The death of individuals is the way species adapt to changes in the environment through natural selection. Once mankind will have full control of its environment, death will no longer have the same reasons to be. Because of the Baldwin effect, natural selection will continue to act on genes. It will favor longevity. It will promote longevity. This one will therefore continue to increase steadily. Extract from « The Thermodynamics of Evolution » by François Roddier.

Theme of the month: dormancy, hibernation… and lives naturally lived in slow motion

Cellular organisms have been living, reproducing and dying for hundreds of millions of years. Hundreds of millions of life cycles have followed one another. Life, as we intuitively understand it, is a set of complex mechanisms by which each entity maintains its integrity, maintains its metabolism, through multiple and abundant exchanges with the outside world.

But in many living species, under certain circumstances, life (to paraphrase the poet Lamartine) « suspends its flight ». In other words, the metabolism slows down considerably.

This letter will detail the main categories of « natural » slow-motion lives, with the exception of sleep. (This fascinating way of living in slow motion that we experience every night was addressed in a letter in January 2016.)

Hibernation and dormancy

Hibernation is the most common case of slowed-down life. During the cold season, some mammals, including marmots and a species of bird (the common poorwill), take refuge underground or in crevices and live with an extremely slow metabolism: body temperature at one or two degrees, heart rate of a few beats per minute…

For poikilothermic (cold-blooded) vertebrates, a similar phenomenon is called brumation. The wood frog can even survive partially frozen. For insects, the mechanism similar to hibernation is called diapause.

Finally, as we all know, many plants lose their leaves in winter (or in the dry season). The technical term is a deciduous plant and the period of slowed-down activity is called dormancy.

Grains and seeds

In this case we are talking about such a « slow » life that we do not generally consider it life at all. Under normal circumstances, for plants living in areas with different seasons, a seed will have a virtually non-existent metabolism during the season that is not favorable to growth.

The term dormancy is also used here. Usually, dormancy lasts only a few months and the plant is « born » in the summer. But if the germination conditions are not met but preservation conditions are good, some seeds can remain fertile for centuries and even millennia. Some seeds from a date palm found in the fortress of Masada in Israel germinated after two millennia.

Spores

A spore is a tiny entity usually made up of a single cell that can give rise to an organism. Many algae, fungi, protozoa and plants produce spores.

In ideal preservation conditions, a spore can produce an organism after thousands of years. It even seems that bacterial spores can remain inside rocks for millions of years. The record is said to be 240 million years. However, this is not certain. In the case of such extremely resistant forms of dormant life, it may be that the spores arrived by « contamination » when the rocks were examined.

Underground life

According to a very recent statement by the Deep Carbon Observatory, an almost inanimate microbial ‘zombie’ life is maintained for millennia at great depth (up to 2 kilometers underground). The total biomass is estimated to far exceed the weight of humans. At lesser depths, in the Siberian permafrost, there have been found nematode worms that were « brought back to life » after 40,000 years.

But this is not transferable to humans

All this reminds us how living beings are often more resistant than humans and to what extent death from aging is not a universal phenomenon. The study of the mechanisms of these longevities will not give us direct instructions for a longer human life, but can give us ideas so to allow us one day to have more resilience.

New of the month: Did Jeanne Calment really live to be 122?

The small world of specialists in extreme longevity is being rocked by controversy. Some are stating that Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997, was an impostor. Officially her daughter Yvonne died aged 35 when Jeanne was in her sixties but some people think that in fact the daughter was switched with the mother. The person known as Jeanne Calment therefore actually died shortly before reaching 100, it is claimed.

In support of the claim:

• There were no other centenarians in the Calment family. And yet the genetic aspect is important in centenarians.
• The supposed age reached by Jeanne Calment was and still is totally atypical (more than two years older than the second longest-lived person).
• Jeanne Calment was rich and there was therefore an advantage, in particular, to hiding her death so as to avoid inheritance tax. Jeanne Calment has also remained famous for having sold her home en viager [an arrangement where the seller stays in the home for life and receives a lump sum and ongoing payments from the purchaser]. This type of contract is uncommon, but it would make sense if there had been deception over Jeanne Calment’s death.

