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Ageing society
OpinionComment
Eric Leire
Eric Leire

The View | Anti-ageing science should focus on allowing us to live better, not longer

  • The average human lifespan has increased by several decades in the past century, but our healthspan – the years we are in good health – has stayed the same
  • The solution is to treat unhealthy ageing like any other illness, that is, as a technical problem that can be overcome

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Elderly people exercise on outdoor fitness equipment at Qingtan new village in Changzhou, Jiangsu province. Many countries are facing the challenge of how to cope with a rapidly ageing population. Photo: Getty Images
Eric Leire
Life expectancy has become the gold standard in assessing the health of a population – a fact made apparent during the pandemic, when the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention advised the elderly to shield for months in isolation.
Health services across the industrialised world are keeping their citizens alive for longer, with life expectancy in some countries increasing by more than a decade in just two generations.
But as lifespan – the total number of years someone is alive – has increased exponentially, healthspan – the portion of a person’s life when they are in good health – has stayed the same. This creates a huge demographic, economic and humanitarian crisis.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Unhealthy ageing is a human tragedy, and if governments and health authorities shift their focus from lifespan to healthspan, longevity technology can remedy it. Looking and feeling younger for longer is not the preserve of beauty brands or Silicon Valley billionaires.

The science is real; it just needs investment and a favourable regulatory environment, as well as health policies that focus on allowing people to live, rather than simply keeping them alive.

Ageing, just like having high cholesterol or high blood pressure, is a risk factor for a variety of diseases. This means it should be treated like any other risk factor – not as an inevitable fact of life that must be accepted, but as a technical problem that can, and should, be overcome.

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