As many of our up-to-date readers know by now, mankind is stumbling ever closer to the long-sought Fountain of Youth, as scientists prepare the first human trial for an anti-aging pill. The clinical trial is called “Targeting Ageing With Metformin” and it will investigate whether the drug is capable of slowing and/or stopping degenerative diseases and heart conditions. The FDA has allowed trials to take place in the Winter of 2016 and scientists are planning to recruit 3000 people in their 70s and 80s who either have or are at risk of having major diseases. The trial will take five to seven years. Metformin is an inexpensive drug already commercially available and used for the treatment of diabetes.
Last year, a study of more than 180,000 people showed that diabetes patients being treated with Metformin not only lived longer than other diabetic patients but also longer than the healthy control sample. Tests on animals have pointed out that the drug extends their lifespan and keeps the whole body healthier.
“If the effects are the same in humans as they have been in animal studies, it may be possible for people to live healthily into their 120s,” said Diabetes.co.uk, a figure that appears to be based on worms living 40 percent longer than their life expectancy when given the drug. One of the effects of Metaformin is making our cells better oxygenated, which can improve overall health. The mechanism behind the increased oxygenation is not clear, but scientists are not surprised that extra oxygen has a positive effect on the body.
So how about that, friends and neighbors? 120 is just around the corner and many of our readers are taking appropriate action. With 50 or so years left, Nancy Kay, a life-long troublemaker, is starting up a new SDS (Seniors for a Democratic Society) chapter in hopes of nagging the country into political awareness. “It’s FIFTY YEARS,” exclaims Nancy. “You can’t just sit on the porch!”
And she’s not the only one. Marty Jourard, an unreconstructed saxophonist after all these years, is busily arranging road dates for the Motels’ 2065 tour. Debbie Wynn, who cast her lot with Jesus several years ago, is petitioning her church for a twenty-year leave of absence to get in a little more hellraising time. Chuck Lemasters is putting all his reserves into the purchase of rural agricultural land to capitalize on the upcoming legalization of marijuana. “In fifty years, I expect to be a Captain of Industry,” he avers, paging through his Porsche catalogue. And my sister, Alice (the Republican), an inveterate traveler, will by then have visited every country extant with the possible exceptions of Madagascar, Burundi and the Keeling Islands. It’s all good.
Overcoming Obstacles
Of course, as in all new upheavals, there will be a snag or two. The most likely being those grumpy, slug-a-bed doctors, always slow to embrace new scientific discoveries. Because, like it or not, you will have to get a prescription for the Metformin. As time goes by, of course, the medical profession will slowly yield, but this does no good for Barney Google, 85, hobbling around the convalescent center with his flashy walker, bumper sticker reading “Oh, you kid!” Barney needs his Metformin NOW! This will all be a great boon to the flagging Mexican drug cartels, on the verge of insolvency due to legalization of pot in the U.S. I foresee Metformin mules wading across the Rio Grande, thousands of little tablets crammed into every orifice, contraband pills flooding into Laredo and Nogales by land, air and tunnel. Little white ice-cream trucks will go tingalinging through The Villages at tortoise speeds with grannies rushing from their houses to get their weekly fixes. In urban areas, oldsters will motor slowly down ghetto streets in large convoys, on the make for product. Pharmacy doors will be pried open at 3 a.m. and the shelves plundered by roving bands of nonagenarians. Eventually, mobs of grey-haired petitioners will picket the White House carrying signs reading “OTC! OTC!” It’s coming. There’s no doubt about it. You read it here first.
“I Yam what I yam….”
On Second Thought….
If you could live to 120, would you really want to? Let’s assume you are in reasonable health and the means are available not to lose ground on that front. Let’s further assume you’re not psychologically compromised by the loss of friends or family. Have you seen it all, done it all? Is there anything left for you? Would it make any difference if you knew there was a Heaven? Or not? People of most religious persuasions are convinced this life is just a Vale of Tears, a proving ground for The Great Beyond, a stage to be endured on the Road to Glory. For them, death is a facilitator, an elevator to the Heights. But what if you knew this was all baloney? What if you knew—to cite Joe E. Brown—that when you’re dead, you’re dead. No tunnel of light with grandma at the end of it, ready to escort you to the Land of Milk and Honey. Just one big THUD. No more Johnny. Would that make any difference?
