Science is making advances in the field of anti-aging, but do we really want to live forever?

Mayflies only live for one day. Galapagos tortoises can live up to 170 years. Greenland sharks hold the world record, living for over 400 years.

Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize winner and author of the recently published Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, opened his Harvard Science Book Talks to a packed audience last week by noting the huge variability in lifespan in nature.

As far as we know, death is certain, but there are no physical or chemical laws that dictate that death will occur at a specific time, which raises other, more philosophical, questions.

The “why” behind these huge variations, and the quest to extend human lifespan, have driven frenzied attempts (and billions of dollars of research funding) to slow or stop aging. Ramakrishnan’s book is a sobering exploration of the current scientific understanding of aging and death, which fundamentally boils down to the accumulation of chemical damage to molecules and cells.

“The question is, can we address the aging process while still retaining our human identity,” Ramakrishnan said in a conversation with MIT Technology Review reporter Antonio Regalado, “and can we do it in a safe and effective way?”

Even if science made immortality or extremely long life theoretically possible, should we pursue it? Ramakrishnan likened the question to any other moral consideration.

“There are no laws of physics or chemistry that say it’s impossible to colonize other galaxies, outer space, or even Mars,” he said. “I’d put myself in that same category. It would require significant progress, and we’re not there yet.”

“In fact, we’re pretty close to making major breakthroughs in our quest for immortality,” Ramakrishnan said. “The field is moving so rapidly that a book like his can only capture a small part of it.” He then took the audience on a brief tour of some of the major directions in aging research, many of which he said started in unexpected places.

Rapamycin, a drug first isolated from Easter Island bacteria in the 1960s, was found to have antifungal, immunosuppressant, and anticancer properties. Rapamycin targets the TOR pathway, a large molecular signaling cascade within cells that regulates many functions essential to life. Rapamycin has attracted renewed attention due to its potential to reverse the aging process by targeting cell signaling associated with physiological changes and diseases in older adults.

Other directions include mimicking the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction that have been shown in mice, and a particularly intriguing area called cellular reprogramming, which means taking a fully developed cell and essentially reversing that development.

The most famous fundamental experiment in this field was done by Kyoto University scientist and Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, who demonstrated that with just four transcription factors, adult cells could be reverted back to pluripotent stem cells, creating what are now known as induced pluripotent stem cells.

Ramakrishnan, a scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for elucidating the structure of the ribosome, said he felt qualified to write the book because he was “not involved” in ageing research: As a molecular biologist who has studied the fundamental processes by which cells make proteins, he had connections in the field but wasn’t particularly close to any of it.

While researching the book, he tried to avoid interviewing scientists involved in commercial aging-related ventures.

The potential for conflicts of interest is great.

Research into aging has exploded worldwide in recent decades, with government agencies and private companies spending billions of dollars, and the consumer market for products is predicted to reach $93 billion by 2027.

As a result, Ramakrishnan said, we are now seeing an increase in false or exaggerated claims from companies promising to help you live longer, citing as an example a supplement being sold on Amazon designed to lengthen people’s telomeres, the parts of our genes that shrink as we age.

“Obviously, these aren’t FDA approved, they haven’t been clinically tested, and it’s not clear what the evidence is,” he said.

But it seems there is still demand.

This article appears courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, the official newspaper of Harvard University. For more University news, visit Harvard.edu.