The Immortalists by Aleks Krotoski: The billionaires and tech bros trying to buy eternal
The Immortalists by Aleks Krotoski (Vintage £22, 320pp)
Last month, the President of Russia was caught on mic musing with the President of China on how to stay young.
‘With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality,’ said Vladimir Putin.
But even without his exhortations, people are living longer and healthier lives. Global life expectancy was 32 in 1900. Now it has more than doubled to over 71, thanks to advances in medicine, public health, diet and living standards.
Humanity is banishing illnesses, and death is being delayed. But can it be beaten? Not surprisingly, into this dizzying kaleidoscope of longevity, come the tech billionaires, the medical and scientific innovators and the venture capitalists.
They exercise huge influence on this world, but the one thing they can’t control – yet – is when they have to leave it.
Now Aleks Krotoski, an award-winning broadcaster, academic, and technology reporter, has cast her eye over living for ever.
Though how many people really do want to live for ever? The thought of another 100 years of having to listen to a bot saying, ‘Your call is important to us . . .’ makes the blood run cold.
As billionaires such as Peter Thiel and Sam Altman plough huge amounts into the growing number of companies offering treatments – from blood plasma washing to hormone injections – Krotoski shows how the lifeblood of Silicon Valley, data, is turning our bodies into machines.
For the technologists and innovators, death is simply a problem to solve. But human beings are messy – we get ill; we die. We are not like the products that computer scientists make.
‘Why do all the tissues of the body grow old together?’ asks Berkeley bioengineering professor, Mike Conboy. ‘It doesn’t matter whether they’re on the outside or on the inside. Everything seems to go to heck in a handbasket with age.’
They experiment with mice, transferring young blood into an old mouse. The ones given the young blood recovered more quickly from injury. And tentatively, it looks like it might be good news for old humans as well.
Age Defying: Longevity guru Bryan Johnson
But, when it comes to how long each of us will live, the rich and the powerful have a head start. They can afford cutting-edge treatment and as much young blood as they need.
Bryan Johnson, the American millionaire who describes himself as a ‘longevity athlete’, has an algorithm-devised strict routine of diet, supplements, and exercise. He is trying to reduce the body’s biological age compared with its chronological age; to hold back time in other words.
Sounds crazy, but you have to agree that if your body is getting younger, then you will outlive age-related diseases like dementia. They will have been cured before your body ages into them.
Krotoski’s riveting book ends with a poignant account of the deaths of her father and stepmother. While the immortalists resist death, it will come to us all. The only thing we can try to control is how we face it.
And it is the living in the here and now, she writes, that ultimately defines our humanity.