The most important political issue of our times is aging.
Aging is responsible for disabling and killing far
more people than any other disease — and aging is indeed a disease.
Just consider that if we cured cancer we’d add just 2.1 years to the average human lifespan
and if we cured ALL cardiovascular diseases we’d add 1.5 years. And yet
we spend billions of dollars on trying to cure those age-related diseases,
which of course we should do, but virtually nothing on curing aging itself,
which could theoretically add an infinite amount of years to our lifespans. There isn’t a country
on Earth that has committed significant resources to cure or at least slow aging.
And yet, whatever generation, country, and organization ends up curing it
will go down in history for potentially all of history.
You win the game when you defeat the big boss — the Grim Reaper.
Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey claimed that the first human to live 1,000
years is probably already alive, and might already be between 50 and 60 years old.
And why not?!
There’s no natural law that says “Living things shalt not live past 122 years old!
The oldest living land animal is a 187-year-old giant tortoise. The oldest living mammal is a
211-year-old bowhead whale. The oldest living ver·te·bret is a 400-year-old Greenland shark.
There are trees in California that have been alive since before Jesus. Jesus!
As Richard Feenmen said, There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the
inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only
a matter of time before biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble.
We age not to as some believe to “make way for the next generation,” but because our bodies
didn’t evolve to fight off entropy much longer than it takes to raise the next generation.
Animals that procreate faster die faster
as their evolutionary purpose has been served, but as humans, we already go well beyond our
evolutionary purpose in so many other respects and so it’s about time we did so with aging too!
Life can theoretically last forever, as long as we can preserve and/or recapture critical
biological information by absorbing energy from someplace in the universe.
We can, after all, already do things in a lab that a generation ago were unimaginable
such as cloning, reversing aging in mammals, and reviving yeast microbes from 4,500 years ago.
Scientists are also exploring the possibility of resurrecting the woolly mammoth and the T-Rex.
A common critic of anti-aging is, “I don’t want to live forever,”
and no one is suggesting you have to live any longer than you wish,
but wouldn’t it be nice to live healthfully for as long as you wished?
With our biological clocks stopped or at least drastically slowed down we could
travel the galaxy, see our great-great-great grandchildren’s wedding (perhaps to each other),
and cultivate a deeper sense of peace than we’ve ever known.
I don’t blame people for not wanting to live forever in their current mental state, including
at times myself when I feel overwhelmed or disappointed, but at a higher level of existence,
I don’t see why after 100 years of immaturity many of us wouldn’t finally make the choice to
move away from external-based pleasure-seeking to internal-based joy. In high school,
I’d politely insult my friend by saying he was in a “constant state of meditation.”
Perhaps, that’s what lies ahead for humanity.
Now, before we dive into some political solutions to slow aging let’s consider
some personal ones because politics always begins with YOU! If you make healthier choices
then those around you are more likely to make healthier choices.
Politics is shaped by culture and the culture is shaped by your choices…
Eat Less
Studies show that cutting calories lead to longer lifespans in worms,
rats, and monkeys. As Harvard biologist David Sinclair said,
“After twenty-five years of researching aging and having read thousands of scientific papers,
if there is one piece of advice I can offer, one surefire way to stay healthy longer,
one thing you can do to maximize your lifespan right now, it’s this: eat less.”
Eat Less Often
In worms a fasting diet increased lifespan by 40%. Rats that went hungry every third day lived 15%
longer than rats on a normal diet. Intermediate fasting leads to an
increase in sir·tu·in and au·toph·a·gy expression.
Eat Better
Mice fed on low levels of methionine (beef, lamb, poultry, pork, eggs) increased their
healthy lifespan by 20%. Plant proteins, in general, tend to contain low levels of
me·thi·o·nine to keep us well, but not so much as to cause biological complacency.
Exercise
Individuals who exercise more — the equivalent of at least 30 minutes of jogging 5 days a
week — have telomeres that appear to be a decade younger than those who live a more
sedentary lifestyle. In another study, those who ran 4-5 miles a week reduced their chance of
death from a heart attack by 40% and all-cause mortality by 45%. The Mayo Clinic said, “HIIT
engages the greatest number of health-promoting genes, and more of them in older exercisers.”
Shiver & Sweat
Animals who are subjected to the shivering cold for three hours a day experience significantly
reduced rates of obesity, diabetes, and Alzheimers. And then on the warm side of things,
those who sauna 7X per week saw a 100% drop in mortality over those who do so 1X per week.
But fundamentally we are social animals and no matter how much we may know we should do the above
things it’ll be harder for us to stick with it so as long as our peers don’t, therefore, we need to
build communities that incentivize good behaviors, which brings us into the political realm...
Sin Taxes
They discourage bad behaviors. I believe in low taxes, but if we’re going to have a government and
therefore taxes then we might as well tax things that have the greatest negative externalities
such as smoking, CO2, sugar, salt, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. The revenue should then be used
to create a more walkable infrastructure with sidewalks, bike lanes, public transit, parks, etc.
Every city should strive to increase their Walk Score. Pedestrians first!
NIH Rewards
The National Institutes of Health spends $31 billion in research annually with the “biology
of aging” getting less than 1% whereas I think it should spend $50 billion combating aging as its
#1 priority. I also think the funding mechanism should shift from grants to rewards so that a
researcher primarily gets paid after successfully achieving a specific nationally-defined goal,
such as breaking the longevity record for a certain species: mice, monkeys, pigs, humans, etc.
Deregulate Education to Increase STEM
The American education system has failed to prepare America’s youth for the jobs of the
21st century despite spending more money per pupil than virtually any other nation on Earth
and at any other point in our history (adjusted for inflation). Power, not money is the problem.
Power to the students! Let’s increase vouchers , charter schools, digitize credentialing,
and abolish federal loans, which only serve to drive up tuition prices, therefore,
indebting students longer into the future with diplomas that often don’t reflect market demand.
Deregulate Healthcare to Increase Innovation
It’s bad enough we already have a cronyist oligarchic healthcare system. The American
Medical Association has already killed millions of Americans by lobbying DC to cap the number of
doctors in order to purposely create a doctor shortage. As with Operation Warpspeed, by
deregulating healthcare we’d undeniably see a boom in new vaccines, drugs, treatments, and medical
professionals. The downside to deregulation is that more unsafe products will be available on
the market, but the upside is that they’ll also be more cheaper and safer products available too!
The least regulated parts of an economy are the most innovative. Do not let the fearmongering of
powerful interest groups who pretend to have your best interest at heart stop you from thinking for
yourself and taking responsibility over your own body. The future has always belonged to the brave!
A president who spearheads an anti-aging campaign
will, in my opinion, go down as the greatest president
since the Great Emancipator because whereas one freed up labor; the other freed up time.
By slowing/ending aging we’d save trillions of dollars by reducing the prevalence of
age-related diseases, and the money invested on educating the youth would have an even
greater return as we live longer, and by extending life beyond 120 years old
it may mean that for better or worse most our lives would be supplemented by a de facto UBI.
In the end, I think we’ll eventually end aging. So the question is
will we be one of the last generations to die from it or the first
to defeat it? How you live and vote will have a tremendous impact on that answer.
Live long and prosper!