What is Engineering Immortality?
A brief note on why I'm on a mission to make humans an immortal and disease-free species.
As many of you know, I believe that humanity can and should strive to become a disease-free and immortal species. I believe that we will reach longevity escape velocity within our lifetimes due to converging exponential growth trends in (1) synthetic biology, (2) machine learning, (3) quantum computing, (4) genetic engineering, and (5) gene delivery technology.
For most of my life, I have been disturbed by the fact that humans die. When I was young, I was a constant hypochondriac.
I forced my parents to take me to the cardiologist at age 9 because I was convinced I was having a heart attack.
Between the ages of 12 and 16, I visited multiple different doctors because I was convinced I had lymphoma.
Looking back, it’s obvious why I was (and still am) so anxious by the state of my health.
Humanity still has no control whatsoever over its mortal destiny. We are but tumbling peoples in the cosmic stream.
The best medical inventions of our time: CAR T-cell therapy, partial reprogramming and gene therapy are mere child’s play in the grand complexity of biology.
We still do not have good answers to the questions “when will I die?” and “how can I live longer?”
Our best minds are building B2B SaaS and consumer apps. Our best institutions are gate-kept by bureaucrats who believe that death is good. Our best researchers are focussed on niche, obscure, conservative projects backed by risk-averse government grants.
This is deeply disturbing to me. We can do better.
Humanity’s most consequential problem is death. It is by far the most expensive and pressing consumer-facing problem. Emotional considerations aside, death deprives us of our most brilliant minds, and robs us of their economic output. We spend 17% of our GDP on healthcare precisely because we have not mastered biology.
It is more important than transitioning the planet to sustainable energy or becoming a multi-planetary species.
How can we call ourselves an advanced species when we die in the same way as a bear or a worm?
Yes there are problems with living forever.
Who decides who gets to live and who dies?
Will the earth reach population carrying capacity?
Who is allowed to have kids?
How does democracy work when the demographics of the electorate don’t change?
How is power distributed when the old guard never gives way to young humans with new thoughts?
How is wealth distributed in a world where the rich never die?
Do we become a stagnant society that collapses under its own bureaucracy?
Does social mobility decline to levels last seen during feudalism?
These are questions that need to be answered by a new constitution. And then a new bill of rights to fix the mistakes.
I’ll try my best to answer those questions too. But first, we must win the revolution.
A couple weeks ago, I found myself hanging out with biotech founders and researchers in Lake Tahoe at the Longevity Biotech Fellowship.
Something is brewing in longevity biotech.
Humanity needs to become an immortal and disease-free species.
And you should be a part of it.
If you want to learn more about this space without doing an incredible amount of grunt work, then I am starting a newsletter called Engineering Immortality.
Every week, I'll be breaking down papers in genetic engineering, computational biology and lifespan extension research.
Stay tuned.