Modern WisdomPROFESSOR DAVID SINCLAIR | Can Humans Live For 1000 Years?
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 28,291 words- 0:00 – 15:00
What's happening? I'm coming…
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening? I'm coming to you from the beautiful Harvard Medical School in Boston. I arrived last night. I've had the requisite amount of caffeine, and I'm about to go and sit down with David Sinclair, who is a biologist and a professor of genetics here at Harvard Medical School. You may have recognized him from the Joe Rogan podcast he did a couple of months ago. That was interesting and exciting to say the least. Introduced me to a lot of topics that I didn't know about before and I'm super excited to follow up on some of them today. So yeah, stay tuned. Professor David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School. How are you today?
- DSDavid Sinclair
I'm doing really well, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm very, very glad to be here. I'm, uh, off to see your friends at InsideTracker later on. Uh, I'm gonna go straight over there and have a sit down with them and go through my, uh, my results. See what, see what they've got to say.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Oh, really? You've had your blood drawn?
- CWChris Williamson
I have indeed, yeah.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh-huh. That'll be exciting.
- CWChris Williamson
I went to Quest Diagnostics, uh, a week and a bit ago in California, um, and I went through my results with Stacy. If it's not, if she's not called Stacy, I'm gonna be in so much bother. Um, with one of the analysts at InsideTracker, and they took me through all of my stuff earlier on actually, which was super interesting.
- DSDavid Sinclair
So are you, uh, older or younger than your actual age?
- CWChris Williamson
I am 31 in real years, and the inside of my body's 36-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Oh, wow. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... unfortunately. Um, that is because glucose being out of range-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... weighs very heavily. Um, and the only thing I've got is slightly out of range glucose, and my lipids are a tiny little bit out as well. So I need to eat soluble fiber.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah. You'll, you'll enjoy that. Um... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Soluble fiber, when I was looking at the list of potential groups of foods, it was just 20 different types of beans.
- DSDavid Sinclair
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And I was like, "I have-"
- DSDavid Sinclair
Oh, no.
- CWChris Williamson
"... I have no types of beans in my diet." Like, are baked beans, like does that count as a bean? Uh, I-
- DSDavid Sinclair
I'm sure it does. It has the desired effect, I bet.
- CWChris Williamson
It does indeed. So the first question I've got for you, what, what do you do here? I know we're in Harvard Medical School. (laughs) I haven't got the first idea about what it is that you do.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, so I, I come in every day to my lab. Uh, there's about 30 to 35 people in, in my lab. Um, and I instruct them to discover really cool stuff. And that's basically my job. Uh, and they'll come to me and they'll say, "I've got an idea to discover something." And I'll say, "That sounds good, go do it." Or, "That sounds really boring, don't bother doing it. And by the way, how much is that gonna cost?" And they'll tell me, "It's gonna cost about $2 million."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
So it's my job to bring in the money and let them, uh, figure it out. But the theme of my lab is focused on aging, and has been since I started the lab, uh, about 20 years ago here at Harvard. And so I, I run a center for aging research here, and we are really working, uh, not just on trying to understand why we age, but also how do we slow down and reverse that process as well.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's all being conducted here, but also offsite at one of your multiple companies? Or is it mostly here or is it... How does it work?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, there's a giant ecosystem. Um, this is the Menlo Park version, uh, of the ecosystem where we do the very basic discovery. We can ask fundamental questions about what is the clock of aging? Uh, can we reprogram the body? Is it safe? Uh, and can we extend lifespan? Mostly of animals we work with here. Uh, these are, um, laboratory animals. Uh, outside of the university is, uh, a network of companies, um, institutes, colleagues, collaborators, um, literally thousands of people around the globe. Uh, Europe, Asia, Australia, and others, uh, all working with us on trying to understand these questions, answers to these questions. But also what makes my lab rare, uh, and unusual is we're very innovative. So that we file patents once every few months. We spin out a company, uh, at least a couple times a year. Uh, and the reason for doing that is not because... Well, I do like starting companies, but that's not why I do it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, I do it because I'm not satisfied with just publishing work. I feel that my role on this planet, if I have one, is to try and help people with their lives. To live longer and healthier and more productively. And just making a discovery in a yeast cell or a mouse isn't doing it for me. That's just part of what I'm here for.
