Today, we lay up store against winter. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
You hear a lot of claims
about long lives. But no one has ever verified a
lifetime of more than 120 years. When we talk about
extending human life, we really mean seeing how
close we can get to that apparent natural limit.
Life expectancy involves three issues: One is
disease. Eliminate cancer, and life expectancy will
rise. Another is natural deterioration, even in
healthy old age. Finally, we ask if we can ever
silence the ticking of our genetic clock. Can we
find a Fountain-of-Youth cure for the aging process
itself?
I'll leave Fountains of Youth to science fiction.
They're not on the horizon yet. We have to make
peace with the competing forces of disease and
aging. The more disease we eliminate, the more we
have to worry about the quality of late life.
For example, women's life expectancy went from 46
years in 1900 to 84 in 1988. We've reduced both
infant mortality and disease. Now our diet is
improving. We smoke and drink less. The result:
we'll see far more old people in the 21st century.
So we have to ask about the quality of our
grandchildren's extended lives. Some factors that
extend life also extend its quality. My father
lived to be 86, but smoking-related ailments made
his last 25 years very unpleasant. He would've
lived a little longer as a non-smoker. More
important, his last years would've been so much
happier. So it's time to worry less about fatal
diseases than ones which disable us in late life.
Life expectancy will get to 100 years, even without
inventing a Fountain of Youth. So you and I had
better think more clearly about how to use the gift
of old age.
And it can be a gift. When I was a student, I swam
to blow off physical energy. Every day I saw the
same 70-year-old chemistry professor. His name was
Joel Hildebrand. He also had to blow off energy.
I watched him swim his laps and wondered what it
meant to look back on his long and distinguished
life. I didn't know it then, but he wasn't looking
back at all. He had almost as much career ahead as
he did behind. Hildebrand published his last paper
just after his 101st birthday.
The mind, of course, is our most reliable source of
pleasure. It's also the last organ to go, as long
as the body doesn't betray it. Creative minds are
what will serve the quality of longer life in the
21st century. That's a gift we've too often
squandered in the past. It's one we'd better learn
to hang on to, as more of us start observing 80th
and 90th birthdays.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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