On the other hand:

• Jeanne Calment’s case is abundantly documented. In the event of fraud, at least Jeanne Calment’s husband should have been aware of it almost certainly as well as other family members and relatives.
• It seems unlikely that Yvonne Calment, who supposedly pretended to be Jeanne Calment, could have lied (or possibly after a while lied to herself) for more than 60 years without anything wrong being detected despite her very numerous contacts, notably with journalists.
• The person who was to receive Jeanne Calment’s property upon her death would have had every advantage in reporting the fraud because he could have had the life annuity canceled. At the death of this notary, his widow who continued to pay would also have benefited.

So there are good reasons for doubt in both cases. It would be useful for science to analyze the DNA of the person buried in 1997 (by comparing it with the DNA of family members). If Jeanne Calment did live 122 years, we will have extremely useful genetic elements to decipher and, if not, we will know that supercentenarians are an even rarer phenomenon than we think today.

Unfortunately, research for longevity is not yet perceived as important enough. It is easier to examine the DNA of royal families than that of presumed supercentenarians.

To find out more:

• In general, see in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org et longecity.org

• Source of the photo : wood frog hibernating

Should mankind be augmented? If it’s for all of humanity, I’m for it. In the current context, we are promised by transhumanists that all this will happen (around) 2020 or 2030. But between now and the next 10 years, we are already in the midst of extremely rapid change. And the question of augmented mankind must enable us, at least I hope so, to go beyond these great advances in medicine and technology, which are undeniable and will bring us a great deal. I think that this will indeed only be possible – the augmented human – if it is in the context of an augmented humanity. Pascal Picq, paleoanthropologist and writer, source Le Figaro (video of a talk, translation), October 1, 2018.

Theme of the month: Rejuvenation and Society

Very often, those to whom we talk about human longevity imagine a world of decrepit old people with no energy. However, scientific research on aging aims to reduce and even stop the aging processes.

If we succeed, women and men will be able to live much longer in the same state of health as they were when treatment began.

Or rather, it could go far beyond that, the search for therapies to stop the process could be continued and allow rejuvenation, a decrease in the visible age.

The hope of rejuvenation through the intercession of divine powers, especially in the myth of the Fountain of Youth, is probably almost as old as that of a life without aging.

For centuries, women and men have also dreamed of products that could restore the beauty and vigor of youth. Today as in the past, in the cosmetics industry, hundreds of billions of euros, dollars and all the world’s currencies are spent on product research and even more on advertising these products to improve physical appearance. But all these cosmetic agents are in principle only effective… cosmetically.

Finally, the hope born of purely medical research is also ancient, from testicle transplants to stem cells. However, despite many promising attempts and even more dramatic announcements, in this year 2018, no substance, no therapy, has a proven long-term rejuvenating effect for humans (or indeed for any mammal).

But today’s impossible could become the banality of the day after tomorrow. In 1900, thousands of attempts to fly « heavier than air » had been unsuccessful. Twenty years later, at the end of the First World War, aircraft had been used for countless purposes, from dropping bombs to passenger transport and peaceful mapping to the identification of military targets.

In the rest of this letter, some issues and the potential social, political and cultural consequences of rejuvenation techniques will be discussed.

What age would we choose? The physiological aspect.

Mortality, and to a lesser extent morbidity, increases with age, and exponentially. The most desirable physiological age from this point of view is about 20.

In a world of optional aging, there would probably be a few unconventional people not taking rejuvenation therapy. On the other hand, logically, those wishing to « surpass nature » would probably go as far as the ideal physiological age and would not stop on the way. To draw a parallel with the current situation, there are a few (very few) people who do not cook their food or use mobile phones. Even fewer still cook their food halfway or use a mobile phone every other day.

What age would we choose? The aesthetic aspect.

We have never yet been able to « uncouple » the aging process that allows more experience and the aging process that causes the deterioration and then the death of every human being after a maximum of 122 years. The passage of time to gain experience is of course positive. There is a famous African proverb that says that when an old man dies, it’s a library that burns to the ground.