- CWChris Williamson
You need to apply that as well.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Exactly. So most of the companies that come out of this lab are biotech companies working on medicines, but we also do a whole range of other things. We have biosecurity, so protecting the world from pathogens and, and other nasty things that can go on. Um, we also work on bioinformatics, so trying to understand... So like InsideTracker, how do you estimate somebody's age and help them with their living and what they're eating? Um, but mostly it's molecules that we hope will be drugs one day to not just treat one particular disease of aging, say diabetes or heart disease or cancer, but to have a radical type of medicine, uh, that would actually slow down all diseases as, at once with a single pill.
- 15:00 – 30:00
(laughs) …
- CWChris Williamson
uh, thread, uh, on Reddit. And, uh, he just decided that he would post, um, "One of my buddies is going to go and do a podcast with Professor David Sinclair. Does anyone have any questions?" And I thought it would be like, I don't know, th- sh- "How many, how many pieces of fruit and veg should I eat a day?" Or, uh, "How long is the optimal window of a fast? Like, you know, 16:8 or should I be doing like a, a, a 18:6?" Or whatever it might be. And the list of questions that I had to try and translate, I've not even ... uh, they're in Evernote, but they're just staying there because I can't pronounce half of the words that are in there.
- DSDavid Sinclair
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
But I think one of the things that it definitely did identify to me is that-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, longevity at the moment appears to be a very emerging field within kind of the, the general public or becoming more of a, a general public concern.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I mean, everyone's aging, right?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Right. Well, we've always been aging as a species for ... ever since we were, you know, primordial cells in the soup four billion years ago. Uh, and we've always been conscious of our mortality. But I think there are two things happening, Chris. One is that the science is mature, and it's no longer an if, it's just a when. We have the technology. We understand how to slow down aging, maybe even reverse it. And the other is that the world I see is bifurcating into two types of people. Uh, those that wanna understand a topic in detail, so your listeners are those type of people, and God bless them. Um, this is the level of detail that typically members of the public would never know about. Uh, and then the rest of the world watches cats playing pianos and stuff. But-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
... thank goodness there are people who really care about the world and what's happening and, and wanna learn in detail beyond what, uh, typically a newspaper used to tell people.
- CWChris Williamson
I agree. Uh, I think that we've emancipated the ability for people to, uh, to learn, uh, in as much detail as they want. And there is a, there is a horse for every course, uh, with regards to what people want to learn. Um, you're totally right, that for myself, I ... w- we get comments all the time on the, on the YouTube videos and stuff, like a too long, didn't read, like, "Can someone do a TL;DR of this particular podcast?" And I'm like, "I- i- if you want a shortened version of this, there's someone ... or if you want to watch something which is short, YouTube is awash with three and four-minute videos. Like, feel free to go and watch that." I particularly, and I know that the listeners do as well, they enjoy the nuance and the subtlety and the detail and, and deconstructing things down to its component parts over the course of one, two hours. That's what I think is important. And it definitely sounds like that's helping people to buy into more difficult topics potentially like this.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Oh, for sure. Uh, because when a newspaper reporter, not all of them, but many of them over the, my career, which now spans 25, 30 years, uh, they latch onto this, and it's always hyped. "Oh, we're gonna live forever. You should drink more red wine." Blah, blah, blah.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
And I can tell you as a scientist who's spent his career working on the cutting edge of research at Harvard Medical School, publishing in the world's best scientific journals, it's really frustrating. And it, it's actually taken a lot of willpower to make it through those times, because the nu- almost every time what I say comes out-... changed, misshapen-
- CWChris Williamson
And you get a bastardized version of whatever it is that you've said.
- DSDavid Sinclair
And no wonder the public says, "Yeah, this is another stupid story-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
... it can't be true." But if you listen to two hours of someone like me talking, uh, you really do realize that the science is way more advanced than people ever knew about. And as a scientist, I, I just, you know, thank heaven, thank people like you-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
... who can actually allow people like me to, to reach many people at a level that never was possible before.
