The business of immortality

When we say that reality is catching up with the fiction of Foreverness, we mean it. The question of how immortality is achieved in the novel is lightly skipped over, for it would be too easy to get things wrong if just guessing. In real life, however, some of the top scientists in the world are following the steps of Watanabe, our dear wise man. They are not, like he does, carrying research on a shoestring in a dark university lab, they are being payed sport star salaries, of the order of one million dollars.

The race was initiated in 2013 by Calico, founded by Google. Since then, a steady stream of new companies has come into existence with increasing budgets. First tens of millions, then hundreds, then billions. Retro Bioscience, funded by Sam Altman, raised 1Bn after been founded in 2021 and soon after, in 2022 Jeff Bezos threw 3Bn into Altos Labs, the current top player in the field.

The financial effort aimed to defeat death from the part of the investors is just a sign of how much other people would be willing to pay for a tested, or even experimental, immortality treatment. The size of this niche market is significant, and constantly growing.

The science of aging is not completely understood, but there are already good indicators of some of its causes, such as reduction of telomere length. At the same time, revolutionary gene therapies are showing promising results in cell rejuvenation, with claims that vision has been restored to mice. Rejuvenating treatments also have severe risks of actually causing death through tumors, but these are only early days.

Which of those companies will play the role that the WHS plays in Foreverness? When will rejuvenation therapy will be available? And for whom? One thing is sure, some very powerful people are doing all they can to scape the graveyard.