It is therefore conceivable that the women and men of the future will prefer to have a physical appearance of a mature person rather than a young person. However, it is also possible that age may be marked by signs other than those of the body, such as the appearance of clothing. Moreover, at present, differences in physical appearance between the ages of 25 – 30 and 45 – 60 are tending to diminish thanks to overall progress in public health (medicine, diet, lifestyle, etc.).

Parents and grandparents physically resembling their children: would that be disconcerting?

Some may regret the « good old days » when people over 75 were so physically different. They would be deprived of the « beautiful natural spectacle » of progressive degradation.

Theoretically, we could also fear a society of « perfectly young and beautiful », uniform, bland and interchangeable humans.

But strong uniformity is unlikely. Both in terms of physical characteristics and clothing, not to mention personality, it would be logical for citizens to bring out their socio-cultural environment, which of course includes the period during which we grew up. To imagine what could happen, the science fiction film « In Time » is interesting. In this film, citizens experience an eternal physiological youth (but die if a computer clock orders it). As for as everything else goes, society is composed, as it is today, of « nuclear » families (father, mother, children). Quite quickly the viewer clearly « feels » who the children are and who the parents are, whereas all of them are physiologically young. In other words, a society can easily mark the age of its citizens without the need for physiological appearance.

We could also imagine that some people would go through phases of different physical appearance, older and then younger or the opposite.

Rapid changes or sudden changes?

First, we must make a remark based on pure logic. No matter what happens, no one will be more than 200 years old before the year 2100. This is obvious, but it often eludes those who are concerned about the potentially « upsetting » nature of rejuvenation therapies. Indeed, the oldest person in the world is 115 years old today and will only be able to reach 200 years of age in 2103, whatever happens. Even if a perfectly effective therapy were to be discovered tomorrow, it would take decades for a significant number of citizens to live longer than 122 years (the maximum lifespan ever reached so far).

At the same time, if therapies allow rejuvenation, they would probably only allow gradual changes. And even if it were technically possible to change one’s appearance overnight, it is likely that the majority of citizens would prefer gradual changes for themselves.

Obligatory rejuvenation or optional rejuvenation?

Those who oppose longevity research often say that stopping aging and dying of old age is impossible (they are right) and will always be impossible (they may well be wrong, but only time will tell). This statement is often capped off by a somewhat contradictory statement such as « I want to still be able to choose to grow old ».

This type of declaration is illogical at two levels.

First, to date, no one chooses to age or not to age. We cannot choose to age any more than a stone endowed with consciousness could « choose » to fall.

Secondly, and most importantly, if rejuvenation therapies are developed, they will not be any more mandatory than it is now mandatory to receive treatment when we have an illness. Initially, few people would take the therapies. Then the movement would spread. As rejuvenation therapies become more widespread, the fundamental right to a healthy life should appear more and more important. Deterioration due to old age could become as undesirable tomorrow as plague and cholera are today.

In this case, an old man who dies would become an exceptional event. Almost all of us would have more time to increase our knowledge, the number of projects we undertake with others, our capacities, and more time to teach and cooperate with those who are the youngest « chronologically ». We would also have more time to ensure that the entire planet is a sustainable environment that can support a long life. Life would also become an increasingly precious commodity as our time horizons expand.

At the same time, it would also be important, to be democratic and pluralistic, to allow those who wish to continue to age to do so, like the Amish in the United States who do not use certain technologies.

Eternally young, a deadly bore or a wider field of exploration than ever before?

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon wrote British novelist Suzan Ertz.

It is not impossible that one day longevity will be boring and that some people will decide to age again. But in fact, boredom affects as much, if not more, young people who have only « a few years on the clock ». Older people are often less bored, although their physical capacities and activities are decreasing. The taste for life would be even greater if people of advanced age were to benefit from rejuvenation treatments.

A world of women and men choosing their biological age would not, however, make the world perfect. This would be a world to be improved with environmental, technological, social and cultural challenges. It would also be a world where we could « de-haste » ourselves, take time, consume less frenetically, be less competitive and collaborate more with each other.

                                The good news of the month:
The Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing was a success

From November 8-10, around 100 researchers and research activists for a much longer healthy life met up in the centre of Brussels. This was an opportunity for high-level scientific exchanges, but also for discussions about the financial perspectives (how to find funding for the most promising research) and even political perspectives.

