Illustration by R Fresson.
According to one estimate, the revenues of the global anti-ageing industry will increase from about $200bn today to $420bn by 2030. One sure sign of its rosy prospects is the involvement of high-profile people in the US who have made vast fortunes from the internet. If many of them can avoid taxes, why not death?
The sums invested in anti-ageing research by such tech players as the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the Trump-supporting venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, show what happens when such ideas meet big money. The same goes, somewhat predictably, for the activities of the Amazon founder and aspiring astronaut, Jeff Bezos, who has previously funded an anti-ageing setup called Unity Biotechnology, and, via his personal investment vehicle Bezos Expeditions, is now reportedly a donor to a newly founded California venture called Altos Labs.
Plenty of other companies – they have such names as BioViva, Youthereum Genetics, the Longevity Fund and AgeX Therapeutics – are also trying to somehow arrest ageing. Piercing through the research and journalism that surrounds what they are doing, you occasionally get the vague feeling that some of the people involved may eventually come across some or other revelation about age-related diseases, but there is usually a sense of fuzzy, hubristic ideas, and money that would be better spent elsewhere.
Besides, even if anti-ageing techniques eventually proved successful, what would be the social and cultural consequences of literally pathologising old age?
If we lived much longer, would we also be expected to work indefinitely?
How would the planet cope with a hugely increased population, and who would be first in the queue?
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