George Church: prediction

Transcript context

…Today I have the pleasure of interviewing George Church. I don't know how to introduce you. This is not even an exaggeration, it would honestly be easier to list out the major breakthroughs in biology over the last few decades that you haven't been involved in— from the Human Genome Project to CRISPR, age reversal to de-extinction. So you weren't exactly an easy prep. Okay, so let's start here. By what year would it be the case that, if you make it to that year, technology in bio will keep progressing to such an extent that your lifespan will increase by a year, every year, or more? Escape velocity is sometimes what it's called for aging. Different people have estimates and all those estimates, including mine, are going to be taken with a big grain of salt. Mainly looking at the exponentials in biotechnology and the progress that's been made in understanding—not just understanding causes of aging, but seeing real examples where you can reverse subsets of the aging phenotype—you're getting close to all of aging. In other words, instead of just saying, “Oh, I'm going to fix the damage in this collagen in this tendon, in this limb”, you're saying, “Oh, I'm going to change a lot of things that are common to age-related diseases and I'm going to get more than one at a time.” Looking at those two phenomena—the exponentials in biotechnologies and the breakthrough in general aging, not just analysis but synthesis and therapies, and a lot of these therapies now making it in the clinical trials—I wouldn't be surprised if 2050 would be a point. If we can make it to that point, 25 years… Most people listening to this have a good chance of making it 25 years. The thing is, it's not going to be some sudden point where you're going to be so sick 25 years from now that it's like hit or miss. It's more likely that you're going to be healthier 25 years from now than you thought you were going to be. There may be some, probably not some law of physics, but some economic or complexity issue that we don't know about that becomes a brick wall. I doubt it seriously, but we'll have to see. Given the number of things you would have to solve to give us a lifespan of humpback whales……

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