What if a viable means of continuing life to 120 was developed? How much would that increase pressure on natural resources, on the economy? What would happen to already strained entitlements like Social Security? Would the AARP lobby become the most powerful in history, kicking the NRA to the sidelines? Would Viagra outsell aspirins?
Most people, offered the promise of a longer life, would place all of the above on the back burner. Woody Allen once stated, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying.” And he’s got plenty of company. In Gulliver’s Travels, Our Hero encountered immortal beings called Struldbrugs, exclaiming “What a wonderful thing it must be to be born exempt from that Universal Calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the Weight and Depression of Spirits cause by the continual Apprehension of Death.”
Were he able to live forever, he tells his friends, he’d spend 200 years becoming the richest man in the kingdom, then apply himself to studying the Arts and Sciences in order to outstrip all others in learning. Finally, by observing every change in politics, public affairs, customs, language and fashion, he would become “The Oracle of the Nation.”
John Walsh, writing for The Independent, reminds us that Gulliver soon got a wake-up call. “Struldbrugs, he is told, spend most of their lives morose and dejected: ‘they were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative; but uncapable of friendship and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing Passions.’ They envy, Gulliver learns, the vices of youth and cannot hear of a funeral without lamenting that someone has gone to a place forever denied them. They have no memory of anything that happened after they were 30. After 80, they’re treated as though dead, their land inhabited by heirs. They are held incapable of working or holding office. They lose their teeth, hair and their sense of taste, and cannot read because their memory won’t let them remember the beginning of a sentence by the time they’ve reached it’s end. They lose the elasticity of language until they can’t communicate with their neighbors. They are ancient, silent, useless, hopeless individuals, with nothing to enjoy, no hope of relationships, looking fruitlessly for just one thing: death.” Then again, nobody ever accused Gulliver author Jonathan Swift of being a cheery sort. Surely the shortcomings of the Struldbrugs needn’t be delivered to us. Right?
On The Cheap
We mentioned Alice, as we often do, much to her occasional chagrin. Alice is the Marco Polo of the Killeen family, traveling far and wide and often. Now, you might think Alice is blessed with a significant travel dowry, but that is not the case. Alice is a woman of modest means. She is just determined to get out of the house as often as possible and any mode of inexpensive transport will do. Alice will take the redeye to Korea to save a buck. She will discover the optimum travel times, the cheapest fares, the most dubious carriers. Alice is not above riding steerage class on a Sumatran garbage scow if it gets her where she wants to go. Alice will ride in swine delivery vehicles. Alice would strap herself to the wing of an airliner if the price was right and the authorities looked the other way. Alice is all about getting there. We don’t know where Alice is going this year but we know it’ll be a bargain. We think it’s a shame all this travel knowledge is going to waste on one person and we have often suggested Alice set up an online travel bureau called “On The Cheap.” She says she is considering it. We’ll keep you posted, although we might mention that this business is not for the faint of heart. All customers are advised to wear flak jackets, carry a two-shot derringer and a bottle of Lysol. You are now free to move about the country. Well, almost free.
We’re Leaving On A Jet Plane….
Tomorrow. Heading with Siobhan to a veterinary conference in Las Vegas. These vets have two major conclaves every year—one in Orlando, one in Vegas. What does that tell you? Anyway, this gives Siobhan an opportunity to interact with clients west of the Mississippi and it gives Bill a chance to check out wedding chapels for the June nuptials. The temperature in Las Vegas right now is 38. How can that happen? Every time we’ve been there before, it’s 105. What does the old song say—“It’s a long, long while from May to December?” Why don’t we just go to Aroostook, where it’s warm?
If you need anything, we’ll be staying at the Venetian. They have weddings there, too. In gondolas. Floating down canals. Just like the real Venice. Irana tried to talk Siobhan into one of these things but I resisted. Nothing personal, I just prefer The Wedding March to O Sole Mio for these occasions. We have one night to kill out there so I’m searching for entertainment. None of the musical offerings ring my bell and I’ve already seen The Blue Man Group. And how many incarnations of Cirque du Soleil are required in one lifetime? I mean, they’re everywhere and they’re not exactly unvaried. Where’s the real Elvis when you need him?
That’s all, folks….
