Obsessed with immortality again

The pursuit of everlasting life is a story as old as time. So why is longevity once again big business, and who’s set to benefit? Katie Kenny reports.

When 31-year-old Canadian musician Grimes revealed in an Instagram post that her ‘‘training regimen’’ involves a sensory deprivation tank, maximising mitochondrial function, and experimental eye surgery to block blue light, many assumed she was joking. (BuzzFeed described the post as ‘‘a wellness word vomit that is a masterclass in Millennial satire’’.)

In an age of vaginal steaming, bee-sting therapies, and young blood transfusions, it’s not beyond imagination that Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) would replace the top film of her eyeball with an orange ultra-flex polymer.

Keep in mind, too, she’s dating technology billionaire and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. While Musk has previously said he’d be content living for ‘‘100 good years’’, many of his friends in Silicon Valley are obsessed with the idea of immortality. Longevity is a big business, with new startups out to disrupt the ageing process and treat or – ideally – cure death.

The arguments against immortality are strong, says Amy Fletcher, an associate professor of political science and international relations at Canterbury University. There are technical, environmental, and social objections to it. ‘‘The meaning of life is that it stops.’’

Still, the money continues to flow, so the researchers push on. In 2016, the longevity field was almost nonexistent. Last year, investors bet

US$850 million (NZ$1.3 billion) on anti-ageing startups.

Humanity’s desire to cheat death dates back to the dawn of civilisation, with society’s interest in it fluctuating over time. As a social scientist, it’s not so much progress in the field that interests Fletcher, as people’s pursuit of it.

She references the Holy Grail and the Fountain of Youth. In the 19th century, there was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, inspired by Galvandi Aldini’s experiments with shocking corpses ‘‘back to life’’. In the 1960s, Robert Ettinger’s The Prospect

of Immortality and the subsequent birth of the cryonics movement — the practice of freezing human bodies, or body parts, in the hope of one day reviving them.

Fletcher, who’s studying the topic in the context of the modern era in Western culture, says a concerted focus on immortality tends to coincide with periods of social and economic stress.

The world is seeing rapid technological advancements and, with that, increasingly wealthy technology titans wanting to invest in cutting-edge ventures. But those things aren’t necessarily new, she says.

‘‘Most of these technology billionaires are technically Baby Boomers. I think they’re what’s motivating this return to the quest for immortality.’’ (It’s generally accepted the boom began in 1946 and ended in 1964.)

American journalist Michael Kinsley writes: ‘‘Baby Boomers [...] will be the second dementia generation, but the first to know that it’s coming.

‘‘Our grandparents generally died too young or too poor to worry about what used to be called ‘senility’.’’

Of the 79 million Boomers in the United States,

14 million are expected to develop Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.

In 2016, dementia cost New Zealand $1.7 billion, a bill which is expected to blow out to more than

$4.6b by 2050. By 2036, one in four Kiwis over 65 will be affected by brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, Brain Research New Zealand estimates.