What a Transhumanist Keeps in the Medicine Cabinet

Lately, I’ve been getting acquainted with London’s transhumanists: people who trust in the power of technology to accelerate humankind’s evolution and precipitate the advent of a new brand of Homo sapiens with unthinkable abilities, skills and possibilities. Among their goals, tremendous longevity that could possibly verge on immortality is paramount. If the transhumanist utopia is to happen, future humans won’t age, will surely enjoy Methuselahic lifespans, or may just opt for not dying at all.

Attending some meetings of the city’s transhumanist community—which is mainly made up of nerdy guys with Ivy League jumpers and bespectacled, bearded types—I learned that the posse is quite divided as for the best means to achieve this much-coveted goal. Some advocate Ray Kurzweil’s mind-uploading path to unlimited life. Others think that working at the cellular level to elongate telomeres or reverse metabolism-induced damages is the best way to defeat ageing and death. Still others believe that longevity is quite attainable using a more old-fashioned medical approach, i.e. taking various drugs.

While the first two are quite long-term strategies (right now we don’t know how to transfer our minds on computers, or how to make telomeres longer), the third one is particular intriguing, since you could perhaps get started with it right now.

I set about to find out what were these miracle medicines that would allegedly make us all live longer and, at one of the meetings, was handed a copy of Aging Matters, a  “magazine” (more like a catalogue for anti-ageing business International Antiaging-Systems) where the secrets of some supposed longevity-enhancing substances were described.

Reading it, I got an idea of what a real transhumanist medicine cabinet should apparently contain. Turns out that it looks quite similar to my granny’s.

Peptide bioregulators

The story goes, according to Antiaging-Systems, that during the Cold War, Russian military scientists were under pressure to develop methods to defeat ageing, since they sounded like a good weapon to have (imagine an army of forever young soldiers). Later, one of the scientists involved, former medical colonel Vladimir Khavinson,decided to disclose  the fruits of that patriotic effort: peptide bioregulators, of which Khavinson is now the foremost evangelist.

It’s quite difficult to grasp what these "peptide bioregulators" are in the first place; the description provided in the magazine is rather fuzzy. The best I could put together is that the peptides used are chains of amino acids somehow extracted from animals’ organs (mainly cows). In a fun correlation, each peptide is supposed to cause a different effect depending on the organ it was squeezed from: According to Khavinson, for example, a peptide bioregulator extracted from a cow’s brain will benefit the patient’s brain.

So what do they do? According to Khavinson’s interview in the magazine, a whole lot of stuff. They can restore the functions of an old organism, and create “a biological reserve for health and aging.” They also allegedly have the potential to repair serious damages to the retina.

That all sounds very cool, but Khavinson’s miracle lacks painfully on the peer review side: nearly all the literature produced on the topic, so far, is published under his name or one of his partners’.

Metformin 

I’d heard about metformin before, since it's an anti-diabetic medication—specifically, the one both my grandparents take.

According to Aging Matters, metformin is also “the most effective anti-aging, life extension drug.”  It backs these claims up with a 2013 study from the University College of London, which demonstrated that a particular species of worms, treated with metformin, showed an increase in lifespan of about a third, and a rather youthful metabolism. Another study, carried out by the US National Institute of Aging, showed that treating mice with metformin leads to a rise of mean lifespan by 5.58 percent .

It’s not exactly clear whats the reason for metformin’s anti-aging effect could be, but it somehow has a potentially rejuvenating effect on metabolism, triggering weight loss and amplified sensitivity to insulin.

But while it could perhaps be helpful if you’re a rodent or worm, any lifespan-increasing effect of metformin on human beings is yet to be proven.

Melatonin

Again, I’d heard about this from my grandparents, who use it when they have insomnia issues. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland, a little node which Descartes believed to be the “seat of the soul.” In a previous issue of my anti-ageing magazine, Italian doctor and melatonin guru Walter Pierpaoli defines the pineal gland as our biological clock,  the ultimate arbiter of one’s life and death. As the gland starts deteriorating, in Pierpaoli’s opinion, we start ageing and striding firmly towards death. Taking melatonin, a hormone regulating the sleep-wake cycle, would supposedly be the right course of action to prevent the magical gland’s decay.

There have once more been a few studies on mice with mixed results, but melatonin is far from proven as an anti-ageing wonder drug right now.

Garlic, eggplants and other herbs

In the anti-ageing circle, the  vegetable realm is a trove of wondrous cure-alls. From garlic, which can be used to treat virtually everything from heavy metal poisoning to heart diseases, to eggplant (sometimes rechristened the “devil’s apple”), which some claim could cure skin cancer.

Of course, little or nothing of these claims is actually scientifically substantiated, but we know fresh veggies are good for your health, so why not? Also, my grandparents eat lots of them, too. And since they’re both over 90, that’s something.