Notably, we may see some pro-longevity candidates in the May 2019 European elections.

To find out more:

• In general, see in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org

• Photos : Antonin Kovar aged 25 and 102

The search for life-prolonging interventions has often been perceived as a purely academic pursuit or as an unorthodox medical enterprise, with few or no practical results.

Yet, in fact, these studies, which explicitly aim to prolong human life, have often been a formidable, albeit rarely recognized, motivation for biomedical research and discovery. Ilia Stambler, June 2014 in The unexpected outcomes of anti-aging, rejuvenation, and life extension studies: an origin of modern therapies

Theme of the month. Products that destroy senescent cells.

There are many more cells in our body than human beings who have lived on the planet, probably around 40,000 billion. These cells reproduce by dividing, grow, die, absorb and excrete substances… In short, they are living entities that function in our body with a certain autonomy and for an extremely variable duration that can range from a few weeks (120 days for red blood cells) to a whole human life (most neurons).

As far as we know, our cells are directly descended from an organism that appeared nearly 4 billion years ago. More precisely, our cells come from the fusion, two billion years ago, between two descendants of the original organism: the primitive cells and what are today the mitochondria.

When a cell malfunctions, it is normally eliminated quickly. There are many mechanisms that lead to cell death, the best-known being apoptosis sometimes also called “cell suicide”.

But it also happens that cells that are harmful to the rest of the body continue to live. The most well-known case is cancer, an « anarchic » multiplication of cells that results in the death of the carrier individual if the body’s control mechanisms or adequate therapy do not interrupt the multiplication.

Senescent cells

Another major category of cells in poor health has been the subject of great attention in recent years by researchers working in the field of the fight against aging. These are the so-called « senescent » cells.

Substances used to destroy these cells are called senolytics. The term is based on the word « senescence« , i.e. in biology, the process of progressive degradation due to aging, and the word lysis which refers in particular to the degradation of organisms by the action of a physical, chemical or biological agent.

A senescent cell is a cell that does not function effectively for the rest of the body. It has a metabolism whose functioning has harmful consequences for the rest of the body. It accumulates and secretes pro-inflammatory factors that promote the development of age-related diseases.

The objective of the ongoing research is to destroy these cells, but of course without significant negative effects on healthy cells. This is therefore a goal quite close to that sought in the fight against cancer, where it is necessary to eliminate cancer cells without eliminating healthy cells. Products designed to destroy cancer cells are also being tested as senolytics.

Many substances have been tested in recent years on mice and some products are beginning to be tested on humans. Treatment with senolytics results in targeted apoptosis of senescent cells. It should be noted that it is not necessary to remove all senescent cells but only part of them. It is even possible that a treatment that killed all senescent cells would be counterproductive. Successful treatment reduces inflammation. On the positive side, arterial calcification is lower, reducing the risk of atherosclerosis.

To date, a positive effect has been established for mouse health levels in the short and medium term. One experiment yielded positive results with regard to the lifetime of mice, which increased by about 25%.

Tested products

Quercetin (a flavonoid) and Dasatinib reduce the « markers » of senescence in in vitro and animal studies. The anti-cancer drug Navitoclax was also examined as a senolytic.

Another flavonoid, fisetine is currently mentioned very frequently in scientific exchanges related to these new therapies, as are piperlongumine and Bcl-2 inhibitors.

Perspectives and limitations

Senolytics are currently the most frequently cited therapy in the field of research on aging. These are already-existing products, often natural (which are not very expensive to produce), whose mechanism of action is fairly well known and which could significantly extend healthy lifespan.

However, optimism about this should not be excessive. Most experiments on mice to date have not focused on longevity. The first human trials widely announced in the scientific community are only just starting. They will be double-blind and will concern elimination of senescent cells from the joints of osteoarthritis patients.

In this field as in other longevity research, greater public and private investment, faster knowledge sharing and the involvement of more researchers is desirable to enable those who wish to live in good health much longer to do so in as near a future as possible.

The good news of the month: More and more international activities concerning longevity.

