Do We Have to Die? 

Jeanne Calment died in 1997. She was so old, she sold paint to Vincent van Gogh in the 1880s as a child in Arles..

My grandmother is 102 and only had to get some assisted living help in the past 2 years. She drove, and shopped, and cleaned with no help from anyone.

My grandfather died at 92, a week before he died he had a stroke which is what did him in. Prior the stroke he loved by himself in a townhouse, drove his own car, did the cross word everyday, and everyday of his life since his twenties he’d do 50 sit ups, push ups and a bunch of other abs and strength exercises, he was still doing his daily work out up until the morning of his stroke He was a good role model for healthy living, and I’ll take any help we can get for slowing down or halting the negative impacts of aging.

Figuring out how to keep cognitive and psychical health intact within the lifetime we already have would be amazing achievement on its own

My sister-in-law was very healthy most of her life; never smoked, drank, only ate a bit of fish in an otherwise vegetarian diet, hiked, biked, swam, and lived a largely athletic lifestyle. She died of colorectal cancer at age 70. Sometimes, your genetic makeup is just against you.

"Aging" is just the accumulation of damage, not the passage of timing.

As a paraplegic, one issue with life extension research is that it never seems to account for black swan events that the body can't heal from. Without treatments for disabilities like Spinal Cord Injury, Traumatic Brain Injuries, Amputations, etc. any possible eternal life will just continuously get more disabled due to black swan events every few hundred years. Car crashes, shootings (like me), pandemics even. Even though only 0.1% of the US population has a Spinal Cord Injury, if people start having 70 super active years instead of 30, that's going to be a huge increase in injuries that society will need to heal.

That last bit is the most important, I'd say. My knees started giving out when I hit 25...living to 90 using a diaper and not knowing where I am half of the time...that's just not worth it.

I've been interested in this idea for over 15 years. I worked in science education and whenever I brought it up, people reacted like I was a mad scientist, lol. Really glad the field is starting to be taken more seriously. Also glad they have the new X prize for longevity. It seems insane to me that we are seemingly so close to significant life *and health* extension, but we're just not devoting a lot of resources to it. Personally, I don't want to get a single day biologically older for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I don't want to be immortal. What I _do_ want, is to be the one who decides when I bow out.

I haven't seen this girl up until recently. If you are a new addition to the channel, it's a great one. Very easy to hear your voice.

i want to live forever, i want to see the galaxy

Sees title, and immediately realize that it's about SENS. (Strategies for engineering of negligible senescence) Thanks for covering this, more people should know about it.

My great grandma, Ivah Elizabeth Livermore Lovell-Rose (whose last names are actually two streets that intersect in my hometown. No connection, just neat happenstance), lived to 97. She was born in 1905 and was beautiful, so I'm sure being 15-25 during the Roaring Twenties was a wild time. She wasn't particularly healthy. Smoked cigarettes for decades, drank a fair bit, had a drunk as her first husband, and a drunk for a son, who died from prostate cancer a few years prior. Yet somehow, she suffered what her doctors called a "massive heart attack" at the age of 95 and bounced right back. She got ill about five or six months before finally passing in 2002, when I was 10. She was such an icon where she lived, that her other son, a very wealthy (and kinda crazy) doctor living in a remote cabin on a mountain in Colorado, hired people to continue yardwork and even turn on and off the lights for years in her estate, which was a beautiful Victorian mansion located in the heart of her little town (and across the street from the funeral home where her funeral was held).

Whether or not I live forever only time will tell, but I'm 72 now and I'm healthier metabolically than I've been in many years simply by changing what I eat. I've eliminated most sugar and most refined carbohydrates but have increased fats and protein. I'm looking forward to seeing if these changes increase my chances for a longer and more rewarding life.

This is a huge topic and they really didn't have time to cover everything here, but a leading hypothesis of aging is that due to pleiotropy, there is genetic conflict between traits that will make you more successful when you are young but at the cost of your long term health. A classic example is cancer and wound healing. Regeneration is very beneficial for your short term health, but opens pandoras box to cancer by encouraging rapid cell replication that could become exploited by oncogenic mutations later on.