- CWChris Williamson
(smacks lips) I totally agree. Um, how much ... This is a question that's been percolating around in my head. How much do you think the increasing interest in longevity with the general public is due to a fear of death?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, probably m- most of it. Most of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Most of it?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Deep down, I think we're all afraid of dying. Or maybe not the, actually the day we die, we're not afraid. "Oh, I'm not afraid of dying." I've looked death in the face a few times in my life, it's not that scary. But I think we're all fearful of, uh, of not being around. It's gonna be pretty boring. We're never g- probably never going to see our loved ones again, or our friends. That's pretty sad-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
... if you really think about it. And it actually takes a lot of courage to think about our own mortality. Mostly by the time we're age six, we forget about it and don't think about it again till we're about 50 years old. Uh, and that interim period we assume we're immortal. Of course we're not, uh, and I don't think we ever will be. Uh, but I think what's going on is that, that once you realize that something can be treated potentially, then it gets exciting. You know, a hundred years ago people used to say, you know, cancer, and gangrene, dying from a splinter, childbirth, these were things that were just the way life is or was, just the way it goes, and so people didn't really care that much about it. Once antibiotics were developed and other medical treatments, people actually were okay talking about it. And the same is happening with aging right now. Uh, the best analogy I could give in terms of human history, uh, it's like the Wright brothers, where in 1902 they built their Wright Flyers and, uh, we're, we're strapping on engines and, uh, and seeing where we can fly.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, you are right that the frame is moving with regards to w- the fidelity and the resolution with which we see life. That a splinter could have killed you a hundred years ago, or that ... I read a, an article not too long ago about the fact that so many prehistoric, uh, people died from, uh, issues with their teeth. That they had, uh, m- mouth infections, that was one of the-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Really? Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... one of the, the main things, 'cause they, they had no way to be able to, uh, comprehensively clean their, uh, their mouths. And, um, you are right. As, as time begins to move forward and as the, um, public perception hasn't yet caught up with the technology that's available, the status quo as it is at the moment, well, aging's always gonna be there. We've always got older and now we, we will forevermore, was the same as a hundred years ago. People have always died in childbirth, or people have always died from gangrene, or a splinter, or scurvy, or whatever it might be.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Exactly. That's exactly right. And that's why I think that especially younger people who tend to listen to this kind of show more than older people, uh, really get it. They get that we're going through a scientific transformation and that the future that most people think is coming, that's not gonna happen. The future is something quite different, and people who are born today, or people in their 20s and 30s are going to see radical changes that are far bigger and far more important than the iPhone. You know, does anyone really care about the next, you know, additional memory in an iPhone? I think we reached a point where a lot of that technology frankly is, is being, you know, quite disappointing with the new releases.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Mm-hmm. …
- DSDavid Sinclair
this is not beyond possibility in terms of technology today-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
... here in the, uh, the second decade of the 21st century. 22nd century, it's gonna be quite something to see. And biology, getting back to the iPhone, I think biology is gonna really make a much bigger difference to our lives than any electronic technology.
- CWChris Williamson
Wikipedia.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I do love Wikipedia. Um, did you listen to Alex Jones on Joe Rogan, the most recent one?
- DSDavid Sinclair
I did, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I mean, I don't really even know where to start with that. But the, the-... trans human-animal hybrids in the flesh farms, wherever it is. Like, is, is, that the sort of thing that's doable at the moment with current technology?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Oh, (sighs) yeah, we, we do create, uh, chime- chimeric animals, uh, in the lab.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, and so-
- CWChris Williamson
What's-
- DSDavid Sinclair
... that, the Island of Dr. More-
- CWChris Williamson
Can you define chime- chimeric, please?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, admit to, it's a, an organism that's comprised of cells with different genomes. And, uh, so it's a, it's a mixed organism. And yeah, we, we could do that but, uh, I mean, that, that to me seems highly unethical and even unnecessary.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I, I think everyone would, would agree that that's the case. But it doesn't necessarily stop the technology from occurring. And I suppose the line between how do you... What if you had to do a lot of iterations of chimera, um, proliferation, and X number of years from then you would develop this unbelievable new, uh, solution to something you've been looking to work on? Does the cost-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... outweigh the, the benefit?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Right. Well, I think we all, we all have personal views on that. Um, one area that I think is really interesting in this building right here at Harvard Medical School is, uh, whether or not you think it's okay to use animal organs for humans. And so one of the reasons we don't use pig, uh, livers for transplant is they're full of pig viruses. But George Church in his, uh, spin-out company are actually removing those viruses, cutting them out of the pig genome so that these livers might be useful. Um, and you might say, "Well, we, we shouldn't be breeding pigs to, to have transplants." But if we're eating the rest of the animal and throwing away the livers, why not?
