Vol. 78: Longevity and Biden

Suppose we got better as we get older?

         Back in the ’90s, while researching a magazine article about longevity, I interviewed the movement’s guru, a former Johnson & Johnson executive named Wallace Steinberg who had reinvented himself as the world’s leading (and perhaps only) biotechnology venture capitalist. In that capacity he had raised more than $300 million for biotech projects devoted to extending and enhancing the quality of human life. As Steinberg persuasively argued, the flood of recent advances in gene therapy, immunology, and organ and cellular transplantation meant that all the ills and degenerative conditions of aging were, at least in theory, correctable. His implication was staggering: Medical science might soon extend the human lifespan to hundreds of years or even eliminate death altogether.

“I have this theory that death is a genetic disease,” Steinberg said. “There is no religious, preordained reason to die.”            

Steinberg was eager to benefit personally from these advances. “I’m a better tennis player today, at 58, than I was 30 years ago,” he insisted. “I’m playing and improving every day. By the time I’m 132, I’m going to win Wimbledon.”

An immature world

         But surely, I protested, life without death would lose its meaning. And a planet where nobody died would be horribly overcrowded. Besides, would you really want to chart your own path in a world where your grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents were constantly looking over your shoulder?

         Steinberg, who had encountered such quibbles many times before, waved his hand dismissively. Most people today, he argued, need 50 or 60 years to get their act together, only to die a decade or two later. As a result, humanity is essentially immature. Wouldn’t it be better to live in a world run by elders who possess centuries’ worth of maturity and wisdom?

Verdi and Grandma Moses

         These thoughts are prompted by Joe Biden’s feeble performance in his debate with Donald Trump last month. The case against continuing Biden’s candidacy essentially boils down to this: He’s not as sharp as he used to be, and at 81 he’s unlikely to get any sharper.

         “The one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” the actor George Clooney argued in the New York Times last week. “None of us can.”

         That’s probably true in Biden’s case (not to mention Trump’s). I had to wonder about Biden’s reasoning power when he declared last week: “I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in this to complete the job I started.” Complete the job? Any good Jew could have told him that the Talmud says precisely the opposite: “It is not upon thee to finish the work; neither art thou free to desist from it.”

And yet…  Konrad Adenauer was 87 when he finished his job: his 14-year task of transforming Germany from a Nazi dictatorship into a pacifist democracy. Verdi composed Falstaff at 80. Churchill completed his four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples at 81. Luis Buñuel directed That Obscure Object of Desire at 77. Michelangelo designed the St. Peter’s Basilica in his 80s. Grandma Moses didn't start painting seriously until she was 78, and she was still producing masterpieces past 100. And they did it all without the benefit of genome sequencing or organ transplants.

Tom Lehrer on Mozart

         Psychologists have argued that creativity peaks in our 30s or early 40s. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet at 35. Einstein presented his general theory of relativity at 36. Edison demonstrated his incandescent light bulb at 32. Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro at 30. (As Tom Lehrer once observed, “It’s humbling to realize that when Mozart was my age, he’d already been dead for two years.”)

         But the past doesn’t necessarily predict the future, and visionaries like Wallace Steinberg aren’t necessarily wackos. A similar label was applied around 1800 to Oliver Evans, an eccentric Philadelphia inventor who regularly amused his neighbors with public declarations like “There will come a time when wagons will move on land with steam-engines, at 20 miles an hour, a man breakfasting in New York, dining in Philadelphia, and supping in Baltimore, all in the same day.”

Outliving Putin

         I write as an 82-year-old who still bikes to work daily through the streets of downtown Philadelphia, still does 60 crunches every morning, still runs up and down three flights in my house (although, to be sure, I’ve given up ice skating and mountain climbing). Most of my thoughts remain future-oriented, such as books I hope to write before I die. But the certainty of death sooner or later is surely a motivating factor. The challenge of outliving, say, Trump, Putin, Mitch McConnell, or Clarence Thomas also inspires me to hang in there, even if I know damn well that other Trumps and Putins will inevitably replace them. These days I find myself less interested in running things than in supporting and encouraging other younger creative thinkers who offer me reason to hope that the world will be OK after I’m gone.

         But you were wondering what became of Wallace Steinberg. One night in July 1995— barely two years after I interviewed him— he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. He was 61. The cause of his death was never determined.

So, no, Steinberg never made it to Wimbledon. On the other hand, the life expectancy of an American was only 47 years in 1900; today it’s 76 years. Who knows what it will be in 2100?

Steinberg wasn’t necessarily wrong about the future of longevity— just premature.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com