and connective tissues. Reconstructive surgery is certain to become more effective than it is today.

Eventually, we will be able to culture replacement organs from our own cells and repair damage using nanotech machines. All of this will increase life span.

I’d also like the “play cornerback like Deion Sanders” nanomachines, but that’s just me.

Source:

Live Longer With Evolution? Evidence May Lie in Fruit Flies. Claudia Dreifus, New York times, December 6, 2005.

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