For anyone who's like, "bluh it's against god's plan," there are dudes in the Old Testament living to like 900 allegedly 😂

William Clark, Ph.D., emeritus chair of immunology at UCLA, perfectly addressed this topic in his 1996 book "Sex and The Origin of Death" Senescence and death were the consequence of sexual reproduction, the segregation of germinal DNA away from the somatic variety which powers the cells. Clark poetically referenced this as the ultimate loss of innocence.

I've followed the list of verified oldest people for decades. When I started watching back when Wikipedia was very new, there were two people verified to have made it to 119 and three that made it to 117. Now there are 3 that have made it to 119, 4 to 118, and 12 to 117 including one still living. It's hard to filter out noise related to better documentation standars and just better data availability, so clear conclusions are hard to draw. But if there really are so many more contenders making it to 117, 118, and 119, it's very possible someone will break Jeanne Calment's 122 years sometime fairly soon.

Love the narrator for this one. Very easy to listen to voice.

I'll never forget the Aglet!

Best host since Hank. Don't let this one get away

I think I prefer the idea of not living longer, but having more years where I'm able bodied and as healthy as I treat myself.

I think there are 4 reasons for us dying: 1. Hayflick limit. 2. Senescence. 3. Buildup of damage, especially from oxygen radicals, which also cause senescence. 4. End replication problem.

Another question the demographers weren't asking is were those final years of a person's life desirable. Living with some health problems can be worse than death. You also touched on the point that if we don't die off we would continue to compete for resources with our offspring, this is a huge problem to overcome.

This host is mad good.

Is it possible, yes. Why? Every time an organism (including humans) reproduces, the cell clock is reset. You may say that it is because of the re-shuffling of genetics so this becomes a "new" cell. But this does not account for parthenogenesis, and it is my suspicion that here is the key. Biology is at the point that physics was at the end of the 19th century. When it was believed that all of physics was understood and all was just smoothing out the rough edges. Then nuclear theory happened and we realized that we indeed had just scratched the surface of physics. Biology is just in it's infancy and our understanding of how our own cells work is just starting. I find this to be both exciting and terrifying,

Well, there is the Hayflick limit. And the main limiter is our brain. If we can keep that running for a thousand years, the other organs are a cakewalk.

"The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" is a wonderful take on whether humanity needs to accept death. Written by Nick Bostrom and animated by CGP Grey over on CGP Grey's channel. Phenomenal stuff.

I don't mind dying... I don't like getting old, though

There IS an evolutionary advantage to aging; not to the individual, but to the community. This is well studied in genetic algorithms. When a "most fit" algorithm is allowed to continue to compete with offspring generation after generation, then the community of algorithms gets trapped in a "local maxima". That is, the community hasn't found the best answer to the stresses it faces, but it's found the best answer that resembles the ones its already explored. By removing the "most fit" contestants after a maximum number of generations, even if they're currently scoring best against the reaper algorithm, the community explores more possible avenues. It doesn't stick with the best answers it knows, as far as genetics goes; it goes out and tries new things, now that the old leader has aged out. In the short term, the community becomes "less fit". But in the long term, it can discover entirely new gene mixes that are better than the old best could have been. It can escape the trap of the "local maxima". You can visualize this if you imagine a map, covered in hills. The "most fit" contestant in the breeding game is the one highest on the map. Generation after generation, the new contestants that land higher on the hill are even more fit. Eventually, a contestant lands on top of the hill. It's not possible to get any more fit. Except there's another hill, father away, that's even taller. No one's going there, though, because the new generations are spawned near the old "best fit", and it's already at the top of this hill. No one's setting foot on that taller hill over there, and starting the climb. When the top fitting algorithm is forced to die after X generations, instead of just camping at the top of its hill forever, the population explores more. They find that next neighboring hill, and some start exploring it. They find a higher peak. That's the value of death by aging, not to the individual, but to the community. It prevents the "best answer we've found yet" from getting stuck as "the best answer forever", when there are better answers out there. Put it another way: Imagine our stone age ancestors found a magic plant that repairs the damage of aging. Everyone who does well has all of the magic herb they need to remain young, healthy, and breeding forever. Eventually, they breed a flawless Conan, stronger and faster than everyone else in the tribe. Conan has tons of kids, but none of them can surpass him. Conan is the best Conan that genetics can produce. All his children and children's children are similar, but Conan is forever the chief because no one is a better Conan than Conan. This tribe carries on for thousands and thousands of years, with Conan the eternal patriarch. And they never create a Napoleon, or a Nikola Tesla, or an Ada Lovelace, etc.. There's nothing stopping us from replicating the improved genetic exploration produced by death after we sort out biological aging, and we'll need to. If we don't take steps to keep change going after mortality ends, our species will hit a local peak, and then, genetically speaking, decide that's as good as it gets.

