Death and taxes, as the idiom suggests, are the two certainties in life.

In reality, the only true certainty in all human life is death. Morbid, I know…but in a way, human beings are programmed to die, and death is unavoidable – for now.

A favorite sketch of mine is an anonymous German drawing from 1635 that features a standing, smiling skeleton aiming a crossbow. An hourglass rests by his back foot and a broken arrow sits beside it, while another arrow rests in the quiver. It’s a piece of art designed to hang at eye level so that the arrow – the one locked and loaded into the crossbow – is pointing directly at the viewer.

Translated, the inscription at the top can be summarized as saying: “My arrow, I promise you, spares no one. You will all dance the ballet of which I sing.” The piece titled Death Stays on Target is a fantastic Memento Mori, the medieval Latin Christian theory and practice of reflection on mortality. The symbolism is dark, but it’s meant to be a reminder to live life with urgency and to its fullest. Death smiles at every person, and all we can do is smile back.

Age-related deaths currently account for approximately two-thirds of the ~150,000 deaths that occur across the globe every day. What strikes me as fascinating is the lack of total understanding as to why aging and age-related death is, indeed, a fact of life. From DNA damage to cellular miscommunication, the act of aging itself is a mysterious process. Hypothetically, if the mystery were to be solved, would that mean that humans could learn to control aging, and as a result, prevent non-accidental death? If so, would the outcome be in the best interest of humankind? Many biological, social, and philosophical inputs must be considered to arrive at a well-reasoned conclusion, but what’s called science fiction today may just be called science in the future.

Theories about aging can be broadly lumped into two distinct categories: error theories and programmed theories. Error theories assert that aging is a result of environmental damage to the body, which accumulates over time. Conversely, programmed theories assert that the human body is designed to age and follows a certain biological timeline. I subscribe to most aspects of programmed theories, and they’re also more fun to discuss and debate.

Aging seems to be an innate and essential part of human biology. While it’s common to compare the human body to a machine, the analogy is actually quite inaccurate. Machines encapsulate only the original materials they’re built with, whereas the human body is constantly repairing and replacing cells. In fact, every 7-10 years, roughly 90% of the cells in a human body are brand new – and it’s the organs that work the hardest that have the fastest cellular changeover. Since the body has the ability to renew itself, technically, there should be no reason it should ever “wear out.” So – what’s happening? George Church, famous geneticist/synthetic biologist and Harvard professor, is attempting to figure it out.

Medically speaking, geneticists and biogerontologists identify the seven main reasons for aging as: genome damage, epigenetic factors, telomere shortening, unfolded protein response, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, and stem cell exhaustion. But all of these factors can potentially be mitigated by using gene therapy to load new DNA instructions into a virus, and administering that virus into a body. Church’s new start-up, Rejuvenate Bio, has made the bold prediction that they will be able to reverse aging in dogs by the year 2030, and preliminary trials are already underway. If dog trials are successful and ethical standards are strictly defined and followed, human trials won’t be far behind. Church describes the desired outcome as: “the idea is to live to 130 in the body of a 22-year-old.”

Church certainly isn’t the only person on the hunt for the fountain of youth. Remember Time Magazine’s popular 2013 article titled: “Google vs. Death”? Calico, Google’s ultra-secretive health venture start-up, is solely tasked with performing gene-editing and anti-aging research and employs some of the most well-respected academics and researchers in the industry. Further, gene-editing is being researched and performed all over the world. In late 2018, a Chinese researcher, He JianKui, claimed he used a powerful editing technique called CRISPR to make the first genetically edited babies, though the evidence is still being evaluated.

But biogerontology aside, maybe aging and death are actually programmed components of what’s largely considered evolution, not biology. My thoughts on the origin of our species and “evolution” are already documented in a previous post, but if human beings didn’t age and die, logically, there would be no reason to ever reproduce out of necessity for survival. If biological individuals lived forever, modern evolution wouldn’t exist, which could be why human beings are genetically engineered in their source code to age and die.

What would society look like in a world where human rejuvenation was cyclical and people didn’t die, yet still had the capacity to reproduce? Issues with overpopulation and consumption of resources, which are both already a problem in some parts of the world, would increase by orders of magnitude, because we’re still stuck on just one planet. But perhaps less obvious are the unavoidable consequences to social norms and cultural trends. Societal values change, often for the better, with each passing generation. New generations, which are created as a by-product of aging and death, have the ability to rethink social structures and improve the standard of life. Therefore, aging and death inadvertently contribute favorably to the progression of human beings as a species.

Many people fear death. It may be rational to fear the unknown, but it’s futile and irrational to fear the unavoidable. Think about it… you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, and I believe no one is ever truly “old” until their regrets begin to replace their dreams.

So wake up every day with a smile! A day older, a day wiser…and realize that life is in fact a journey – enjoy it – because part of every journey, is the end.