Thirst for life: Do we really want to live forever?
As the number of our years increases, as we age in that simple chronological sense, we also age in a more important and profound sense. Gradually but progressively our bodies begin to function less effectively, and that increasing loss of function makes us more vulnerable to disease and death. Nevertheless, we distinguish aging from disease. Unlike disease, aging is a normal stage of life that seems built in. Though it makes us more vulnerable to disease, it is not itself a pathology.
Is it any surprise, then, that we have mixed feelings about aging? We’re a bit like the character in Wallace Stegner’s novel The Spectator Bird whose “last Christmas letter contained a line that should be engraved above every geriatric door. He says that when asked if he feels like an old man he replies that he does not, he feels like a young man with something the matter with him.” Our uncertainties can only become more pronounced as we find ourselves in a world where life prolongation and age retardation have become serious scientific projects pursued (and funded) by serious men and women.
For the moment this often means simply taking some rather conventional steps—diet, exercise, stress reduction—though, to be sure, taking them with intensity. But many hope that such measures will keep us in good health so that we can profit still more from an era, perhaps on the horizon, in which biotechnological advances will ceaselessly repair the accumulated damage in our bodies that is the mark of aging. This repair may take many forms—chromosome replacement, regenerative medicine using cloned stem cells, drugs that mimic the effects of caloric restriction or that lengthen telomeres.