"People aren't living longer, they're dying longer"

“I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, please sir, I don’t want to go “

For me personally, I plan on hitting 150 years prior to passing. So every day after may the 20th 2121 will in my opinion be borrowed time. But prior to that I plan on filling that remaining 97 years with an amazing adventure and share the insights I"ve learned with everyone who will listen.

Congratulations on reaching 8 million subscribers!

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." --Susan Ertz

Pleeeeeeeeaassseeee keep. This. Host. She's. awesome!!

Yo I've never caught a Scishow fresh outta the oven! Welcome everyone to sick science

No, we don't HAVE TO die. Our medical science is advanced enough to where we can actually start tinkering with living longer far more than we do. The only problem is when you look at the "ethics" of performing trials for living longer (religious lunacy and determining who gets the ability to live longer).

i had exploding head syndrome & sleep apnea at the same time once & i experienced death. it was the scariest thing id ever experienced. i dont want to die again

Also could we talk about the strange properties bats display i.e., dramatically longer lifespans by mammalian size, immune system behaviors, and body temperature during flight.

The comparison to humans vs animals is, we do a lot more than anyone else. We're overly stressed, work constantly sometimes, deal with medical and mental problems on a daily, etc. I'm 44 so I doubt I'll ever see advancement in this area before I'm gone.

When people reach over a century, many lose the will to live due to quality of life. That is the factor, quality of life with stable mental acuity.

Let's leave the "priests" out of decision making. And philosophers are unlikely to be of much practical help.

0:47 I bet the priest will touch up on it later lol

I don't think I'd even want to continue indefinitely. Better to end naturally, than to live endlessly being bored of it all.

She's back!

7:47 "So looking at DNA methylation gives you a pretty sensitive age, it just is one that might not match up with what day you were born" That's a really good sign, since it tells us that the age that matters is the molecular one (which should be something we'd eventually be able to manipulate with DNA editing techniques). It really seems like with perfect DNA repair mechanisms (without mutations and that can preserve all epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation) and perfect replication (no end of DNA - telomere - shortening), immortality (or more accurately, agelessness) should be a reality (and those "immortal" organisms could be the key to achieving it).

Most compelling argument my friend told me pro-immortality: Age-related complications and diseases are but a small fraction of possible causes of death, so immortality would have surprisingly little effect on the overall human population.

I like this host, her voice is relaxing.

The older i get the less i care if i live forever.

Do we have to age?” might have been a better title

The rich and powerful gaining the ability to live and accumulating resources and power indefinitely does not seem very appealing to me personally...

What if the video was just a yes followed by 10 minutes of silence

Hey just a reminder that the phrase "begs the question" is not an expression that means something like "it brings up the question...". It is actually a logical fallacy that relates to circular reasoning or assuming a key part of your argument is true without proving it!

Would be nice if we didn't have to. I'm like a late bloomer and sometimes feel like I have to do things quickly to catch up, doing things when you are a young adult, halted aging would help alleviate the pressure.

"Should we live forever" Tbh taking a possibility like that from someone is like killing someone, after all both shorter someone's life, so the question itself should be "is it worth living longer" and I can answer with 100% certainty, yes it is, I want to live longer, experience more, see the future, there is nothing good in death

You are a terrific, likable and engaging host. Great job! As for the topic, at 45 years old, the Grimm spectre of death isn’t as far away as it once was lol. I’m counting on those sweet, sweet life extension options by the time I am staring down the reaper 🤞

Anecdotal from the native communities tell of a man who lived to 147. My great grandmother lived to 114.

i'm of the mindset that at somepoint CRISPR will be more widely acceptable and snapshots of people's genomes at certain ages will basically reverse aging as long as people had a snapshot done

"Aglet (Don't forget it)" Insert "I GOT THAT REFERENCE" meme here.

