The average human lifespan continues to rise. Patrick Kovarik / AFP
The average human lifespan continues to rise. Patrick Kovarik / AFP

As science advances, will living to 150 become the new normal?



There is a universal desire in all socio-economic groups in the world’s 196 countries to live good lives for longer. But what is a simple mission statement raises some of the world’s most thought-provoking questions: at what point do our ethics stop pushing our biological limits through experimental science? How much is too much?

Medical and scientific experts unequivocally agree that humans’ average lifespan can continue to rise, but there is little consensus on exactly how much. There are few comparisons. Humans’ current average life expectancy has doubled since 1900 to 71.4 years. This is long when compared to mayfly’s lifespan of one day, short when compared to a 400-year-old Greenland shark and a blink of an eye when compared to an 11,000-year-old deep-sea sponge. Chimpanzees, with whom 98.5 per cent of our DNA is identical, typically live fewer than five decades.

Aubrey de Grey, the chief science officer of the California-based Sens Research Foundation, argues that society has a fatalistic attitude to longevity and that the first person to reach 1,000 years old could already be alive. Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for research on telomeres and the genetics of ageing, said raising the average lifespan to triple digits is not overly ambitious.

A study by scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine said it may not be possible to extend life beyond the ages that have already been recorded, with 115 years likley to be humans’ maximum average lifespan. The odds that in any given year at least one person in the world will live past their 125th birthday are less than 1 in 10,000. Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who was the world’s oldest person having lived for 122 years and 168 days until she died in 1997, may be the record holder for a long while.

Most specialists argue that it is too soon to pin down a maximum lifespan when medical experimentation has so often pushed the boundaries of what we thought possible, even when it challenged ethical norms.

__________________________________

Health debate

This is the first of a three part debate about the potential human lifespan.

Read part two: As human lives get longer, the question is: can we afford it?

Part three: Nicole Sirotin looks at present and future medical advances

__________________________________

Organ transplant and in-vitro fertilisation are two prominent procedures that trigger ethical debates. The idea of organ transplants, for example, was initially criticised by some saying that using human body parts like a robot – swapping and switching functions to make the whole system work – failed to value human life. But, since the first organ transplant in 1954, of a kidney, the vast benefits and manageable risks of the procedure mean it is now largely accepted by society as a normal operation.

Aversions to new medical procedures can stem from concerns over patient care, the necessity of the treatment, an aversion to animal testing, religious beliefs or a lack of confidence in the risk-reward ratio of the treatment. While experimentation is integral to growth, what is the distinction between pioneering care and reckless treatments? Answering this question will prove increasingly valuable in order for the healthcare industry to cope with the 30 per cent increase in the world’s population to 9.7 billion by 2050, especially if birthday celebrations for 115 year olds become commonplace this century.

For example, Italian professor Sergio Canavero is the director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group and, along with researchers at Harbin Medical University in China, said in January this year that the first successful head transplant using monkeys had been completed. The spinal cord was not reconnected so the monkey, which was euthanised on day one for ethical reasons, was left paralysed. But, Dr Canavero and his team still plan to carry out the procedure on a human by the end of 2017 in the long-term hope of giving mobility to patients who are paralysed or have muscle-wasting diseases.

The radical concept of joining the “mind” and “body” from two different bodies is ethically challenging. Those in some scientific and medical circles appreciate the potential longevity and enhanced lifestyle that a successful patient could experience, but there are concerns that the science is misleading as the nervous system of the “new” being could be redundant. Many experts feel that the procedure would benefit from more research trials before being applied to humans.

Human lifespan is often referred to as a global average. But the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Competitiveness Survey said that Hong Kong has the highest average life expectancy, at 84, and a multitude of other data sources point to Chad as having the world’s lowest lifespan at just under 50. Is it right to question the ethical guidelines of living to 115 when millions of people are still not living to see their sixth decade?

Dyala Sabbagh is a partner and COO of Gulf Intelligence. Free tickets for the World's Fair 2020 Debate Series on The Future of Health: The First Person Who Will Live to 150 Has Already Been Born, on Wednesday at NYU Abu Dhabi, can be booked at thegulfintelligence.com

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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