There are so many activities informing researchers about human longevity that it is no longer possible to follow everything. Two conferences in Europe have recently taken place and two conferences are taking place in November:

• November 8, 9, 10 the 4th Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing in Brussels
• November 5, Longevity Forum in London
• October 4-5, the 3rd International Conference on Ageing and Disease in Nice
• From September 11-14, the Basel Life conference in the Swiss pharmaceutical capital.

To find out more:

• In general, see in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org et longecity.org

• Image source

People will vote with their feet once those technologies offer significant benefits. At the moment they have concerns about nature or God, but that will change if you can double somebody’s lifespan with genetic engineering (…).

People will use genetic engineering if you can ensure that your child won’t get Alzheimer’s disease (…). When it offers spare organs and the cure of aging, then of course it will be used.

Julian Savulescu bioethicist, September 2015, Source.

Theme of the month. A global mobilization for a common goal is possible

The International Space Station (ISS)

Sometimes at night we can see it with the naked eye. It is a point of light more visible than a star and which goes around our planet every 97 minutes. It passes at an altitude of 400 kilometers, far from the tiny film of atmosphere that envelops all the forms of life we know, everything we have, from our wildest dreams to our most horrible nightmares.

In this hostile environment, the United States, Russia and other nations including France have created a tiny oasis of 388 cubic meters of living space, continuously occupied since 2000. It is an object made of components so strong that they can withstand the vacuum of space and temperature variations that would kill us in a few tens of seconds, and yet so fragile that a meteorite of a few grams would be enough to destroy it.

Why are we talking about an international space station? Because the word station in French and English can mean, in addition to a place where you stop, a place where you can make scientific observations and the facilities that are located there.

The international station is one of humanity’s major collective projects. One of its objectives is prestige, but a prestige that is not directed against other groups. In this sense, this technological achievement is more collective, more united and more universal than the Apollo project of the 1960s. Because after Neil Armstrong’s « small step for man but giant leap for mankind », the first flag to be flown was not the United Nations flag but the American flag.

In the international station, most of the real work is scientific work. Unfortunately the ISS’s Space Station Biological Research Program was never started, particularly following the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. Nevertheless, experiments are frequently carried out, some of which concern the aging process in living creatures.

Other international scientific projects

Can an international scientific project be hosted on the surface of the planet without being part of a state? Yes, certainly. First, the majority of the world’s surface does not legally belong to a state. This is the part of the oceans that is outside  territorial waters. Then there is the Antarctic continent, which does not belong to any state, under an international treaty dating from 1959. This treaty, which was particularly relevant in the context of the Cold War, was intended to be peaceful and also scientific, as precisely expressed in article 2: Freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation toward that end (…) shall continue.

By means of an international treaty, other territories could be removed from the jurisdiction of a state. However, this is not essential for an international terrestrial station. Many international projects have been carried out without this requirement.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research with 22 member states, has played an important role in the development of the Internet. CERN was responsible for the creation of the first « web browser ». It should be noted from the point of view of international symbolism that CERN’s buildings are located on Swiss and French territory.

UNESCO created the concept of world heritage of humanity. Science is well represented there since the first category of item on the list is what represents a masterpiece of human creative genius. However, the emphasis is more often placed on beauty than on science. There is a symbolic international aspect since inscription on the list assumes that these things also belong to « Humanity ».

The World Health Organization (of which almost all the world’s states are members) carries out, among other things, the International Classification of Diseases (ICM), the 11th revision of which is currently in progress.

The Human Brain Project aims to provide an excellent understanding of the human brain. The project, which has been controversial, includes a  medical platform. It is a work that brings together 117 institutions from 17 states, most of them from the European Union but also from Switzerland, Israel and Turkey.

An international longevity station / An Apollo project / A Manhattan project?

An international project for longevity would be a collective and united way of seeking to achieve one of humanity’s oldest dreams. It would also be a means of implementing a little-known part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in Article 27 that Everyone has the right to (…) share in scientific progress and its benefits.

If the project starts on a non-governmental basis, it could be promoted by The International Council for Science. The ideal place would be a place where borders meet, but it could also be an international place for symbolic reasons as well as by choice of the participants.

