麻豆传媒

In 100 Plus, futurist Sonia Arrison celebrates medical advances, but fails to question fantastical figures suggesting we鈥檒l live happy and healthy to 150

鈥淭HE trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain鈥檛 so.鈥� So said Mark Twain, and his words were echoing in my head as I read 100 Plus.

The science of ageing has reached a critical phase. In the developed world we live 30 years longer, on average, than our ancestors born a century ago, but the price we pay for those added years is the rise of chronic diseases. We are engaged in battles with pernicious killers such as heart disease and cancer, and in recent decades we have gained ground in the tug-of-war against these and other diseases. But unfazed by our successful battles, the hand of biological ageing 鈥� with its firm grasp on the rope of life 鈥� is always able to give that final, fatal tug.

This brilliant and frustrating book by Sonia Arrison is about the 鈥渘ext longevity revolution鈥� 鈥� one she envisions in which everyone will live healthy and happy until 150. (I鈥檓 hearing Mark Twain now.)

There is a longevity revolution on the horizon, but it is highly unlikely to be as Arrison envisions. That said, the chapters she devotes to advances in regenerative medicine and the search for interventions that slow ageing are exhilarating. Growing new limbs, copying internal organs like a Xerox machine, exponential increases in computing power, better eyes and ears 鈥� I could read stories like this endlessly.

We need such vision to help carry the science forward, and some of the most exciting advances in the scientific study of ageing are forthcoming. Arrison paints a realistic picture of the science driving the next longevity revolution, and makes the case that, if we play our cards right, humanity will reap huge dividends for the effort. In that way, this book is the most comprehensive treatment of the socioeconomic consequences of life extension that I have seen.

But the book鈥檚 Mark Twain problem is the underlying frame of reference: the presumption that we are on the verge of 150-year life expectancy and that somehow all of those years will be healthy. Arrison has apparently been drinking the radical-life-extension Kool-Aid with her eyes closed. The 150-year target is pulled out of thin air. It would require half of the population surviving past 150 鈥� and many people living to 200 鈥� and the health of younger (more obese) generations to improve, not to worsen as it is now. But those issues are never addressed.

Still, the costs and benefits of life extension and, more importantly, health extension, are subjects in desperate need of open dialogue, and Arrison begins this process with elegance and style. What I fail to understand, though, is why Arrison and the proponents of radical life-extension she listens to feel the need to invoke exaggeration and hyperbole to get the message across that the next longevity revolution is worth fighting for.