Never say die

The rejuvenation idea gets real

The oldest dream of mankind is finding the Fountain of Youth and being forever young. And just when it looks like we’re heading into the darkest age when dying young might be a good idea, we appear to be getting close. Life itself is dealing us a hand of ultimate irony.

Aside from all the grim news of wars, approved mass murder and sky-high mortgage rates, there appears to be a genuine research breakthrough and since I am noticing the acceleration of ageing in my own body, this is of some interest. I have always had a deep interest in this topic. The very first freelance article I ever sold was on this subject, waaaay back in the early seventies when life was so much more cheerful, and I was only in my thirties.

The article I wrote was satirical in tone though based on the state of medical research up to that moment. The takeaway was that all we needed to do was to figure out now to stop cells from making ‘mistakes’ and quitting altogether after replicating for a mere fifty times. My editor dubbed it The Immortality Pill. Just for kicks, I am attaching this file at the end of this update. Suffice it to say that none of the grand scientific pronouncements of that era came true. There really wasn’t a whole lot of progress in the field though not for lack of effort. Science never rests and ever since we got our hands on gene technology, the chances of actually figuring out how to reverse the ageing process were definitely improving.

And now the gears have clicked into place at last. Though I am still looking at the topic through my satirical lens, and ready to be disenchanted yet again, it seems that something big is moving the needle just as ageing has really taken hold for me personally. But for all you younger whipper snappers out there, this could be your escape hatch from ageing ‘normally’, which is not for sissies, I can assure you.

Who knows, it could be that those of you who are in your early old age, around sixty to seventy years and of course, younger yet, may benefit and suddenly find that rejuvenation is actually within your grasp. Yuvan Research has just published the results of experiments on old rats who were injected with pig plasma nanoparticles and were dramatically rejuvenated. The results have already been replicated and the implications for humans are quite stunning: if this procedure is as effective on humans, an eighty-year-old woman like me would wake up to being transformed into her twenty-eight-year-old self. I rather like the sound of that especially since I am looking particularly ravaged this morning. You can read the story here:

https://innovationorigins.com/en/groundbreaking-study-reverses-ageing-in-rats/?utm_source=substack&utm

Simultaneously, a Spectator article on a 46-year-old man named Bryan Johnson, a millionaire described as a ‘body hacking, pill popping, blood swapping man who never wants to die’ appeared this morning and caught my attention. You can find out more about his extreme, downright monkish devotion to living forever here:

The never say die industry seems to be flourishing and since I am an inveterate trend watcher, the simultaneous appearance of these two news items on one of my lifelong interests galvanized me to share this rare, good news with my Substack followers. I suspect you are as tired of the darkening public sphere as I am, so I hope this diverts and cheers you up as it did me. Just imagine: if you’re younger than I am, you could be looking at a life without the Zombie Apocalypse of Old Age.

Now, if we could just figure out how to stop killing each other and then justifying it…

The Immortality Pill

Monika Ullmann

Published by the driving magazine, WestWorld, circa 1975; edited for length in 2012. The state of science has advanced since then, but not by much. We are still far from having this Pill, in spite of all our efforts. The article proves that satire is my natural, fallback position.

Ever since the beginning of recorded wrinkles, man/woman has been madly searching for a cure for ageing and its natural consequence, dying. To the ancients, it was known as the quinta essentia, or the fifth elixir. And we still believe in it.

Dr. Alex Comfort, a leading authority on the process of aging claims that, ‘by the 1990s, a cheap, readily available and easy-to take anti-aging drug could be in our medicine cabinets.”

And Dr Bentley Glass, biologist and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, sees quite clearly that, “We are either the last of the mortals or the first of the immortals.”Ah, all is vanity. From Hippocrates and Plato through Francis Bacon and Erasmus of Rotterdam right down to the good Dr. Comfort, the greatest minds have tried to solve the problem of aging. Apparently, none of this learned gentleman wanted to die. However, they all have, with the exception Dr. Comfort, who might yet avoid it, if he can live up to his own predictions.

But where did the idea of the fifth elixir come from? It seems that we can lay the blame squarely on the Greeks, who started a rumour about the existence of a Fountain of Eternal Youth. During the Renaissance, when anything Greek was held in high esteem, several expeditions set out in search of this magical fountain.

