Lifespan Equilibrium

This article reflects only the opinions of its author. Although grounded in evidence, it is by no means a piece of rigorous scientific work and should not be treated so.

It’s always been a dream of mankind to live forever. For the philosopher among you, of course, this may not sound like an appealing idea. However, it does seem most certain that our average life expectancy will be on the rise for decades to come. I was a steadfast believer of this, until one day, mulling over this topic, I stumbled across a different conclusion – my line of reasoning connected tightly to the pandemic that we’re all enduring right now. So, pause for a few minutes, take a small break off your busy life, and see if you agree with me on the notion of lifespan equilibrium.

One of the most obvious factors pushing the limits of our general life expectancy is medical innovation. However, as medication improves, so does resistance. There’s a big example that we’ve all heard about it: antibiotic resistance. As quickly as we progress in designing new antibiotics, bacteria and viruses are catching up with resistance. As a result, new antibiotics have to be constantly invented and updated, or else risk being ineffective against pathogens. The situation has reached the point where choosing the correct antibiotic is as important as diagnosing the patient, and in the case of failure, potentially leading to fatal accidents. On a wider scale, it isn’t just antibiotics; many drugs available on the market today is the potential victim of drug resistance – it’s just a matter of time before the microorganism mutates. This is a race that will continue indefinitely.

Of course, perhaps a speeding up of medical advances may offer hope, but the mutation rate of bacteria and viruses could also soar in responses. The greater our medication power, the more pressure we put on bacteria for their own survival. In the context of evolution, any new genes that are potentially beneficial are quickly differentiated and spread very easily in the gene pool, even if this mutation might be detrimental under normal circumstances. In other words, the greater the threat of extinction, the more targeted the mutations are at that threat, and the quicker they appear and spread. This is the idea of evolutionary pressure. Therefore, even a giant leap in medication could be countered by a leap in drug resistance.

Taking the point of evolution further, as human civilisation progresses (not just in the medical sense), the rate of mutation follows. The World Health Organization had pointed out as early as 2007 that infectious diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate. Since the 1970s, about 40 new infectious diseases have been discovered, including SARS, MERS, Ebola, not to mention the deadly AIDS and the most recent COVID. The underlying factor is a lifestyle change. Our era’s frequent air travel and denser population acts as a breeding ground for viral mutations and ultra-quick transmission, as does war, poverty, and our expansion into new geographical areas. As the Baylor College of Medicine noted, ‘With people traveling much more frequently and far greater distances than in the past, living in more densely populated areas, and coming into closer contact with wild animals, the potential for emerging infectious diseases to spread rapidly and cause global epidemics is a major concern.’

Climate change, a consequence of industrialization, also plays a role. For instance, with large areas of the globe warming up, mosquitoes may carry diseases to a more diverse list of geographical locations, hence the increased risk of a deadly mutation and a drastic increase to the potential scale of a pandemic if it does happen. In short, an increasing rate of mutation in harmful microorganisms aren’t only influenced by a myriad of medical factors, but are also direct a consequence of our current notion of modernization.

The modern lifestyle is another reason for concern. Obesity has long been a problem in the States, one of the most developed countries in the world, while the advent of technology and a pixelated reality leads to fears of a sedentary lifestyle. Although it’s too early to make foreboding prophecies, I wouldn’t be surprised if a decline in average health is a result of certain so-called ‘advancements’ which fundamentally redefine our ways of living, interaction, and maybe even cultural norms. For the first time, the speed at which our society revolutionises itself has far outstripped the evolution of our biological instincts. This makes pleasure, redefined in a new social context, less compatible with the way we’re supposed to roam in the wilderness as a Homo Sapiens. With most people choosing a shorter but pleasurable life over a long yet monotonous existence, when pleasure and health comes in conflict, the latter is often what suffers. This inherent problem, ironically prevalent in more developed countries, is an inherent factor tying down our life expectancy.

Following from the reasoning above, modernization, globalisation, tech, and drugs don’t necessarily mean a safer world with a longer average lifespan. Their benefits are marred by their accompanying risks of genetic mutation and intrinsic problems in our lifestyle. As optimistic as we are about the future, we have to acknowledge that scientific discovery and medical innovation are at a decreasing rate. Could this be a sign that we’re slowing down in our race with nature? Could we be reaching our maximum life expectancy? Coronavirus may just be the start, and perhaps it’s only luck that dictates COVID’s low death toll.

It seems as though the greater we yearn to push our lifespan beyond its limit, the more vigour with which nature lashes back, manipulating its lesser dominions against us, and in this grinding race, the gradual formation of lifespan equilibrium.