Die Already

Christmas Eve here in Beijing.  I’m holding off sending business things to people out of courtesy.  People are not returning the favor.  Did you review this?  Are you gonna send that?  Only birth and death can keep the world at bay.  A mere holiday doesn’t cut it.  Kids have school today and tomorrow but we’ve taken them out of and kept them home.  Which is as it should be but it suddenly introduces more work as they won’t be accompanying on the ‘last minute shopping’ runs and they have their own rich holiday agenda.

I wrote yesterday about technology pushing the boundaries of ethics; about a free market that causes disruption of old businesses and the disruption of traditional morality.  Well, it didn’t take long to find a feisty example.  Have a look at this article posted on Hacker News from The Guardian.  http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/20/anti-ageing-human-trials?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

Scientists from the U.S. and New Zealand have successfully trialed an anti aging compound in mice.  Focusing on the cell wall mitochondria, the compound restores communication ability between cell walls and the nucleus, producing energy and restoring youthful potential and “radically reversing” the aging in mice.   Trials on humans may begin as early as next year.

It goes on to say that this does not mean that people will pop a pill and live to 150.  Firstly the current procedure would cost a cool US $50K per day.  (One cringes to imagine the super-rich who might quickly say: “fuck it, I could afford that.”  It’s only $18.25M per year.  You could probably get a bulk discount.) Rather and for now, the treatment is likely to make the last twenty to thirty years of life a whole lot more enjoyable.  And as always, now that they have insights into how the reversal works they can come at it from multiple angles.

But what if widespread anti aging treatments were affordable and widely available in, say, a decade? What if the breakthroughs were such that you could restore twenty year-old bodies, for everyone?   What if the science advanced in twenty years such that, short of getting hit by an anvil or eaten by a shark, you could live to 200 years old with a twenty year-old body?  This will rather dramatically upset many moral fundaments.   Death won’t be done away with.  It isn’t immortality.  But some at least will have quite a bit of time to prepare their 视死如归[1]

I shared the article with a few friends and mentioned it at another Christmas party last night.  Such a range of reactions.  Perhaps I’m a simpleton, but my immediate default was wonderment.  Bang.  Here’s a twenty year-old body for the foreseeable.  I figure I can opt-in on a dying program some other time.  Selfishly it sounds great.  Friends weren’t so sure.  Hundred year-old husbands running around with twenty year-old machinery, twenty year-old appetites?  Rich old white men playing golf at 150 while people in Africa still went without.  China, the font of the one-child policy coming  up with early, innovative legislation around maximum ages.  Do we have a responsibility to the next generation to die?

I’m listening to a beautiful disc for the second time now, “Basra” by the remarkable native New York drummer Pete La Roca who apparently only released two or three such discs as a lead man.  I usually associate him playing with alto player Jackie McLean though he was prolific and appeared with a host of luminaries.  I marvel considering what a scene it must have been. 

This disc was released the year before I was born, 1965.  Pete La Roca died last year.  The horn player Joe Henderson died in 2001.  Steve Kuhn the pianist and Steve Swallow, the bassist are both still alive.  I mention who is extant and who has passed because what would jazz, for example sound like, if you work on your chops for a century?  What would my own approach to a new language, or mathematics or jazz theory or the sitar, or snowboarding be like if I had the next hundred years with a fresh body and mind to work on it?

La Roca, I just learned, with a quick gaze actually took time out from Jazz drumming in 1968 to become a lawyer.  Damn.  Good for Pete.  And, he actually managed to successfully sue pianist Chick Corea after the latter released material under Corea’s name without La Roca’s consent.  I suppose I wouldn’t be particularly impressed with this, if La Roca was staring down a 150-year shelf life.  But given that you were a mere mortal, whose time was precious, I tip my hat to your memory, Mr. swingin’ Pete La Roca, Esquire.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_La_Roca  

Now if you'll excuse me there a few dozen last minute gifts I need to attend to with my own precious time. 

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[1] shìsǐrúguī:  to view death as a return home / to not be afraid of dying / to face death with equanimity (idiom)