SURVEY – To live to 120 or 130 years … a prospect which is not impossible today. If this exponential lengthening of life fascinates us, it will disrupt our societies over the coming decades.
One morning, eight years ago, Monique Léonard pushed open the heavy wooden doors of Jaeger Institute. This luxurious establishment, located in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, is also known as the Institute of Medicine and Physiology of Longevity.
It welcomes adults who want to benefit from support, to live longer in good health. A demand which is made more and more frequent within an aging European population, and whose life expectancy increases by three months each year.
In her sixties, Monique Léonard met Dr Christophe de Jaeger while she was going through difficult times. Between a painful divorce and significant pressures at work, this former teacher at the University of Toulon felt both physical and psychological discomfort.
Monique then started looking for solutions to feel better. She wanted to regain the feeling of a young and healthy body, without wanting to lengthen her life expectancy considerably.
Monique Leonard, patient at the Jaeger Institute: “A lot of things were moving in my life at the time. It was a time of turmoil. I felt the need to put myself in hands I trusted to improve my general condition. I wasn’t necessarily thinking of longevity … “
This request, Dr de Jaeger understood it well. A geriatrician specializing in the biology of aging, he offers very specific care, which makes lifestyle the key to increasing people’s longevity (see report).
An approach based on methods of prevention and correction of biological defects, which gave its name to a new school of thought, longevism. He advocates a new role for the doctor, who is no longer considered as a healer, but as an accompanist of healthy individuals. “I have the weakness to think that it is good to support people in their health. », Underlines Dr de Jaeger.
Christophe de Jaeger, geriatrician and researcher: “It’s good to support people in their health, life expectancy in good health has been declining for at least seven years. It’s a real problem, but nobody talks about it … “
The fantasy of immortality
Other currents go much further, even dreaming of immortality. The best known, the transhumans, is interested in longevity, with very high ambitions, sometimes worthy of a science fiction film. The most extreme even imagine that they can live 500 years, see 1000 years.
Intellectual movement born in the United States, carried in France by the Technoprog association, transhumanism nurtures the hope that nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and cognitive sciences (NBIC) will revolutionize human existence, and lead to an exponential lengthening of life.
Unlike longevity, it is therefore the technologies of the future that are at the heart of transhumanist thought. It is enough to discuss with Didier Coeurnelle, spokesperson of Technoprog, to notice it.
“Traditional medicine and drugs alone will not make it possible to exceed biological limits and the world record for longevity, held by the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died at 122 years old. Only technologies can go beyond ”, he notes.
Living healthy # up to 130 years … A prospect that may no longer be impossible: These approaches …
Posted by Why actor on Sunday 6 December 2015
A point of view shared by Dr Laurent Alexandre, close to the transhumanist movement and urologist and founder of the DNA sequencing company, DNAvision. This aims to sequence and interpret the genome of individuals, on behalf of hospitals and research centers. An analysis that aims to identify potential genetic mutations at the origin of diseases.
However, for Dr Alexandre, transhumanist ambitions now face a major problem: the technologies capable of revolutionizing life expectancy have not yet reached maturity.
Laurent Alexandre, president of DNAvision: “Maximizing your life expectancy is lifestyle, but it leads to a real biological limit, which can only be broken by NBIC technologies, which are not yet mature …”
This does not prevent him from thinking that the human being who will live 1000 years has already been born. “Someone born today will only be 85 in 2100. And in 2100, the technology will be unimaginable. So, someone born today can without too much difficulty make it up to 2150, ”he emphasizes. But this “immortality” is by no means for tomorrow.
Stammering scientific perspectives
Science is also closely interested in the issue of aging and longevity. Over the past decade, many researchers, particularly in France, have demonstrated biological and cellular mechanisms capable of delaying aging or rejuvenating the body, with a view to extending life (see box).
Inserm researcher Ivan Matic wanted to understand “why we age”, when only 25 to 30% of longevity depends on genetic factors of individuals. His work focused on understanding how the environment could be modulated to increase life expectancy. In particular, he showed the interest, in primates, of imposing caloric restrictions to increase life expectancy.
Jean-Marc Le Maitre’s team, at theInstitute of Functional Genomics of Montpellier, stood out in 2011, by reprogramming cells of people who are centuries old into pluripotent stem cells, free of all signs of aging. Another famous biologist, Miroslav Radman, has shown the role of proteins encoding genes in the aging process.
Problem: this research is not yet exploitable at the therapeutic level. There is still a long way to go before medicine can reverse the aging of individuals.
A philosophical fight
Longevity and transhumanism do not differ simply in terms of techniques, but also in terms of ethical reflection. First battle horse for transhumanists: persuading individuals that old age is an enemy to be overcome.
“Throughout the history of mankind, hardly anyone has been confronted with the aging mechanism because people die early due to difficult living conditions. If we want to be provocative, we could say that it is aging that is not natural. It is therefore necessary to go against nature in order to live longer, ”emphasizes Didier Coeurnelle.
Didier Coeurnelle, spokesperson for the Technoprog association: “If we want to be provocative, we could say that it’s aging that is not natural. It is therefore necessary to go against nature to live longer ”
For the detractors of transhumanism, by dint of wanting to slow down their aging, individuals miss the point. “It is really a restricted vision of human life that transhumanists have. They reduce life to the simple number of years or to good health when we know that the taste for life is the quality of links and relationships, which cannot be artificially increased ”, emphasizes Pierre-Henri Tavoillot , philosopher.
The fascination with immortality has always existed. Whether you put your hopes in technology or prefer to influence your lifestyle, extending your life poses a number of challenges, and in particular that of the social and economic cost.
Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, philosopher: “There comes a time when transhumanism gets a bit delusional with a focus on the sole desire to be immortal. Nothing says that eternal life will be better. It is a restricted view of life, reduced to the number of years. What makes the quality of life is the quality of the links ”
Read the rest of our survey:
The Jaeger Institute acts on biological age
Live a long time, but at what cost?
Unlike the United States, France does not have a great tradition of research on aging. However, over the past ten years or so, a good number of its researchers have distinguished themselves in the field, focusing on the biological and cellular mechanisms at the origin of the degradation of the body.
the Dr Emile Beaulieu worked in 1963 on DHEA, a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands. It has demonstrated some of its anti-aging properties, especially in postmenopausal women, thanks to a study on women over 70 years old. Without being a “makeover”, as it has sometimes been described, DHEA would improve the bone density of its women and their libido. It is not considered a drug, but is however only available in pharmacies, on prescription.
Inspired by the work of Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka, Jean-Marc Lemaitre and his Inserm team succeeded in 2011 in reprogramming senescent cells and human centenary cells into pluripotent stem cells, using a modified cocktail of six genes. They then showed that this process led to the reversibility of the process of cellular aging. After reprogramming, the cells obtained no longer showed any signs of aging, and were capable of reforming all types of cells in the body, with a capacity for proliferation and increased longevity. A major step forward for regenerative medicine.
The works of‘Ivan Matic are studying how the environment can be modulated to increase life expectancy. Several experiments in primates, for example, have shown that calorie restrictions can increase lifespan, but reduce the fertility of animals. He also showed that, in woodpeckers, certain manipulations of the intestinal flora can act on longevity.
Miroslav Radman believes that aging is due to oxidative damage to the proteins that code for genes. This oxidation increases with age. For him, the mechanism of aging is therefore not directly linked to a shortening of telomeres, the non-coding DNA sequences located at the ends of chromosomes, as many scientists argue. He believes that the aging process can be reversible, by creating “anticorrosion treatments”, which would protect cells from oxidation.
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