- CWChris Williamson
That's a very good question. I'll be interested to hear what the listeners think about that particular ethical dilemma about, I suppose, the vegans and the vegetarians might be firmly on one side of that already. They don't need-
- DSDavid Sinclair
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It doesn't matter whether or not the liver's going into someone's body. I think they, they've already made their stance on that.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah, I, I would charge the, the listeners with the following thought. What if it was your mother or your child who needed a liver transplant and there were none available, would you sacrifice a pig?
- CWChris Williamson
That is a difficult question to answer, isn't it?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So moving back onto the, uh, questions that you get all of the time ringing through the phone. What are the, um... What would you say are the foundational, uh, strategies that people right now should be looking to incorporate into their lives to improve longevity?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Right. Well, one of the, the reasons that this field is, is taking off also is because there are things that people can do right now that we've learned are actually helpful for turning on these longevity genetic pathways. Uh, if I could give one piece of advice, only one, uh, and I will give more, but if I could only give one, the most important thing would be eat less. Eating less has been shown for, for centuries, but also in labs for the last 70, 80 years to be extremely effective in extending lifespan of everything from yeast cells, to worms, to flies, to mice, to monkeys. And if humans don't live longer for fasting and calorie restriction, then, then we'd be the exception on the planet. And I don't believe that we're an exceptional species, biologically speaking. Um, so eat less. What does that mean? Well, nobody knows what the perfect diet is. I get a lot of those questions.
- CWChris Williamson
What should I eat?
- DSDavid Sinclair
What should I... Well, what you eat is important, but when you eat and how much you eat are just as important as well. Uh, so why don't I, I give you an example of what I do as, as... You know, I do a fair bit of research and I've come up with my own best practices. Um, so I do intermittent fasting. And now there are a variety of those, and I think many of your listeners probably know them by name. But there, there's fast every other day, there's fast, uh, two days out of five, there's, uh, skip breakfast and perhaps have a late lunch and don't have a late dinner as well. Uh, that's the one that I prefer. I find it easier to skip breakfast and have a late lunch than to really go through days of, of being hungry. I can't tolerate it for too long. But I don't mind hunger pains for a few hours. Um, on top of that, uh, I take a, a drug called Metformin, which is prescribed for diabe- diabetics, type 2 diabetics, age-associated diabetes, which has two main effects. First of all, obviously, it low- lowers blood glucose. That's what it's prescribed for, for, for patients. Uh, but it also is, is quite rough on people's stomach, and I find that it actually stopped me from being hungry.
- CWChris Williamson
It curbs the hunger pangs.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Ah, so you've got…
- DSDavid Sinclair
it didn't live longer. And we found out because in the pituitary, it needs to be off rather than on.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, so you've got this physically incredibly robust mouse, but it's actually suffering with dementia and it's, like, super old and super wise.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, well, what happens with the pituitary is it controls grow- growth hormone.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sinclair
And so, uh, by, by turning it down in the pituitary rather than up-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
... uh, we actually ... It created small mice that lived a long time if we just tweaked it in that part of the body.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sinclair
But by turning it on in the whole animal, that turning it on in ... and gave the mouse a lot of growth hormones-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sinclair
... we got a, a bigger, more robust mouse, but it, it didn't live longer unfortunately.
