In the Long Run, Even Baseline Humans Will Live for a Very, Very Long Time
It is at present somewhat out of style to point out that, yes, obviously, it will be possible in the future to ensure that humans live for a very, very long time. That will be true for even baseline humans lacking all of the various genetic modifications one might propose a future scientific community to be capable of, modifications to introduce the numerous distinct forms of resilience to the mechanisms of mammalian aging exhibited by naked mole-rats, whales, elephants, bats and so forth. Control over aging is a subset of control over molecules and their positions. To be as reductionist as possible, degenerative aging is a matter of the wrong molecules in the wrong places. In the bigger picture, our technological capabilities are inexorably heading in the direction of far greater control over all matters relating to the arrangement of molecules.
However, we now have a longevity industry that is very focused on the short-term, the next step on what will likely be a very long road towards biotechnologies that will completely control aging. For reasons that remain unclear to me, the cultural complex of media, academia, regulators, and industry is allergic to considering both the short-term and the long-term in the same few breaths. Near all talk of imposing visions vanishes in favor of incrementalist rhetoric as the venture funding ramps up and regulators become involved. Thus it is pleasant to see that at least some few individuals are still willing to stand up and say the obvious: that people will absolutely live for thousands of years at some point in the future, and that what we do now in research and development for the treatment of aging is a part, a small part, but a part nonetheless, of the continuum of technological progress that will lead to that outcome.
How long can human beings live? Although life expectancy has increased significantly over the past century, thanks largely to improved sanitation and medicine, research into hunter-gatherer populations suggests that individuals who escaped disease and violent deaths could live to about their seventh or eighth decade. This means our typical human life span may be static: around 70 years, with an extra decade or so for advanced medical care and cautious behavior. Some geneticists believe a hard limit of of around 115 years is essentially programmed into our genome by evolution.
Other scientists in the fast-moving field of aging research, or geroscience, think we can live much longer. A handful of compounds have been shown to lengthen the life spans of laboratory animals slightly, yet some scientists are more ambitious - a lot more ambitious. João Pedro de Magalhães, a professor of molecular biogerontology at the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham in England, thinks humans could live for 1,000 years. He has scrutinized the genomes of very long-lived animals such as the bowhead whale (which can reach 200 years) and the naked mole rat. His surprising conclusion: if we eliminated aging at the cellular level, humans could live for a millennium - and potentially as long as 20,000 years.
"I actually did some calculations years ago and found that if we could "cure" human aging, average human life span would be more than 1,000 years. Maximum life span, barring accidents and violent death, could be as long as 20,000 years. This may sound like a lot, but some species can already live hundreds of years-and in some cases thousands of years [such as the hexactinellid sponge and the Great Basin bristlecone pine]. If we could redesign our biology to eliminate cancer and evade the detrimental actions of our genetic software program, the health benefits would be mind-boggling. I think it's possible. Is it going to happen soon? I think it's quite unlikely. Even if you can figure out how aging works, it is not easy to develop interventions."