An international station of longevity could involve:

• The part of the « Human Brain Project » that deals with medical issues. As far as we know, there is no living species with a complex nervous system that does not die of aging. Neurodegenerative diseases are therefore at the heart of human aging mechanisms.
• World Health Organization services and workers specifically concerned with age-related diseases.
• An international committee (Nobel Prize winners, specialists…) to examine the most innovative proposals.
• The best-performing scientists in the fields concerned.
• Researchers in the field of artificial intelligence competent in health issues.
• An international IT platform for providing data on longevity studies carried out and in progress. These are first of all human studies, but also animal studies. It is important that failures are also known.
• An international database of human genetic data relating to health for the exclusive use of public sector (and therefore non-commercial) research. The information, coming from scientific bodies competent in public health, is collected in a secure environment and specifically designed to collect information related to the extension of healthy life expectancy.
• An international group of doctors, nurses, health practitioners who were experimenting with new longevity therapies. These experiments involve elderly volunteers, well informed and concerned to enable those who wish to live in good health to do so for much longer.
• A team of ethicists, economists and lawyers to examine ways to accelerate research. The aim is to implement, as soon as scientifically possible, the universal duty to assist people suffering from age-related diseases and wishing to benefit from medical progress.

The good news of the month: Longevity Festival in California

From September 20 to 23, at San Diego Raadfest was held – the world’s largest annual event for longevity activists. This year, Ray Kurzweil spoke about the progress made in terms of longevity. Among the dozens of other specialists who spoke enthusiastically, some spoke of ongoing research, others of possible financial investments.

For more information:
heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org
Photo source

The numerous billionaires who are doing research into eternal life will soon enable us to live to 200 years old. It will then take relatively few steps before it reaches 1,000 years or before we even become immortal. I have great confidence in these billionaires and I understand their passion.

It is humiliating that life at one point simply pushes you aside. In this sense, death is an excellent technology that allows nature to thrive. After a person has served a purpose, a new one replaces it. But sooner or later, every technology will become obsolete. In the case of our mortality, it will take one or two major breakthroughs.

Manu Joseph, Indian writer and journalist. 17 August 2018, translated.

Theme of the month. On the role of a few very small organs in aging.

Each human being is a universe made up of hundreds of billions of cells but also of bacteria. Each of these entities is in turn a set of structures and corpuscles that we only partially understand.

All of the structures, organs, corpuscles etc.  which see to the functioning of our organism are of an extraordinary complexity. The links between the organs, the rhythms, the contacts with the outside, are almost always multidirectional. A glass of water that we drink, a feeling that we feel, an hour more and less sleep… everything has physiological effects.

We know more about our bodies than ever before. At the same time, a vast amount remains to be discovered. There is that which we do not understand. There is what which we still do not even know exists. And there are probably a lot of things we wrongly think we know. For centuries, tobacco was used as a medicinal plant and bleeding was one of the main remedies.

Among the hundreds of organs in our body, some very small ones are essential to our harmonious functioning. This letter discusses the role in longevity of the thymus, thyroid, hypothalamus, pituitary gland and hippocampus, five organs that together represent about one thousandth the weight of an ordinary adult.

Thymus

The thymus is at the centre of the immune system. It is a very small organ located close to the heart. Its maximum weight (about thirty grams) is reached at the end of adolescence.

The thymus specializes in the maturation of T lymphocytes  (T for thymus). Its role is to detect cells infected with a virus, or cancer cells, and destroy them.

One of the major aspects of aging is the decrease in the effectiveness of the immune system, which manifests itself in two ways:

• Infected or sick cells that should be destroyed are no longer destroyed
• Healthy cells are attacked (auto-immune diseases)

Allowing the entire immune system to function with reduced senescence is a major challenge. However, the thymus loses its volume throughout our life (the medical term is involution) until sometimes it disappears by being totally replaced by ordinary fat cells. As we age, we become more and more susceptible to contagious diseases.

If we could regenerate the thymus, we could help elderly people to fight infections more effectively. Scientists, including biogerontologist Greg Fahy, are studying ways to achieve this.

