In a long review of David Boyd Haycock’s “Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer,” Steven Shapin discusses historical and recent proposals for extending the human lifespan. Shapin’s article seems off to me: he just seems to spend too much time mocking the idea of extending life. He keeps bringing up silly examples such as the biblical Methuselah, Mel Brooks’s 2000 year old man, and Old Tom Parr, who lived in the 1600s and claimed to have lived 150 years old. (Shapin didn’t even need to go back that far; I remember as a child reading of a bunch of Russians who claimed to have lived to about 150–as I recall, they ate a lot of yoghurt.)
This is all fine–after all, Shapin’s a historian and is reviewing a history book–but he seems a bit too eager to laugh at modern life-extenders such as Roy Walford, who promoted the caloric restriction diet but died at age 79. Connecting to the Bible and even Old Tom Parr is fine, but why does Shapin keep bringing them up in his review? Not to mention bringing up the “Groundhog Day worry about endless boredom . . . the meaninglessness of life in a world without death . . .” I mean, talk about weak arguments in favor of mortality!
My guess is that to Shapin–as to me–the potential of much longer life is scary. I’d love to live to 150 or beyond (I think); certainly I’m not happy about the idea that my life is more than half over!–but, still, there’s something scary here, and not just because of issues such as environmental devastation, global inequities, and so forth. I think the scary thing is: What if the calorie-restricters and vitamin-poppers are right? What if we could live to 150 if we only lived right? Then when we die peacefully in our beds at 80, we can be torn up about the 70 years that we’re going to miss. I mean, who really wants this guy (with his “private blog” and all the rest) to be right? Far better to laugh it off or just not think about it. That’s what I do.
P.S. I was also surprised that Shapin didn’t discuss the theory (which I first read in Plagues and Peoples, I believe) that premodern hunter-gatherers lived healthier lives than those in agricultural societies, at least until recently. This would relate the historical stories of the ancients having long lives.
Like Sportin' Life sang, "Methuselah lived 900 years, yes, Methuselah lived 900 years,
But who calls it livin', when no gal will give in, to a guy who is 900 years?"
The social and political scientists should consider what having a conservative older generation around for an extra 80 years might mean. If as some say, the older generation dying off is what allows the scientific consensus to advance, or social mores to progress (didn't 538 have something to say on precisely this point about gay marriage?), then lifespan extension could be a profoundly dangerous invention, the kind of thing a future Fidel Castro or Kim Il Sung will use to turn decades of oppressive rule into centuries.
Let's do everything we can to let people have their threescore and ten in comfort and health, then forget our selfish desire to live forever and make room for others who, we can hope, may have benefited from our good works, learned from us and remember us fondly. That's immortality too, of a kind.
Decline in health with the introduction of agriculture is more than just a theory. It is pretty widely observed in multiple neolithic and bronze age societies.
See http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n12/full/1… for an overview of some of the evidence.
See the fable of the dragon-tyrant for another point of view.
Caloric restriction reduces the rate of metabolism – so sure, you live longer, but you the same amount of work done more slowly. What good is that? I guess they should teach caloric restriction techniques to history majors, but not sure if others would benefit.
Has anyone looked at this?
I also remember reading about long-lived Russians in my youth. I think such longevity claims were another tool of the cold war. But the idea that eating yogurt could help you live up to 150 years actually goes back to Nobel prize winner Ilya Mechnikov (1845-1916). He wrote several books on the topic.
One effect of the longer lifespans in the twentieth century seems to have been to push back when people get married and started on careers.
In the Middle Ages, you might have people dying for various reasons at the age of 50, but they were usually not only raising children as teenagers but were doing the work they were going to be doing for the rest of their lives.
Society has chosen to handle increased life expectencies by inventing "adolescence" and "retirement", and now an adolescence in all but name in peoples' twenties, to keep the actual productive years the same. I'm not sure if this is a good thing because there are signs that people think quicker and are more creative when they are younger.
Also menopause hasn't budged. So people are running up against all sorts of problems starting families later and there is a market for fertility treatments. But the reason families are being started later is because people are inheriting property and getting started on their careers later too.
I'm reminded of the Greek myth about the mortal who was given eternal life by the gods but not eternal youth, so he just turned into a cricket.