I agree. I don't really want to live longer if that just means more years of physical disability and dementia. If I can be myself, doing the things I enjoy, sure id love to live longer! But i have watched my grandparents and parents lose the ability to do much of anything for themselves, and become confused and worried, unable to recognize friends and family. I don't want extra years of that, thanks anyway.

3:44 - OK so you're saying don't squeeze fresh free radical orange juice on my DNA.... Got it. 😁👍

Another thing to the "Humans aren't lab mice" is the fact that ethics aside, humans can live a LONG time compared to a lot of animals. By the very nature of the problem we are trying to solve, a trial to "make people live longer" will IDEALLY take a long time--if the treatment doesn't have an immediate negative effect, it'll take a long time to figure out if it worked, and how well. That kind of long-term science ain't cheap or easy.

One thing to keep in mind is the brain stuff. It's hard to imagine how our memory capacity could be infinite, barring advanced BCI. Seems like then the options are living until you've replaced all your memories with new ones or living until you're incapable of forming new ones. Niether sounds great to me but I'd take the first, even if in some sense it does mean that I gradually "die" from a continuity of memory perspective on personal identity.

Good video, though I feel that 'Do we have to age?' would have been a better title. I find it surprising that the question of whether we should attempt to cure aging is such a divisive one. We recognise that any other cause of suffering and death (disease, crime, accidents) is best avoided, but when it comes to biological aging, many commentators seem to imagine that it's something we shouldn't do. I believe aging is the mother of all disease, and defeating it will bring benefits that far outweigh any drawbacks. Future generations will find it baffling that there was ever a debate to be had.

I know lobsters are biologically immortal. However once it reach a certain age it becomes extremely hard for them to molt and they die

I am happy that Unlike other videos on aging your does not harp on why we must die. You concentrated on biologic causes of aging without unscientific moralizing. Thanks

If you want to understand the secret to immortality, study Keith Richards liver.

All I can say is from a biological perspective it makes sense to have generations of organisms, and for older organisms to eventually die, not only does it allow for new mutations to be put to the test in the environment allowing for adaption to actually take place, but it removes the competition that parents can pose to their offspring in an environment. With out death, new life has no room to grow.

so early that sponsorblock hasn’t caught up yet

Don't leave this question to philosophers. They're not qualified to decide about YOUR LIFE.

No matter what there's always the heat death of the universe

I often feel like I was born in the wrong century. This is a topic I really care about, because life extension (or ideally negligible senesence) is my only chance of living to experience the following centuries (besides the beginning of the 22nd, at a very old age).

We need to be funding this stuff.

Biologist here. CRISPR might tick lots of relevant issues. See, the majority of changes, and problems, are expression dependent. Something the cells in that tissues should be producing but aren't, or the opposite. CRISPR techniques can replace, block, remove, change DNA and protein expression, the challenge is to find the correct delivery system of the treatment, you don't want your liver to start producing a kidney protein. This approach means to tackle a problem when it appears, you will still get age problems but we fix them along the way. The majority of diseases have cause in DNA, be it cancer, malaria or COVID. The ultimate thing to fix is the brain. Stop the brain from producing amyloid beta and cause Alzheimer's, stop and revert ALS symptoms... The futuristic approach is to change the DNA makeup that might cause the problem, the cancer, the ALS, the obesity, autism. We are talking design babies, but that opens a pandora box we are not sure we can deal with.

Someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won't tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they're old enough to bear it; and when they learn they'll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed! -HPMOR

I’m tired boss

I wonder how long before this comment section is flooded with religious people mainly Christians, that are furious we're even trying to live longer.

Let’s study age reversal, maybe we get lucky or end up just slowing it as a kind of consolation prize

*bryan johnson intensifies*

My great-aunt Ethel lived to be 104, and until she was 102, she was driving on her own, tending her own garden, doing her own grocery shopping and making her delicious family-famous fudge. Since she died, the family has made the fudge using her recipe, but it’s just not the same. Some of the magic is gone.