Thyroid

The thyroid is a gland located in the neck. It weighs about thirty grams and produces certain hormones (thyroid hormones). These hormones are vital and have an influence on all of the rhythms of the body: cardiovascular, growth and metabolic.

An important aspect of aging is the decrease in the production of certain hormones. Many doctors have long prescribed hormones to combat aspects of aging. Unfortunately, no strong influence seems to have been demonstrated in terms of longevity merely due to taking hormones. As far as the thyroid is concerned, curiously it is reduced activity of this gland that is associated with a higher life expectancy.

The hypothalamus and the pituitary gland

The hypothalamus is a very small part of the brain located at its base. It weighs only about 4 grams but plays a decisive role in many physiological functions including hormone release and regulating body temperature. It is connected to the pituitary gland, an even smaller organ weighing less than a gram, that produces many hormones, the best known of which is growth hormone.

The influence on longevity of these organs in the event of malfunction is clear and rapid. However, as is almost always the case in longevity research, the results of a modification aiming at an improvement are mixed. Growth hormone has been – and still is – presented as an « anti-aging » product but no studies to date have demonstrated efficacy in terms of average or maximum life span in humans. The effect could even be the opposite.

The hippocampus

The hippocampus is a part of the human brain (and mammals in general) that has a shape similar to a sea horse (Latin name hippocampus). We have one hippocampus per hemisphere, both together weighing only a few grams. The hippocampus plays a central role in memory and orientation in space. In Alzheimer’s disease, the effects of the degradation of this organ are usually felt in the hippocampus before affecting the rest of the brain. This is marked by a loss of short-term memory and sense of direction.

We know a lot about the development mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and particularly Alzheimer’s disease, but we are still very far from a cure. We know that the hippocampus tends to lose volume with age, especially in sick people. But to date, unfortunately, for this organ as for the rest of the brain, no specific effective treatment exists.

And more generally

As discussed at the beginning of this letter, our body is a network of interdependencies of a complexity that no computer environment in the world can yet simulate, even in an approximate way. But the role of certain parts is fundamental, acting in particular on the speed of aging. Knowing these organs better will be useful in advancing our understanding of the mechanisms of aging.

Please note, however, that to enable women and men who wish it to live (much) longer in good health, it is not necessary to fully understand the mechanisms of aging. To draw a parallel, even today, we don’t fully understand how anesthesia works.

Even if understanding the body with its components and its functioning will be insufficient, it is indispensable. What is also indispensable is to seek to find out, in particular through experimentation with informed volunteers, what we can do to reduce the suffering and illness caused by senescence.

News of the month. No supercentenarian over 115 years of age alive but human cells have been regenerated

On July 22, 2018, Ms. Chiyo Miyako, a Japanese woman who was the oldest member of humanity, died aged 117. She is succeeded by another Japanese citizen, Kane Tanaka, but she is only 115 years old. And according to the Gerontology Research Group, there are only 6 people in the world « confirmed » as being more than 113 years old.

But even if this does not yet translate into longer maximum lifetimes, research is progressing. The human body ages, partly because our cells age. British researchers at the University of Exeter are trying to reverse cell senescence. According to a published scientific article, they succeeded in the laboratory, by using resveratrol-based molecules, in reversing part of the aging of certain human cells (fibroblasts).

Note that a few years ago, in France, Professor Jean-Marc Lemaitre and his team had already succeeded in turning cells from centenarian people into stem cells.

For more information:

• In general, see in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org

• Photo: a cerebral hippocampus and a sea horse

Some people say, “Oh, you shouldn’t do enhancement” but the thing is we do enhancement all the time — to some extent, all aging reversal is enhancement. Vaccines are enhancement… I think I’m just now getting up to speed after 63 years of education. Aging reversal is something that will buy me and many of my colleagues a lot more time to make many more contributions, so you might consider that a meta-level contribution, if we can pull that off. World-renowned Harvard University biology researcher George Church (source).

