When we think about extending the human lifespan, our minds naturally drift towards the dream of immortality. Lifespan Extension —  a rapidly evolving technology — has taken the scientific community by storm. With its promises of a longer human lifespan, it has quickly taken center stage.
Lifespan Extension is not immortality; it is merely extending human healthspan. From here, I will define two pivotal vocabulary words necessary to understand the mission of Lifespan Extension: healthspan and lifespan.

Healthspan is how long someone is alive and healthy, without ailment. Lifespan is how long someone is alive. 

I would also like to clarify that Lifespan Extension and Radical Lifespan Extension are two different things.

Regular Lifespan Extension is the concept of prolonging human longevity through scientific and technological means. On the other hand, Radical Lifespan Extension’s mission is to significantly increase human lifespan. This is achieved by performing something called “gene-editing” and STEM cell therapy. I am covering Radical Lifespan Extension. 

Healthspan is typically from the early 20s to the early 30s. That is the time in which humans are considered to be at their healthiest. The goal of Radical Lifespan Extension is to prolong this healthspan significantly.

The reason for prolonging healthspan, as opposed to lifespan itself, is simply that you would be imposing more suffering on someone’s health difficulties. By increasing healthspan, you are increasing the amount of time humans are healthy. 

Let’s say that instead of being relatively healthy into your early 40s, you would remain in that state of maintained health into your 80s. The average human lifespan is 80 years, but if you remained as healthy as you were in your 20s into your 80s and things went a little haywire from 80 and on, that would be remarkable progress.

Lifespan Extension is currently unable to test on humans due to ethical issues, but it has been tested on mice, and it has increased their lives by 25%. Lifespan Extension on humans would be done by a combination of regenerative medicine, such as STEM cells and tissue rejuvenation, and molecular repair through gene therapy and pharmaceuticals. These could all hypothetically reverse aging and cure diseases.

Lifespan Extension is controversial, however, in a philosophical sense. If you knew you were going to wake up every day healthy, alive, why would you even want to wake up every day if you know you have plenty of time on your hands? Let’s say that you’re 80 with the health of a 20-year-old; what would you do? Is Lifespan Extension worth pursuing if you don’t have a purpose for it? Even then, what would a purpose be? Is it a temporary or permanent purpose?

Another philosophical aspect of this technology is the delicate balance of nature. Decomposition is an important part of the natural world. With fewer deaths, overpopulation, and higher competition for resources, everyday human life as we know it would be completely different if everybody lived to 150 compared to 80.

So while extending lifespan is tempting, the real breakthrough would be keeping the vitality of youth well into old age — turning eighty not into a struggle, but a continuation of a life lived fully.