- CWChris Williamson
You touched on growth hormone there. I remember watching, uh, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Chris Bell's, uh, documentary a long time ago where he was talking about, uh, recreational steroid use in America and said that, uh, a- amongst that, one of the, uh, commonly used compounds is human growth hormone. Uh, the UK is very different to the way that it is out here in terms of getting a prescription from your doctor and all that sort of stuff. One of the places that he went to was an anti-aging convention, um, and he made a joke about there being loads of old people there walking around. And pretty much every single stall was, uh, offering human growth hormone, I think exogenous human growth hormone, as a, a, a, a solution.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the truth in that, if there is any?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, I don't think there's any evidence in humans that it extends lifespan, growth hormone, uh, unless-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Does it shorten it?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, that's the debate. Uh, it's really not known. Anyone who says they know the answer really doesn't, doesn't know what they're talking about.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sinclair
But, uh, theoretically, it could, it could shorten lifespan for a couple of reasons.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- DSDavid Sinclair
One is, uh, so testosterone and growth hormone could make preexisting tumors grow faster-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
... potentially. Uh, but there've been a lot of studies where it's seemingly safe, at least over the course of a year or two. Uh, and so I think that... I hate to say this 'cause we all want perfect answers, but the jury's still out about the long-term safety.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, I think replenishing testosterone and growth hormone to levels that are natural in, in young people I think should be okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, that's my personal view. Uh, testosterone has been studied quite a lot in the elderly, and even though there were some benefits in terms of strength and, and muscle maintenance, uh, there was apparently no change in mortality. So we need to do more than just raise testosterone, I believe.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting. I guess there's a, a balance as well between quality and length of, of life as well, that you could potentially take something which may shorten your life, but if it only reduces your life by 5% but doubles your mobility, your, um, quality of life, however it may be-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I suppose that there's a, a very big balancing act that you guys constantly need to play when you're looking at these.
- 1:00:00 – 1:14:39
Yes. Uh, there's no…
- CWChris Williamson
to the whole topic area before your podcast with Joe, and I'm super excited now knowing about this whole new subdivision of science that I didn't really even know was, was this big. I'm super excited to see what happens, the same way as I read Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom and now I wanna know w- I, I'm super excited to see what happens, I'm terrified, but what might happen with AI. And it's the same for that. Um, do you feel like a very f- i- in a very fortunate position to be... have your finger in so many different longevity pies?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yes. Uh, there's no question that I wake up every, up every day, and most days, uh, I pinch myself that I'm in this position. Uh, it hasn't been easy and it's been not just hard work, I don't mind working hard, I love what I do. But it's been, uh, there's been criticism, there's been ups and downs, um, getting to-
- CWChris Williamson
There was nearly a bankrupt company at one point, wasn't there, and you took a big risk at some point. I think there was a...
- DSDavid Sinclair
Ah, sure. I mean-There's been so many things. So I've helped build about 15 companies and they all go through strife and running out of money. And a lot, most of the money that I make, I pour back into companies.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Um, you know, I've made more money than I would ever know what to do with. But what I want to do with that is, is pour it back in. And so my wife chews her fingernails because, you know, we're, we're multi- multimillionaires for about a month until I find a way to get rid of it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) The next, the next
- NANarrator
cool thing comes along.
- DSDavid Sinclair
I don't want the money. I want to see that humanity progresses. I wanna see what the future holds. I want us to get to the future faster and that's my way of doing it. But anyway, the adversity, all scientists get criticized if they stick their neck out to do something that's different, whether it's discovering a longevity gene or saying that we could live longer or saying that aging is a disease, which I truly believe it is. All of those things have been tough. But fortunately I, I'm very stubborn and I, I'm not taking my eye off, off the prize in the end, which is that we all get to live ... Hopefully all of us get to live longer, more productive lives. And when we do that, uh, we'll look back at today and think, "What were we thinking? Why weren't we doing a, um, Manhattan Project," or maybe, maybe I should call it the, a moon shot on this, because it's so important. Um, one of the things I truly believe is that we look at all the problems on the planet; it's global warming, there's, um, poverty, uh, there's bankruptcy for countries, or at least economic burden of people being sick. All of these are real problems. Social security, um, welfare in, uh, around the world. I think the, the biggest solution to that, um, and admittedly I'm somewhat biased but I do crunch the numbers on this, is if we can solve people's health and make them more productive for another 10 years, maybe even longer, but 10 years would be enough to save trillions of dollars every year across the planet. Even in the US it would be a saving in the tens of trillions of dollars. This is money that can be put to work saving the economy and working on other big problems that we need to solve, like the, saving the environment, saving species, uh, preventing global warming.
