Is Immortality Moral? Peter Diamandis Poses the Question and Seeks an Answer at The Vatican

May 25, 2018 – At the Vatican this month, Peter Diamandis participated in a discussion entitled, “The Morality of Immortality.” The panel included religious leaders, CNN’s medical anchor, Sanjay Gupta, and the Director of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins. The potential for human immortality has been discussed at the blog site before in numerous postings, but never with a religious spin which clearly is expressed here in Diamandis’ observations from the Vatican event. I have chosen to interject from time to time with my thoughts appearing in italics. Enjoy the read.

Moral Evolution

Is immortality moral? It’s important to recognize that our morals change over time. Today, if I told you someone had the heart of a dead person transplanted into their chest to save their life, it would be considered a miracle. Go back 1,000 years, however, and the notion of organ transplantation would have been considered black magic. Surrogate pregnancy is another modern-day miracle that, in another era, would not have been accepted. That’s why I believe we’ll soon make a similar ethical and moral jump to extreme longevity.

Medical progress that saves lives is seldom subject to questions related to the morality of the research. We try to cure cancer, not on moral grounds, but in the desire to improve the quality of lives. It makes me wonder, other than the fact that religious scholars are weighing in here, why morality comes to mind.

Biblical Perspective on Longevity

At the start of our panel, Sanjay Gupta asked Rabbi Dr. Edward Reichman, to provide a historical context from the Old Testament about aging. “Adam lived to 930 years old,” stated Rabbi Reichman. “Methuselah lived to 969 years old. Abraham lived 175 years… Moses died at 120, and it is after Moses (in the Bible) that the human lifespan is set at its maximal to 120 years.” The Rabbi continued, “At the time of the flood of Noah, God pronounced that [humans] will be 120 years old. That did not occur immediately. [It] took roughly 750 years for the longevity of man to gradually taper down from roughly 900 years old to 120 years old.” Reichman cited the work of Nathan Aviezer, a contemporary scientist and physics professor in Israel who writes on the Torah from an Orthodox Jewish perspective. Aviezer’s interpretation is that, during this period, a divine intervention introduced specific genes which curtailed longevity, and it took several generations for these genes to proliferate and shorten the human lifespan. “It could perhaps be that we are attempting to identify those genes that God introduced at that stage of history and now reverse it to achieve that longevity again,” explained Reichman.

I find it difficult to understand how biblical references to the ages of Adam and Methuselah in a serious scientific discussion on aging is part of this discussion. First of all, the references come from one religious source, the Hebrew Bible, not from any other religious doctrine. That, in itself, suggests a bias that should be acknowledged. And as for morality, the bible as a reference in this regard stands on weak ground. There is more “eye for an eye” in the good book that weakens its argument as a source for moral authority. Then to seriously suggest that God corrected a mistake after the flood to alter the human genome so that our telomeres would shorten faster so that 120 years would be the top natural extent of human existence, is simply silly. When you consider that humans on average at the beginning of the 20th century lived only 40 years, it would seem God chose to cheat the vast majority of a life three times longer, and only recently, has decided to make amends.

Natural Selection, Intelligent Direction, and Divine Intervention

From an evolutionary perspective, longevity wasn’t an advantage for most of history. The selfish gene theory had no use for humans after reproductive age (typically age 13). By age 26, your child was now having a child, and, before food was abundant the best thing you could do was not take food out of the mouths of your grandchildren and instead give “your bits back to the environment.”

“Aging is not just a running down of the system,” stated Francis Collins. “It is a programmed process. Evolution probably had an investment in having the lifespan of a particular species not go on forever. You’ve got to get the old folks out of the way so the young ones have a chance at the resources.” Today, thanks to an ever-increasing abundance of food, we’re able to live into old age without consuming resources that should have gone to our children and grandchildren.

The theory about why death happens goes back to the very beginnings of life here on Earth. Without death, there is no recycling of the finite resources of the planet. The biomass that has built up over the 3 to 3.5 billion years since life first emerged has a natural limit on a planet of our size. Death makes life possible by endlessly recycling organic materials necessary to sustain our existence.

Nearing Longevity Escape Velocity

When I was in medical school, I saw a documentary on certain species of whales, turtles, and sharks that could live hundreds of years, and in theory, as long as 700 years. I remember thinking, “If they can, why can’t we?” As an engineer, I figured it was either a hardware or software problem. Today we are finally entering an era where we are developing the tools to read the software and modify the hardware.

In his panel remarks, Collins, who led the Human Genome Project, shared how we’re already able to manipulate the longevity of simple organisms like the roundworm C. elegans. “Research has shown that there is a limited set of genes that determine the lifespan of that little wriggly creature and that with an appropriate manipulation of those genes, you can cause those worms not just to [live longer], but maybe as long as four or five times their normal lifespan,” he explained. “Imagine applying that to humans.”

My friend Ray Kurzweil, who co-founded Singularity University with me and is a Director of Engineering at Google, talks about the concept of “longevity escape velocity.” It’s the notion that, in the near future, science will be able to extend our life by over a year for every year we live. Ray’s prediction is that we’ll reach longevity escape velocity in just 10 to 12 years.

What does that mean? It means that my two 7-year-old boys can have a potentially indefinite lifespan, simply because they’ll intercept a multitude of exponentially growing technologies as they age.

Can we extend the healthy human lifespan past 120? Can humans live indefinitely? We’ll find out — and I believe we’ll discover the limits of longevity-extending technology in the next 20 or 30 years, not the next 50 or 100 years.

What determines the end of a cells life is a process called apoptosis. In our DNA which organizes in a cell as chromosomes, we have base pair sequences called telomeres. They appear at the end of each chromosome and act as buffers to ensure the accuracy of replication. An RNA protein telomerase is responsible for maintaining the telomeres. But telomeres during cell division do not replicate eventually leading to a point when the cells no longer replicate. That’s apoptosis and the natural end-of-life point for individual cells. The point in time when a cell’s telomeres no longer act as buffers in successful chromosome replication is known as the Hayflick Limit, first discovered in 1961. But we know some cells don’t reach the Hayflick Limit ever. We see this in cancer which can infinitely replicate itself with telomeres and telomerase remaining whole and active. Similarly, egg and sperm cells never see their telomeres degrade. Researchers believe that women may live longer on average because estrogen influences telomere integrity. And other researchers are looking into stopping telomere degradation by stimulating RNA telomerase. That alone would lead to average lifespan in humans increasing by up to 30 years. And considering we are moving average lifespan into the mid-80s today, it would take us closer to that godly limit that Rabbi Reichman described in his interpretation of the biblical record.

Conclusion

Longevity enables a variety of positive externalities. Why retire at 70 years old, at the peak of your earning capacity, when you could potentially contribute to society for another 30+ years? Extending the human lifespan by 30 years — and postponing the retirement age — would generate the biggest global GDP boom ever. Regardless of your religious beliefs, you’ll soon have the option to take advantage of life-extending technology. And if you don’t want to live to 250, you don’t have to.

In closing, I found it promising that all the religious leaders on my panel agreed that adding a healthy extra 30 years would be desirable. I agreed and said, “I’m happy with an age-span target of 120 healthy years, after that we can negotiate another extension.”

If you would like to read more on this subject from postings here at 21stcentech.com type “immortality” in the search window. And for a better understanding of how chromosomes and telomeres work in particular, check out https://www.21stcentech.com/biomedicine-part-10-bioengineering-the-end-to-aging/.