What if you knew of the greatest tragedy in human history, one that’s been ongoing since the dawn of life itself, and what if nobody would even believe that it was happening? That seems to be the situation for people like Bill Andrews and Aubrey de Gray, biologists and life extension theorists who believe (loudly) that human beings have the capacity to end the process of aging. Under this way of thinking, the people alive today are racing against a clock they cannot see; if mankind advances far enough, quick enough, you might just live forever.
A new documentary called The Immortalists is making its way from festivals to wider distribution, picking up cred as it goes. The two aforementioned scientists are the topic of this focused argumentative piece, which sets out to show you the life extension movement and two of its most successful exponents. They take you through the science and philosophy of death, and you may be surprised at just how close we really are to radically extending the human lifespan — if you can pay for a full court press of treatments and procedures. There’s a definite Occupy vibe to much of the life extension crowd, which follows rather logically from the idea that more and more people are going to be around and consuming resources for longer and longer periods of time.
The life extension movement (sometimes called the “radical” life extension movement) doesn’t just believe that we could end death by aging, but that we most assuredly will (assuming we don’t first end humanity in some great nuclear/climactic holocaust.) It’s almost a belief in manifest destiny, but the scientific principles underlying it have been getting increasingly solid. Google’s bet big on life extension with its Calico project, and more and more general electronics manufacturers are getting into biomedical technology too; even if you don’t plan on directly extending human life, you can still make the tools needed to administer the treatments. If more and more of us are going to live longer and longer, that’s provides a lot of potential for growth in the life support industry.
The Immortalists screened at SXSW 2014, but its plans for release are uncertain right now. The above trailer may be all we get on the topic for a while, as they get ready for a full release (or, hopefully, a jump to Netflix). Immortality may not come in the forms we imagine, but science really is on its way to making the 100-year lifespans achievable by most first-world people with reasonably healthy lifestyles. That’s a mark you will almost certainly see go by in your lifetime — and then where do we go?