- CWChris Williamson
Would there be an issue of over-population with that?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah, good question. It, it ... There's no question that if people aren't dying as fast as they, they would, there will be more people. But it's not as many as you might think. If we stopped everybody dying today, uh, and which we can't do that, but if nobody died again, the rate of population growth would be less than the rate of immigration here in the US, which, um, you know, the government's trying to limit that as well.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Uh, but it's, it's not as though suddenly there's, there's five times as many people. Uh, and the good news is that, that we're not gonna stop aging any time soon, we're just going to hopefully live another five to 10 years. What that means is, though, that, uh, we'll probably plateau around 10 billion, maybe up to 13 billion. But most of that problem is not driven by people living longer, it's driven by the birth rate. And over the last decade we've seen an extraordinary change in our birth rate as a species and it's going down all the time and going to plateau. The World Health Organization and the UN have agreed, and Bill Gates has given a wonderful podcast on this, that we're gonna plateau out over the next 30 years and we're not gonna be overrun with humans. In fact, places like Europe and Asia are, especially Japan, are struggling with not enough-
- CWChris Williamson
Need some more humans.
- DSDavid Sinclair
... babies. Exactly, more humans. But what you wanna do is also preserve the productivity of the older people. So when we look at a, a 70-year-old now we think, "That's an old person." 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 70 will be middle-aged, uh, well, we certainly see that happening already. Look at Tom Cruise. He's ... What's he now? In his mid-50s, he's riding motorcycles.
- CWChris Williamson
He's, he's easily 105 and he looks-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Looks great.
- CWChris Williamson
... fantastic. Straight out of Cocktail-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... Top Gun. And I couldn't agree more. That, that was the question that I wanted to finish on, was, um, well, two parts. Firstly, would it be possible to make someone live for a really inordinate amount of time, like a thousand years? Is that possible? Presuming they don't, you know, get shot or one of the easier ways of, uh, of killing someone that we identified earlier on. Is there, is there a realistic upper limit on the amount of time that a organism could live?
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, we know that there, there isn't. There are immortal organisms on the planet. There are trees that live for thousands of years. There are jellyfish that go on hydra, these little jellyfish-like things, they live for, for seemingly immor- immort- uh, go for immortality. The, the mistake that, that most people have is that they think that there is a biological limit to humans. And they look at human history and they say, "Looking back in time, there's never been anyone who, as far as we know, has lived beyond 122." And even that's doubtful.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sinclair
That's been, that's been challenged.
- CWChris Williamson
I was in the Guinness Book of World Records, uh, store on Hollywood Boulevard a couple of days ago and they had the photo of the guy that was 120 that was the oldest certified, I think. But I mean, I'm going to guess-
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that the standards to which you hold your research may be a little bit higher than that, that the Guinness Book of Records does.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Well, whether or not, uh, Jeanne Calment in France lived to 120 or not doesn't matter. Um, there are still plenty of people who make it to 115, 117. So let's say that's the, the current limit. But looking backwards doesn't tell you the, the future when it comes to technology. When you looked at the Wright Brothers, looking backwards from 1902 doesn't really tell you that we're gonna go to the moon within 60 years. Uh, so that actually happened. Um, so what I, I think is that there is no biological limit to human lifespan. We are living things. We fix ourselves, we repair ourselves. Uh, we succumb to entropy, no question. We, we lose information over time. But what we've discovered with this reprogramming stuff is that we can regain information that-... is still there as we get older. We just need to access it. Those genes are still there to make us young. We just need to tell the cell to read the right genes at the right time and we can reverse aging. Um, um, we don't know how many times you can reverse aging. But it's possible you could. Uh, so let me tell you a s- a bit of a story but it's based on results in the lab. You know how I was telling you we can reprogram neurons to grow again? We can actually use that same virus to infect an entire mouse and turn on these reprogramming genes and get the mouse, we think, to, to be younger. That's what we're working on. So imagine a future where you could have your genome changed so that you have these reprogramming factors injected. So I'll, I'll come along, Chris, today. We can go to my lab. If we wanted to, literally, I could take a vial of the virus. I could get, give you an injection and it would be compatible with your body and you would be genetically modified to be able to be reprogrammed. Now, we've engineered that virus, literally, we have done this, to be turned on by an antibiotic called doxycycline which you can go get from your doctor.
- CWChris Williamson
I've been on it for a while. I've been on and off it for the last few years, yeah. It's used as a, a ... Doxytetracycline is used as a acne drug.
- DSDavid Sinclair
Yes, or anti-malarial or if you have Lyme disease here in the US. It's pretty safe. I mean, you wouldn't wanna take a long time-
- CWChris Williamson
Be careful you don't accidentally take that when you've got this super gene that's potentially active inside of you.
Episode duration: 1:14:39
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