The world's population will polarize in terms of life expectancy to the point where longevity will be the new inequality, according to Sarah Harper, a professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford.
'It's crazy to retire at 55 if you have the mental and physical capacity of a 30-year-old. I'd like to ditch chronological age. It's about keeping healthy and active and not frail.'Speaking at Intelligence Squared's If Conference, she explained how 10 million people living in the UK today — 20 percent of the population — will make it to 100 years old. "We currently have 11,000 centenarians, but will have half a million by 2050 and one million by the end of the century. So when the Queen is sending out her telegrams or e-mails or writing on someone's wall in 2040, it will be 50,000 a year," she said.
Incremental longevity means that we are adding five hours of live expectancy each day. She added that if we can conquer cardiovascular disease in the UK — which she sees as highly probable — we will immediately add an additional 12 years. She was keen to emphasise that, contrary to some claims [such as those of Richard Seymour] it is highly unlikely that the first person to live to 1,000 is already alive today.
However, the cost of some of the longevity measures and the varying levels of healthcare across the globe mean that this longevity will not distributed evenly. She explained: "We have places like Sierra Leone where 35 is still the life expectancy, whereas rich Americans and Chinese can live until 150 while most people die in their 80s and 90s."
One of the main challenges of radical longevity is the fact that it is easier to regenerate certain body parts such as organs, but not our skeleton. Harper argued that advances in stem cell research, combined with nanotechnology and genetic research can address this.
Another challenge is how we rethink our lives. "The idea that we'll have a period of time in education, a period of time in work and a huge period of time in leisure will move to a more fluid life course," she argued. "We will delay a lot of our life transitions [such as having children or retiring] if we are going to live life for 150 years. But are they going to be healthy years? Or frail and disabled?"
She added: "It's crazy to retire at 55 if you have the mental and physical capacity of a 30-year-old. I'd like to ditch chronological age. It's about keeping healthy and active and not frail."
