“Alive Forever”: Joe Rogan, David Sinclair, & Anti-Aging Technology

The potion is real.

It is worth your time to listen to The Joe Rogan Experience, #2537, with David Sinclair, the Harvard anti-aging scientist. Why? The fountain of youth is (almost) at your fingertips—if you want perfection (I trust you, dear reader, recognize the references to the musical Death Becomes Her).

What David Sinclair Told Joe Rogan About Reversing Aging

Aging, as a scientific concept, is defined as the loss of identity at the cellular level. The theory is that our cells “forget” how to function properly. As a result, we lose our sight, our hair, and even access to our memories.

Sinclair theorizes that as we age, we do not lose our memories (even if we suffer from, for example, Alzheimer’s), but rather lose access to them. In the same way, as we age, our cells lose access to the instructions for their proper functioning. If that’s true, and the question is access rather than loss, it seems to follow that if we can reconnect our cells to the memory of their proper functioning, we can reverse aging.

That is what anti-aging science is seeking: the technology to reverse aging by reconnecting our cells to the instructions for their proper functioning, thereby potentially extending our lives by hundreds of years.

What Is ER-100? Inside Life Bio’s Phase 1 Trial

Sinclair is the co-founder of Life Biosciences (Life Bio). His company is conducting an FDA-approved phase 1 trial to assess “the safety and tolerability of ER-100. . . . ER-100 is the first clinical candidate from Life Bio’s Epigenetic Restoration platform, which uses controlled expression of three transcription factors, OCT4, SOX2 and KLF4 (OSK) to restore cellular function by resetting the epigenetic code to more youthful patterns of gene expression.”

The study focuses on the eyes, specifically “optic neuropathies including open-angle glaucoma (OAG) and non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION),” because our eyes are worlds unto themselves. In other words, ER-100 can be delivered to one or both eyes with minimal risk to other organs. If the therapy works, it will be a major step toward confirming the specific biological mechanism of aging and the theory that returning or “resetting” our cells to youthful functioning can heal blindness, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases—and dramatically extend our lives.

Sinclair’s goal is to turn his anti-aging technology into a pill and a drink.

“If You Want Perfection”: Death Becomes Her and the Fountain of Youth

In the musical Death Becomes Her, Viola Van Horn, played by Michelle Williams (and also performed with equal excellence by her understudy, Ximone Rose), sings, “We reject the loss that time is bound by . . . . If you want perfection (and who doesn’t?), take a sip and drink it in; kill your old complexion . . . . Wouldn’t you just die to look so alive? Perfection at your fingertips . . . . A little touch of magic, in a world obsessed with science . . . .”

Well, science is breaking up Van Horn’s monopoly on anti-aging therapy, with at least one upside. You may not live forever by taking Sinclair’s pill or drink, but you won’t have to be so careful with your body. You won’t need “your person” to “help you stay alive forever,” to be there when you “need your face redrawn,” or to “paint your ass.” Instead, your cells will heal themselves, with just a little reminder from, say, Sinclair Pharmaceuticals?

Rogan’s conversation with Sinclair is wide-ranging, so allow me to focus on a few additional topics worth our consideration.

Sinclair’s Accidental Calvinism and the Psyche in the Machine

Rogan asked Sinclair a brilliant question about whether anti-aging technology can be used to heal sociopathy. If, as Sinclair asserts, we are like computers and can be rebooted—why would his technology not heal such diseases?

As his view of the body as a laptop suggests, Sinclair may be more of a Christian than he thinks. Like a committed Calvinist, he does not believe his anti-aging technology can make human machines peace-loving. Something in us resists reprogramming.

There is a psyche in the machine. At least, that is one way to think of that resistant “something” in us. We are all riders, Freud thought, guiding the horse (Id, unconscious) to where it wants to go.

