Boston-based Harvard Medical School professor Jane A. Driver is an expert on aging. She studies the genetic and physical factors that extend one's life expectancy. She asserts the human race is already prepared to reach average life expectancy of 115 years and the secret is close at hand.
JANE A. DRIVER
Harvard Medical School (USA)
“One of the things we figured out is that most diseases that people get at an older age are better off being prevented than treated. There are pathways that we can access now we understand that we can actually activate through simple things like diet and exercise. That's free and it's available to anyone, anywhere on the planet, for most people.”
This Harvard researcher asserts that there has been a radical paradigm shift in the fight against aging. For the first time in the United States, the FDA approved a drug not meant to heal a specific illness but rather prolong the process of aging itself.
JANE A. DRIVER
Harvard Medical School (USA)
“I don't think that this will result in us living to 200 years. Certainly, it could help many people live out the maximum of the human lifespan, which is probably around 115 years. Again, that begs the question; 'What are we going to do with that time? Are we ready?'”
In her opinion, lengthening one's age by means of genetic treatments or drugs has side effects.
JANE A. DRIVER
Harvard Medical School (USA)
“People need to know what to do with that extra life that they have. So, retirement used to be just a few years before someone would die of natural causes. Now, people might live for 20 years after their retirement. So these are all good problems to have.”
Driver made these statements at a Madrid conference on Transhumanism organized by the Comillas Pontifical University, and run in collaboration with the Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno foundation.
