Ageing revolution have to benefit us all | @guardianletters

‘By feeding a adverse narrative about ageing, Monbiot helps to delay severe debate on how to make certain that the ageing revolution advantages absolutely everyone,’ writes Alan Walker. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

As scientists attending the 64th annual scientific meeting of the British Society for Analysis on Ageing, we would like to respond to George Monbiot’s write-up (An elixir of life, if shared unequally, would be poison, eight July). His worries about the effect of our work seem to be: 1) population ageing is a difficulty only of the wealthy two) the cost of interventions that lengthen healthful lifespan will be “astronomical” three) such interventions will (a) strengthen tyranny, (b) develop a “geriatric underclass” and (c) exacerbate social inequality.

These impressions do not end result from conversation with the scientific mainstream. Nonetheless, we respond: 1) Ageing is a global problem. It ruins the top quality of daily life of older people in both wealthy and poor nations. It is offering the bad of the world short to pretend that only the wealthy increase old. two) Interventions that lengthen healthy lifespan will be cheap. A compound potentially efficacious in treating mild cognitive impairment is at present obtainable on the NHS for about £10 a day. The care expense to the NHS for these folks is at present about £60 a day. It is the promotion of well being, not the extension of existence, that is the purpose of our area.

3) With regard to dystopian visions, we propose the following: a) The “1,000-year Reich” was not ruled in excess of by a one,000-12 months fuhrer. The guy accountable for its depravities place a bullet in his head. This is how dictators will constantly meet their end. A treatment that improves later daily life health will no a lot more change this than did penicillin. b) A “geriatric underclass” already exists. By 85 nearly no one is in excellent well being. This is a social blight. Nonetheless, we hope that our function plays a tiny but substantial component in bettering factors. c) Scientific progress helps the poor. Denying the desirability of building therapy due to the fact they throw into sharp relief the previous political issue “who deserves what and why?” is perverse.

As biogerontologists, we believe that no one particular deserves a wretched previous age.
Professor Richard Faragher
University of Brighton
Professor Helen Griffith
Chair, British Society for Research on Ageing, Aston University
Professor Brian Kennedy
Buck Institute, USA and Editor in chief, Aging Cell
Professor Janet Lord
MRC-ARUK Centre for musculoskeletal ageing, University of Birmingham. Editor in chief, Longevity &amp Healthspan
Professor David Gems
University of London
Professor Peter Adams
University of Glasgow and Editor in chief, Aging Cell
Professor Valery Krizhanovsky
Weizmann Institute, Israel
Professor Claire Stewart
Liverpool John Moore’s University
Professor Anne McArdle
University of Liverpool
Dr James Brown
ARCHA Aston University
Dr Sue Broughton
Lancaster University, Centre for Ageing
Dr David Clancy
Lancaster University, Centre for Ageing
Dr Elizabeth Ostler
University of Brighton
Dr David Weincove
University of Durham
Dr Lesley Iwanejko
University of Liverpool
Dr Jennifer Tullet
University of Kent
Dr Suresh Ratten
University of Aarhus and Editor in chief, Biogerontology
Dr Don Ingram
Louisiana State University and Editor in chief, Age

• George Monbiot’s flight of fancy took off just following he reported his only instance of measured conclusions drawn from scientific investigation: that it may someday be possible, on the basis of rodent experiments, to slow ageing and delay multiple age-related illnesses. If realised this momentous outcome would reduce ache and enhance quality of existence for millions, but it is no a lot more than a distant likelihood. Yet Monbiot treats it as an established fact and launches into a rant.

Lone evangelicals like Aubrey de Grey catch the headlines with outlandish claims, this kind of as the one,000-yr lifespan that Monbiot repeats. But this speculation diverts our consideration from the much far more pressing issues of how to maximise healthier life expectancy between present generations of the two previous and young and make certain that the massive inequalities in lifestyle expectancies and well-getting are combated as rapidly as achievable.

Human life expectancy is growing, with no any genetic interventions, by an remarkable common of five hrs a day and, as a society, we are not prepared to meet this challenge. By feeding a negative narrative about ageing, Monbiot assists to delay serious debate on how to ensure that the ageing revolution benefits absolutely everyone.
Prof Alan Walker
Director, New Dynamics of Ageing Programme, University of Sheffield

• George Monbiot throws up a really intriguing query: if the science of life extension is advancing at this kind of a speed, how would we feed a population potentially a lot larger than recent projections in many years to come? As Mr Monbiot rightly notes in his piece, “grain is utilised to produce meat rather than feed folks directly” and this is wasteful. The actuality of today’s meals method – not in some dystopian long term exactly where individuals dwell to one,000 many years outdated – is that the grain presently fed to farm animals would feed an extra four billion folks. That is not to say that we should now or in the future automatically all be consuming a purely plant-based diet, but that we should be placing animals on ubiquitous pasture lands and using scarce arable lands to increase crops for individuals. No matter how lengthy we all reside, that would be a large frequent sense phase towards good food for everybody forever.
Philip Lymbery
CEO, Compassion in World Farming 

• George Monbiot’s concerns on hugely increased longevity had been foreseen in John Wyndham’s Difficulties with Lichen decades in the past. The clear resolution is for only individuals who are childless (so not me), sterilised and willing never ever to retire to be entitled to such remedy. Thoughts you, what’s so wonderful about all people moist November Sunday afternoons?
Iain Climie
Whitchurch, Hampshire

Ageing revolution have to benefit us all | @guardianletters