An age-old problem

Is our lifespan fixed, or might we be able to slow down or even abolish ageing? And what would we do if we could?

'Who wants to live forever?" we bravely tell ourselves. But if we were offered a pill that promised another 10 or 20 years of life, how many of us would really say no? For better or worse, that's not a decision you're likely to face soon. Nobel Prize-winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan has surveyed the many and varied efforts to extend the human lifespan and - to jump to his conclusion - decided it will be another decade or two before we know whether current anti-ageing research is likely to deliver results.

Over the past 150 years, average life expectancy has already doubled, thanks largely to reduced infant mortality. "But extending maximum lifespan - the longest we can expect to live even in the best of circumstances - is a much tougher problem," argues Ramakrishnan. "Is our lifespan fixed, or could we slow down or even abolish ageing as we learn more about our own biology?" As much of the world gets older, that question has prompted an explosion of research. Every year, scientists publish tens of thousands of papers on ageing and hundreds of new companies have invested billions of dollars in efforts to lengthen lifetimes.

But for all that research, scientists still don't know whether humans have an absolute maximum lifespan. Maybe there really is a limit. After all, even before Covid, life expectancy wasn't increasing as quickly as it once did. Yes, there are more and more 100-plus-year-olds, but it's been almost 27 years since France's Jeanne Calment died at the age of 122, and no one has yet beaten her record.