The Ethics of Living for Centuries

Perhaps that explains how little Sinclair (and Rogan) wanted to discuss the ethical and practical implications of human animals living for hundreds of years. Sinclair joked that someone told him to use his considerable intelligence to solve climate change, but he dismissed the idea in favor of pursuing his passion for anti-aging science.

Sinclair is not wrong to pursue his intellectual interests. We don’t all have to be interested in the same thing. Yet anti-aging research clearly has serious implications for climate science.

Climate change is only one area of genuine concern we must consider if we are to live longer and live well. Our public policy will need serious reassessment.

For example, how will governments ensure that we and future generations can access entitlements such as healthcare, social security, housing, meaningful work, and education over hundreds of years? Moreover, how will governments approach marriage and human reproduction in a world where the human lifespan is measured in centuries rather than decades? Furthermore, what about access to anti-aging drugs? Who is the Viola Van Horn in this instance? That is, who decides who gets this therapy, why, and at what cost? Who benefits from their sale?

Sinclair may have at least one science-informed anti-aging response to the concerns I am raising, and I find it appealing. In a disagreement with Rogan about meat-eating, during which Rogan was extolling the meat-eating lifestyle, including feeling strong, energetic, and satisfied, Sinclair observed that longevity is not associated with an “abundance” lifestyle.

According to Sinclair, the science suggests that longevity is linked to adversity. That is why fasting three or more days a week and cardio exercise, such as running, are good for us—if we want to live longer.

That’s the question that arises often and subtly throughout their conversation: Do we want perfection? Do we want to live forever? How do we know? What difference does the horse make to us, its riders?

Is Aging a Harm? Nussbaum vs. Epicurus on Death

Is aging a harm? I think that is the interesting philosophical question. If we define aging as the degradation of cellular memory such that our cells stop functioning and we die, then Is aging a harm? becomes a version of the question, Is death a harm?

In Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility, Martha Nussbaum disagrees with Epicurus and argues that death is a harm.

Epicurus argues that death is not a harm because when I die, there is no I to which harm can attach. The argument is compelling, but Nussbaum points out that it does not account for how our human lives actually unfold.

In chapter 7 of Justice for Animals, Nussbaum expands on what she calls the “interruption argument.” She writes, “[D]eath [not only ‘premature death’] interrupts activities that unfold over time,” such as love and friendship, reading a long novel, and planting a garden (160). “Death. . . cuts short the pleasant flow of life’s many projects. . . . Epicurus, then, builds on an impoverished picture of human life and value . . . . [M]any or most deaths are bad for the person who dies . . . in a perfectly straightforward way: they change the life that was lived, and for the worse” (160, 161).

“When a life contains a temporal unfolding of which the subject is aware and which the subject values, death can harm it,” Nussbaum concludes. But she also notes that “not all [sentient] creatures are like that. . . and therefore the argument does not establish that death is a harm to all creatures” (161).

Nussbaum would not mind living for hundreds of years, or even forever. Ditto for Rogan and Sinclair. And I am in their camp: I would love to enjoy the pleasant flow of my many projects for hundreds of years (and which gay man wouldn’t?). I think most people with curious minds (and/or children) would like to live more than a handful of decades—and feel better, as if they were in their prime, as they grow older.

Sinclair appears to have credibility issues. But one of the great things about science is the scientific method does not rely on either piety or personality. The science of anti-aging will bear fruit or it won’t.

A Life of Second Chances?

I was traveling with a friend who noticed mansions on the horizon. He said, “I really want a home like that, but it is too late for me.” He was not wrong; aside from winning the lottery, there’s not enough time or opportunity for him to build that kind of life for himself.

If anti-aging science delivers on even some of its promises, consider the implications, especially for people like my friend. He could have hundreds of years to start over (and maybe even start over again). Think of the careers one could explore over a few hundred years.

Yes, but I don’t think the exciting benefits of anti-aging scientific miracles, if you will, can quiet the lingering issue. The if in “If you want perfection” is a stubbornly big if.