Humans living forever is a TERRIBLE idea. Imagine being born into a world where generations never die and they're forever lording themselves over newer generations and hoarding all the wealth. It would be like the boomer problem we're dealing with today, only a million times worse. Humans need to come and go so that culture can evolve.

A profound question! As humans, we have to die because: 1. *Evolutionary cycle*: Death is a natural part of the life cycle, allowing for the passing of genes to the next generation and evolution to occur. 2. *Cellular limitations*: Our cells have a limited lifespan and can only divide a certain number of times before they deteriorate. 3. *Aging and wear*: Our bodies are subject to wear and tear, leading to age-related decline and eventual failure. 4. *Genetic programming*: Our DNA is programmed for a finite lifespan, with built-in mechanisms that contribute to aging and death. 5. *Ecological balance*: Death helps maintain ecological balance, making way for new life and preventing overpopulation. Death is an intrinsic part of life, and it's what makes life precious and meaningful. It's a natural process that allows for growth, renewal, and the continuation of our species. (Side note: While we can't escape death, modern medicine and technology have significantly increased human lifespans, and researchers continue exploring ways to extend healthy life and understand the aging process.)

Yes… we do. No amount of molecular biology/biochemistry, synthetic bioorganic or medicinal chemistry, molecular genetics etc will change this. We’ve only really just begun to understand our own genome… we STILL haven’t delved into the overlaps and exactly how things are regulated and the cascading mechanisms that govern every single process in our cells. We’re trying but we, sadly, to put it into vernacular… “don’t know crap”

Everything in the macroscopic universe eventually ceases to exist. Even the stars from which we are coming from.

If I can eat, sleep, play, f, like I'm 20s in my 80s... I'd be happy to check out by 90yrs old. Living long and old isnt enticing at all.

I don't think anything in the world makes me more anxious and bummed out than the idea of being made to choose when I have to die.

Even if the answer is "no, we dont have to" it then becomes a question of the consequences of folks living significantly longer than we do now. Which could be severe

To me it's more about as a human you reach a point where you're merely living but not thriving. I think many people have a shelf life not only that you live for X long but also mentally, at some point you wake up and it's just another day. It seems worse than death.

I sincerely hope that humanity never conquered death because it is the great equaliser, arguably the only equaliser that's left. Powerful people throughout history have all wanted to hold on to their power til the end of time, thus the infatuation with immortality in every civilisation. But it's the nuisance of the inevitability of death that forces them to eventually distribute, thereby creating any semblance of social mobility. All I want to say is, a future in which the 0.1‰ of immortal billionaires controls 99% of wealth in perpetuity is not a world I would like to live in.

Sad coincidence but you guys released this video 8 days after my mom passed away, and 3 days before my birthday. It’s been a heck of a ride

Yes or congress is going to be full of old people, wait a second : |

I've been obsessed with older folks doing deadlifts on youtube. There are people twice my age also lifting twice what my good form deadlifts are. I don't need to live forever, but being able to have strong muscles and bones in old age would be great. I'm a dad right now and things have gotten a lot physically easier since I started going to the gym. The idea that I could be a physically active parent to not just my daughter's generation, but my grandchildren's generation if I'm careful and keep consistent and safe training is too tantalizing to pass up.

What’s the benefit of living longer if you are a feeble old person unable to function once you reach your 60’s and onward? Is there a way to stretch out our “prime” days?

I personally find that to be a major flaw in human design,more specifically getting sick,but in short I find it to be a major flaw

🗣️🗣️🗣️We ain't making to the afterlife with this one boys! 🗣️🗣️🗣️

I guess the real question is: do you want to live longer if it means being old and sickly, unable to do the things you love, without income, and alone?

Well, considering that my DNA came from mom and dad, somewhere along the way my chromosomes got more telomeres. When did that happen, and by what mechanism?

Yes, because being stuck in this world forever would be a terrible fate. Plus, this is an entropic universe, so yes (again) we do have to die eventually.