Alexander Kazakov/via REUTERS
Leaders of the world’s two biggest authoritarian powers want to live longer.
On a hot mic, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin were caught discussing whether they could live forever during a military parade in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The parade marked the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, was also present.
The hot mic moment came while Xi and Putin were making their way up a slope toward Tiananmen Gate. A translator can be heard saying in Mandarin to Xi that “in a few years, with the development of biotechnology, human organs can be constantly transplanted so that you can become younger the longer you live, and even become immortal.”
Xi can then be heard responding in Mandarin that “the prediction is that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.”
In 2018, Xi abolished China’s 10-year term limit for top leadership positions, which means he could keep his position for life. Putin, who has served as Russia’s president or prime minister over a period of three decades, pushed through a referendum in 2020 that allows him to stay in power until 2036.
Here is what longevity researchers and scientists have said about the ability to live to 150 or beyond.
Longevity research is in a boom period
The science of life extension is drawing billions in investment and becoming mainstream. Social media influencers who are attempting to reverse their biological age are selling lifestyle plans and food products to people who dream of doing the same.
Scientists have been engaging in antiaging research long before this trend boomed, studying ways to protect our cells from degradation. However, it’s slow work, and no credible scientist has found a way to fight mortality.
In 2023, David Sinclair, a professor of genetics at the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, reported mouse experiments that suggested aging could be reversed by “reprogramming” certain cells. He extrapolated that the same may be true for humans, and that one day aging could be driven “forwards and backwards at will.”
Most aging researchers agree that cellular reprogramming technology has some promise, but there’s no evidence that it would work in humans. Even in mice, the researchers were not able to reverse their entire organism “at will.”
A group of Danish scientists published research suggesting that people whose gut bacteria can make new, protective compounds tend to live longer. That prompted speculation that perhaps, in the future, scientists could engineer everyone’s guts to produce more pathogen-resistant molecules. However, these findings were based on correlation — no causal link was found — and other researchers caution that the relationship between gut bacteria and human longevity is nowhere near settled.
As for organ transplants to extend the life of someone who is not having an immediate medical emergency, it may be far-fetched. Immune suppression limits repeated organ transplantation, and experimental research on lab-grown organs to transplant mostly exists as an attempt to fill the donor shortage.
As an example of how difficult organ transplants are, it is considered a huge success when the patient who received a genetically modified pig kidney created by eGenesis hasn’t died after half a year. The patient has a rare blood type that would have made the wait for an organ donor extremely long.
Some experts think we’ve reached a longevity plateau
Some researchers think we may be reaching the ceiling on how long humans can live.
A 2024 study published in Nature found that the dramatic life expectancy gains of the last century are flattening out.
According to the research, from 1900 to 2000, US life expectancy jumped from 47 to 77 years, thanks to breakthroughs like vaccines, antibiotics, sanitation, and better nutrition. But that rapid progress appears to be slowing, especially in wealthy countries where most people now survive well into old age.
“If somebody tells you that they know how to get you to 100, don’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about,” lead study author S. Jay Olshansky, a biostatistician at the University of Illinois, Chicago, previously told Business Insider’s health correspondent, Hilary Brueck.
His team estimated that in the best-case scenario, just 15% of women and 5% of men alive today will reach age 100. The finding is based on 30 years of demographic data from some of the world’s richest nations with the most long-lived populations.
So, while that may dampen Xi and Putin’s musings, Olshansky does offer a ray of hope, even if the triple digits remain elusive.
“We’ve got a lot of people making it out to 85 or 90,” he said. “One-hundred isn’t going to happen for most people.”
Barring some unforeseen breakthrough, a guaranteed solution to a longer life is not going to happen soon, but that doesn’t keep the wealthy and powerful from throwing money at the problem.
In 2015, Google started its health moonshot called Verily, but the company is now experiencing layoffs. More recently, Jeff Bezos’ Altos Labs and Sam Altman’s Retro Biosciences both aim to tackle the same mystery of longevity.
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