The most famous of these was Ponce de Leon’s little jaunt, which ended with the discovery of Florida. Ponce was sure Florida harboured the Fountain of Youth and to this day, one can see elderly Canadians flocking down there, still searching.

During the Middle Ages, the theory was reworked to suit the bloodier times. Drinking, or better yet, bathing in the blood of a child was considered an excellent remedy against old age. A very ancient method, first tested by King David, is still popular today with both genders: sleeping with a virgin. Though it might get you into trouble with the law as today’s virgins are usually underage. Other cures that have stood the test of the centuries are less fun, but quite effective as far as they go.

Hippocrates’ advice to eat moderately and exercise regularly has recently experienced an astounding revival. Other ancient physicians like Avicenna and Maimonides agreed with old Hip, adding only that a little wine and hot baths wouldn’t hurt, either. Now you know why sitting in a hot tub with a glass of wine is good for your health.

All this is fairly innocent stuff compared to what people tried in the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century. We all know that the Victorians were obsessed with sex (unlike us). There was one Dr. Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard, who injected himself with extracts from sheep testicles. He claimed it enabled him to enjoy a wicked sex life with his much younger wife.

Since it was common in those days for older men to marry much younger women, he had no shortage of patients. But the medical profession, deciding that celibacy is the normal state at Dr Sequard’s age (72), rejected his ideas and ruined him, both as a doctor and a man.

The search continued with the highly respected Dr. Elie Metchnikoff, who collected a Nobel prize in 1908 for his work on white blood cells. He thought that aging was due to poisons absorbed from the large intestine. So, he simply removed it. This did stop the aging process for many of his patients---by killing them right then and there.

Well, those were the bad old days. Now, with the twenty-first century less than twenty years away, and modern medical research going full tilt, we shall surely find the real fountain of youth. So, let’s try to unravel the mysteries behind the brave new words of Drs. Glass and Comfort. To wit: we die because our cells die.

This basic fact was discovered, quite accidentally, by Dr. Leonard Hayflick, chairman of the Department of Microbiology at Stanford University. He found that, instead of going on indefinitely, cells reproduce exactly fifty times, and then quit. And as they age, the cells make more ‘mistakes’ as they replicate, rather like a photocopy of a photocopy. Dr. Hayflick believes that aging is the result of the accumulated mistakes made by the cells.

If this theory is correct, it may be possible to ‘slow down’ the entire process and thus prevent the message in the cell from becoming faulty, and we will have the Pill within a decade.

There is, however, a second theory, based on the cell division process, which, if proved correct, make the Pill much less likely. It postulates that aging is genetically programmed into the DNA; this means that there is a gene that tells the cell, after ninety or a hundred years, to just pack it in. If this is so, not even the most optimistic researchers believe that we will be able to ferret out the offending gene in the near future.

No matter which theory proves correct, experiments are ongoing and showing results. Injecting new cells into old ones is one being tried with some success.

There are other theories of aging, such as environmental ones that revolve around diet and the environment. The most controversial method is known as mega-vitamin therapy, explored in the book Psychodietetics, by Drs. E. Cheraskin ad W.M. Ringsdorf. They claim that the standard reducing diet is deficient in nutrients and they want us all to go on their Optimal Diet and have their vitamin deficiencies analyzed. So called ‘normal’ doses of vitamins simply aren’t doing the job and they say that the right amount is highly individual and determined by age, habits, and other factors. For example, emotional loss causes loss of calcium and people living in polluted cities should take high doses of Vitamin D.

Dr. D. Harman, professor medicine at the university of Nebraska, believes that the yellow smog covering our cities produces ‘free radicals’, which cause butter to turn rancid and leather to disintegrate. These free radicals have the same effect on human tissue. Vitamin C and E prevents this. Though the evidence favours megavitamin therapy, the medical establishment is not amused and considers it a form of quackery. (Bryan apparently disagrees strongly)

In fact, only exercise and moderation in all things get their stamp of approval. All that other stuff is suspect. So. What to do? Well, you can always try eating and drinking very moderately, and having a regular and moderate sex life for exercise. And while you are waiting for the Immortality Pill to pop out of some lab, be sensible and stick to the tried and true (bear marrow & virgins?) as is the Canadian way.