Speaking of health care, would you want to live forever, if you had that opportunity,
Louis?
Louis: Forever?
David: Indefinitely. Indefinite extension of life.
Louis: I think that would depend on quality of that life.
David: Well, that is the same thing that British doctor Aubrey de Gray says would be the main
concern, what is the quality of life that we could expect? He's... Aubrey de Gray is
a guy I've been following for a long time.
Louis: This guy?
David: This is the guy right here. And it's interesting, because he often is asked if
you're so into living forever, why do you make your hair out to make you look so old?
Which is a fair question.
Here's the deal: I've been following Aubrey de Gray for a while, he was on "60 Minutes"
years ago, he was interviewed. He says that we are not that far away from living virtually
forever. He thinks the first person to live to 1000 will be born in our lifetime. And
he is what is described as a biomedical gerontologist. He's the head of a California-based foundation
dedicated to longevity research.
And he says, "I'd say we have a 50-50 chance of bringing aging under what I call a decisive
level of medical control within the next 25 years." And he means by that, by decisive
control, the same type of control we have over infectious diseases today. What do you
think, Louis? And again, I haven't gotten into the science behind it yet, but what's
your initial reaction?
Louis: I think this guy's a lunatic.
David: All aging, according to de Gray, is the accumulation of molecular and cellular
damage throughout the body. He says there will be a day when one can go to the doctor
for regular maintenance on their bodies, and de Gray is working with his colleagues to
identify enzymes in other species that clean out the molecular garbage, so to speak, and
then this would enable the technology for humans. And he says once this is accomplished,
there will be no real limit as to how long people can live.
Louis: And then we're really in trouble with our health care system.
David: OK, so this is-- this is why he's coming on the show. He's going to be joining us from
Cambridge, England in a couple of weeks, we've lined it up, because this brings up a lot
of questions.
Louis: Oh, this brings up so many questions we can't even scratch the surface.
David: He is asked these questions often. I watched a TED talk that he did, and you
can see it online if you just Google TED talks Aubrey de Gray, where he says well, some people
make the argument what about finances, what about population, what about all of these
things? What about health insurance? If you're alive just indefinitely, then it makes the
insurance business, there's no end to the spending, eventually.
Aubrey de Gray, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think his argument is
along the lines of if those are going to be problems, let's figure out whether those problems
can be fixed without denying the possibility of this indefinite life extension. In other
words, we shouldn't just not even achieve that technology because of these concerns.
And it's a good question. If you can just collect interest indefinitely on money, eventually,
how is this going to affect the financial system? There are a lot of questions. But
Aubrey de Gray's argument, and I think it is a good one, is we can't decide not to even
pursue this because of those concerns. Let's pursue it and then figure out whether it makes
sense or not.
Louis: This strikes me as the type of thing where only a certain class of people, at least
at first, will be able to afford such treatment.
David: Absolutely.
Louis: And I don't even think this treatment is possible. I think this guy's full of himself.
David: Hold on a second, didn't you just the other day tell me that immortality is possible
and there's some kind of breed of jellyfish that for all intents and purposes does not
die, in other words, it's immortal?
Louis: Yes.
David: So why is it impossible to imagine that this could be achieved?
Louis: I'm not saying it's impossible, I don't think it's going to happen within 50 years.
And I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to implement this in humans.
David: The other argument that de Gray makes is that... let me... he proposes this question:
if the average 55-year-old today were given the ability to live an extra 30 years beyond
whatever his current life expectancy is, OK, so not 30 years from the time they're 55,
but if they get another 30 years of life expectancy, so instead of 77, it's 107...
Louis: Right. Yeah.
David: ... how many more years on average would the average 55-year-old live? And de
Gray argues it's not just the 30 extra years, because that development will likely allow
some of those people, between the time they are 77 and 107, to take advantage of new technologies
and new techniques that would be discovered then, so that the effect would become exponential,
much the same way, he argues, when we look at air travel, look at how long it took to
get the most basic type of airplane, and then look at how quickly we got to what we now
consider modern commercial airline travel. The developments start happening very quickly
once you get the ball rolling. This is all what Aubrey de Gray says.
And I know you'll have questions for him, Louis, I certainly will. If the audience does,
email me, david@davidpakman.com. I'm very curious to talk to him.
Louis: Oh, yeah. Me, too.
David: The new poll, by the way, on www.DavidPakman.com, if it were medically possible, would you want
to live forever? What is your answer on that, Louis?
Louis: I still have to say it would depend on the quality of life.
David: Assuming you could have good quality of life.
Louis: Assuming I could feel like I do now?
David: Yeah.
Louis: Sure.
David: You're in?
Louis: I'm in.
David: All right, well, there it is. Louis, who doesn't really seem to care too much about
other people's lives, as we say, he would not even lose a big toe to save a million
people's lives, now saying hell, he'll live forever. Sure. So a little bit of hypocrisy
coming from producer Louis Motamedi on this issue. Very, very... I'm skeptical.
Louis: Hypocrisy? No.
David: On Louis's moral compass.
Louis: Not hypocrisy, David. If anything, selfishness, not hypocrisy.
David: I apologize. I do apologize. Let's take a break. If you're on Twitter, go to
www.DonateYourAccount.com/DavidPakmanShow, let us use those Twitter followers of yours
to promote The David Pakman Show. www.DonateYourAccount.com/DavidPakmanShow. Back after this. A lot of questions arising,
Louis, about Dr. Marcus Bachmann. We'll talk about that in just a couple of minutes.
Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com.
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