Theme of the month. How to contribute financially to research for a much longer healthy life

Introduction

If you have considerable financial means you can afford medical care more easily than less well-off citizens. But whether you are rich or not, with a good « genetic capital » or not, whatever your precautions and your anti-aging clinic visits, in the current state of knowledge your chances are low of living more than 100 years if you are a woman and beyond 95 years if you are of the weaker sex for longevity. And whatever happens, you will not live past 122 years for a woman et 116 years for a man.
To go further will require complex and costly research. If informed citizens pay money to support this research, it will be positive in a direct way by funding the research. It will also be positive in that it will show the growing interest in these issues.

What could you do about it?

Moderate financial support

If your financial means are limited or if you do not wish to make large donations, your action can still have an impact. If every adult citizen of the world donated €1.50 per month this would make an annual investment for longevity of nearly €100 billion. That would be more than the wealth of Bill Gates, the richest person in the world.

But we are far from having a convinced world population. You could give the price of one coffee a day (about €500 per year) or at least the price of one coffee a week (€100 per year).

For small-scale support it makes sense to focus on one goal. The organization that is best known and most active for longevity is SENS (Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence). Aubrey de Grey, the head of this organization, is the world’s best-known biogerontologist. His tireless commitment to this cause led him to give most of a large family inheritance (upon his mother’s death) to fund research.

The Forever Healthy Foundation is another non-profit organisation, this time from the German-speaking world, founded by Michael Greve. It works in partnership with SENS.

Small streams make large rivers but for donations to « rain down », encouragement is needed. If your investments are moderate you can make them visible by countless means: virtual of course (Twitter, Facebook…) but also by contact with your family. There is also an organization that collects donations for longevity and communicates widely about donations. This is the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF).

You can also make donations to organizations that are more involved in communication and exchange of ideas on this subject: at European level Heales (Healthy Life Extension Society) and at international level Longecity and the International Longevity Alliance.

Substantial financial support

If you wish to donate a larger sum (€10,000+) you can certainly ask that the amount be allocated to a research project which seems especially interesting to you. This can even include helping profit-making organizations, because the number of ‘charities’ for longevity research is unfortunately limited. In the French-speaking world, Elvesys is doing some very promising research and also publishes a lot of information about longevity.

In the case of a specific project, a cautious approach is to seek advice first (of course) from the people working on the project in question, but also from one or more longevity specialists who do not have a direct interest in the area concerned.

Major financial support.

A researcher’s work is expensive. €100,000 a year for the financing of a researcher (remuneration plus necessary equipment).

You might decide to invest money in longevity rather than giving it away. A British billionaire, Jim Mellon, recently wrote a book on this subject. This is outside the scope of this letter.

If you have capital to donate representing months, years, decades or centuries of work by a researcher, consider that every day more women and men die from age-related diseases than there were deaths in Hiroshima in the 24 hours following the bombardment. An effective therapy advanced one week by your financial intervention would save nearly a million lives. If you think we have a good chance of doing so, you might even consider it an ethical duty to intervene.  

If you make public your donation, the impact will be all the greater the larger it is and the more you are personally disinterested.

Charity begins at home

More selfishly, consider, if you are over 40, that even if you are a multi-billionaire your remaining life expectancy (less than 50 years) is less than that of a baby being born today in the poorest country in the world. Over the next three to four decades, therapies for aging can change dramatically. But they could also remain fairly stable. You can help shape humanity’s evolution… or not.

With significant capital, moreover, it will most probably be possible to be associated with the conduct of research or even the use of new therapies.

Whether you are rich and powerful or weak and poor our time, despite its imperfections, is the best time in the history of humanity to be alive. And you can contribute financially so that tomorrow will be better especially for the older people, that is to say the weakest among us.

The good news of the month:
an international short film competition for longevity
a WHO code for aging

Until September 15 you can take part in the Longevity Film Competition, an international short film competition created to help raise awareness of the importance of fighting age-related diseases. The first prize is 10,000 dollars. An international jury composed of filmmakers, scientists, entrepreneurs and experts in the fields of regenerative medicine, aging and longevity will decide between the candidates.

The international classification of diseases (ICD) is the international standard for clinical diagnosis, epidemiology and health management. As part of the preparation of the 11th version (CIM-11), a code (XT9T) « relating to aging » was introduced. This code allows for clinical evaluation and approval – and for insurance companies to provide cover for – therapies targeting this disease.

For more general information, see in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org