I've long thought that a person of any imagination at all could live a long, long time and never get bored. I'm pretty certain I could spend a thousand years right here in our Susitna Valley homestead without growing bored, as long as my wife was around, too. Any person of any creative ability should be able to keep occupied, even for that prolonged span.
Now, the state of the art in longevity is still tinkering around the edges. Medical advances have managed to get most folks past the traditional three score and ten, but not all that much farther. It may yet happen, though, and there's just one problem: Some of the people who might benefit may be people we don't necessarily want around for hundreds of years.
Which brings us to Russian strongman-dictator Vladimir Putin, who was recently caught on a hot mic talking longevity with another such unsavory person: China's Chairman Xi Jinping.
When Vladimir Putin was captured by a hot mic telling Xi Jinping that humans could achieve immortality by replacing their organs, some dismissed the exchange as eccentric small talk between aging autocrats.
In fact, during the conversation at a Beijing military parade last September, Putin appeared to be describing a Kremlin-backed longevity initiative that has become one of Russia’s flagship scientific projects.
Like Silicon Valley billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, Putin has long been fascinated with antiaging research. But in Russia, Putin’s quest to stave off decline is now a state priority relying on methods as wide-ranging as organ printing, harvesting mini-pigs and exposure to ultralow temperatures.
Last month, Russia’s government announced that scientists are developing a gene-therapy treatment aimed at slowing cellular aging as part of “New Health Preservation Technologies,” Putin’s $26 billion longevity initiative.
The notion of a pair of near-immortal Communist dictators should be enough to make anyone wonder if all this longevity work is really a smart idea.
Read More: Peace? Putin Indicates Russo-Ukraine War Now 'Moving Toward Completion'
Putin Pouts As Rubio Locks in Armenia Minerals Deal and Advances 'Trump Route'
Here's the funny thing: Putin's attempts, or at least what we know of them, are a bit on the odd side.
Another auspicious avenue? Creating human organs in a lab for transplantation, one of the lifespan-extending innovations Putin likewise spoke about in Beijing. All these efforts are part of the national longevity initiative he unveiled in 2024, which promises to save 175,000 lives by the end of the decade (the figure had an awkward wartime echo, roughly matching independent estimates of Russian troop losses in the invasion of Ukraine, as critics noted at the time).
Russian state scientists appointed by Putin have focused on two key technologies: bioprinting, or 3D-printing living tissue, and xenotransplantation, or growing human organs inside mini-pigs, a porcine breed deemed genetically compatible to humans. Russian scientists working with government agencies claim to have bioprinted human cartilage tissue and a mouse thyroid gland, with the aim of achieving human organ replacement by 2030. A similar timeline has been discussed for growing organs inside pigs.
Plenty of people have had organ transplants, and bioprinting may, someday, lead to breakthroughs wherein a transplant recipient isn't forced into taking immunosuppressive drugs to keep their bodies from rejecting the new organs. While this could prolong the lives of people who were doomed to die early, it doesn't seem likely that they could extend an otherwise healthy person's lifespan all that much. Why? Well, here's why, and I'm going to tell you: There's one organ that cannot be replaced, and it's core to our very beings: The brain. Even the healthiest among us start showing some signs of aging, mentally, as we get into our later years. Even people who remain fully competent, as my father was until he died at 94, still start have annoying troubles with short-term memory. Imagine a person at 200 or 300 years of age, with that 200 or 300-year-old brain; the brain doesn't regenerate; it doesn't heal itself; some functions of the brain can be rerouted, so to speak, in the event of an injury or an event, but only to a certain extent.
The brain can't be replaced. You can't 3-D print a new one. It carries our identities within its curves and crenellations, and we can't move those into a new brain, even if we could produce one.
Something Putin and Xi don't seem to have discussed (that we know of) is caloric restriction, or, in effect, starvation. Watts Up With That's Eric Worral has some thoughts on that.
Caloric restriction is something which can be done right now. Something strange happens to the body when you reduce food consumption to the equivalent of one cheeseburger per day – everything seems to slow down. Rats, hamsters, even monkeys given caloric restriction diets tend to live significantly longer and have less health problems than their fatter cousins. But before you rush to empty your freezer, this kind of extreme diet, bringing your body to the brink of death by starvation, carries substantial risks. Such diets require constant medical supervision to ensure you don’t tip over into a life threatening health crisis. You have to be born with the right genes – not everyone’s body can take this kind of abuse. So please have a long chat to your doctor before attempting anything like this.
Frankly, if my traditional Saturday cheeseburger at the lodge means I'll only live 95 years instead of 100 (my family are long-lived people on both sides) then I'll take the 95 years, and enjoy myself while I'm about it.
Still, this is Vladimir Putin, Tsar Vlad I, that we're talking about here. He's starting to show signs of aging himself; he was, after all, in his prime back in the heady days of the Soviet Union, the loss of which he still regrets. Is he a guy we want around for another 40 years? Does he really want to keep Russia in his grasp for another 40 years, if he can figure out how?
I think we can safely assume the answers to those questions are "no," and "yes." Fortunately, from a biological standpoint, this isn't looking very likely.
I could still manage a thousand years without getting bored, though. As long as my wife got a thousand years, too. Without her, things would not be anywhere near as much fun.
