Get a jab for eternal youth? Actually, no thanks
IDON’T know when the portal for the age reversal jab will open – but I’d imagine that, when it does, there will quite a lot of demand. Leaving aside the head-melting details of how the jab will be administered down the age cohorts – if the drug does all its researchers claim, then presumably the people who get it first will need it least by the time it works its magic – the availability of any sort of agereversing concoction is tantalising.
No wonder Professor Luke O’Neill, who has been talking up the scientific breakthrough from researchers at Harvard University, is excited. With his natural optimism and endless energy, the Good Professor strikes me as a perfect candidate for a treatment that, he tells us, has the potential to turn 40-year-olds into 20-year-olds.
‘Your muscles, your eyes, your skin, all of it, go back to an earlier age’, he says of a treatment that, ‘if this pans out, maybe on your 50th birthday you get it as a present, your skin will improve and your body gets restored to when you were 20’.
I note that Professor O’Neill didn’t get into what happens if, like me (and Prof O’Neill, for that matter) you’re already well past your 50 birthday bumps by the time the wonder drug gets to you. But in any event, I wonder if the demand for age reversal – and even a whiff of eternal life – might be quite as robust in older age groups.
As it happens, I’ve been aware of this research for quite some time now as my daughter is constantly sending me links to obscure articles and updates on all the ancient mice that it’s already turned into teenagers. She is 25, in the prime of her youth, and apparently can’t wait to turn back the clock. So why I don’t seem to quite share her enthusiasm for eternal youth is baffling to her.
I’d certainly like some of it back. I’d like my eyes to work properly again so that I don’t have to waste quite so much of my twilight time reaching and rooting for glasses.
I’d love to still be able to run stupidly long distances without having to consider the effect on my knees first. My arthritis doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it does most sufferers, but of course I’d prefer not to have it at all. I was never a fan of high heels but it would be nice to have the option to wear them again. And there’s no doubt that, if I didn’t buy so many lotions, potions and solutions for my sagging skin, I’d be considerably wealthier.
But – like most things that appear to be too good true – it’s in the terms and conditions of age reversal that I’d get bogged down.
For openers, nobody really wants to be The Oldest Swinger In Town, so age reversal would only be an attractive prospect if everyone else was doing it too. We might all strive to appear younger than our years, but nobody wants to stand out from their peers and look as though they’ve only half a life lived.
And crucially, only a Kardashian would really want to look younger than their own children.
YOU cannot think of the wrinkles, the squinting and the creaking knees of advancing years without also acknowledging the wisdom, the pragmatism and the acceptance that comes with lived experience.
The dawning of the age of caring less about what other people think of you is one of life’s great liberating gifts, and if that elder person superpower had to be surrendered in order to have lusher eyelashes, then I’m not sure that I’d be signing up for the miracle cure to life.
Let’s leave aside the fact that the planet is already massively overcrowded and that people who live awesomely long lives are frequently incredibly lonely for another day – of which there will, after all, be many, if Luke O’Neill’s enthusiasm is shared.
And let’s not even start on how you’d catch up on 20 years of social media memes so that you could be down with the kids forever.
Let’s just be glad that ancient baby mice might pave the way to treating and even reversing some debilitating diseases, and not worry about signing up for eternal youth just yet.
Maybe by the time the elixir gets to us, they’ll be doing half-doses. That, I think, would do me fine.