The way we end.

We are fascinated with endings as much as we are about beginnings. Last week, I attempted to come up with ways of answering the question “Where did we come from?” I thought, that after over eight years of writing this column, readers, especially those who write to me once in a while, have already realized that this is a science column. But apparently, a few are still confused and tried to argue against last week’s column by citing Genesis so many times that even God would blush. So I thought I’d try another approach and write about “endings” this week.

My choice of topic is timely as I have good material for reflection. The cover title of the September 2010 issue of the Scientific American is “The end. Eternal fascinations — and surprising upsides — of endings.” In it are a couple of good articles on endings such as technology we could have lived without, the afterlife of a corpse, a ranking of wide-scale disasters that could happen to humans according to risk, and many more. For this column, I chose the article “Why we can’t live forever” by Dr. Thomas Kirkwood, a professor of medicine and director of the Institute for Ageing and Health in Newcastle University in England. I chose him because having devoted his life to his work, he has every reason to announce if science has already come across real proof that we can stop or slow down the aging process. Yet, this is what he said: science has not figured out how to stop or even slow the aging process and that even if we are living longer than ever before in human history, science does not know how long this trend will continue.

The human longevity record is at 122 years. Kirkwood’s article was accompanied by a very useful and interesting illustration of lifespan of various organisms including human. Examples of those organisms that reach beyond 122 years are the Galapagos tortoise (150 years), lobster (170 years), Koi fish (200 years), red sea urchin (211 years), bowheaded whale (221 years), and bristle cone pine tree (1,000+ years). But nothing beats marine life like jellyfish and hydra which, barring injury and predators, could remain immortal!  

Kirkwood laid the cards on the table for us that when it comes to aging, it is a tug-o-war between the energy your body needs to reproduce versus the energy you need to keep your body in shape. From what he has studied, it seems like that our bodies will protect us from death only in so far as to allow us to reproduce and then it breaks down. It seems that nature has not found it worth it to allow us to survive indefinitely when our environment is very unpredictable so it found another strategy. It just allows for a mix of genes in the offspring, experimenting if that version will be better in surviving the environment.

Through the years, with or without giving birth, our bodies accumulate cellular damage that causes our organs to have problems and eventually fail. And so far, he says, no pill or strategy has been proven to stop this eventual private ending for each of us. He and his team has found that the cell has some kind of circuitry which keeps tabs on the amount of damage it is experiencing. When it has had enough, they have observed that the cell locks itself in to preserve itself and it no longer divides. If your cells no longer divide, then you no longer renew your basic make-up and eventually, although with no certain dates to meet, die. Drug treatments and therapies are being done to address this but they have not been around long enough to see if they are really safe and make good on their promise. Jumpstarting cells to start dividing again also risk dividing uncontrollably and this is what we know as cancer.

I have heard of people who take stem cell therapy but I do not know enough about it to know to what extent it claims to stop or slow aging. I think it has been successful in prolonging the lives of individuals whose organs could no longer function but I do not think those stem cells are also programmed to live forever. You might theoretically have to do stem cell therapy, well, forever, to last forever. I cannot imagine Dr. Kirkwood and his team not being aware of these stem cell therapies as the former unlock how aging happens in our cells. But despite that, he confirmed that nothing has yet been proven to stop or slow the aging process. He also said that “solutions will not come easily despite the claims of merchants of immortality who assert that calorie restriction or taking dietary supplements such as resveratrol, may allow us to live longer.” 

I know this column will hardly make a dent knowing how much more attractive the ads of anti-aging or age-slowing drugs or therapies are out there. I just wish those ads would be truly representative of what you would be if you were to live forever. Next time we see an ad or a billboard for this miracle age-stopping therapies, let us demand that instead of cosmetically or digitally enhanced images of celebrities, they should have an image of hydra or jellyfish because so far, it is what nature really has in terms of what you have to be to be immortal.

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