The secret of how to live forever . . . or die trying very hard

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Mar 29, 2009 | by Barry Didcock

LIVE forever, Oasis once sang. But who actually wants to these days, what with the weather going weird and Spandau Ballet reforming?

David Fisher does. A 51-year-old who gets by on just 1600 calories a day, he wants to avoid the diseases of old age - as well as old age itself, presumably - and he intends to do it on a diet of prawns and pomodoro tomatoes, whatever they are.

Jane Little met him in the fourth and fi nal part of Third Agers (last Monday, 9.05am, BBC World Service), her intriguing series of essays on the ageing process.

Little began in a dance hall in Rio - "There's no age in Brazil, " said one octogenarian samba bunny, adding "if you want to live longer, come here" - and then chatted to Englishman Aubrey de Grey, chair of the US-based Methuselah Foundation.

Proper maintenance is the key to long life, de Grey said. Humans are like Morris Minors:

keep giving them regular MOTs and they'll run forever, though they might struggle a bit on the hills. It's all about molecular repair on a cell-by-cell basis, apparently, and the technology may soon be available to do it.

Then again, it might not. We also heard about the Methuselah Mouse Prize which offers cash to any scientist who can extend the lifespan of a mouse. So far the award money is unclaimed. "Come on, get real, " said Little in a rare moment of editorialising.

After the bonkers bit came the sterner intellectual stuff. Baroness Mary Warnock, who at 84 fears dementia more than anything else, spoke about her hopes for a change in the law to allow for the introduction of living wills. Baroness Julia Neuberger used her experience as a rabbi to talk about ageing as an important part of what it is to be human.

And, finally, 81-year-old Holocaust survivor Edith Eva Eger was asked how she viewed life and life's end. "I can die today and feel very satisfied, " said Edith. "I'm not afraid to die. If you're afraid to die, you never live."

On the subject of age - and, coincidentally, weird weather - Radio 3 caught up with 90-year-old James Lovelock last week for an extended edition of its highbrow Nightwaves programme (last Wednesday, 9.15pm). As well as being the creator of the Gaia theory, which posits that the Earth is a single living organism, Lovelock invented the electron capture detector, which enabled scientists to identify pollutants in the atmosphere, and worked for NASA on its Mars project in the 1960s. Not bad for a man who grew up in a house with no electricity.

So, asked presenter Philip Dodd, what are you: scientist, thinker, writer, environmentalist or inventor? "Think of me as a sort of old-fashioned GP, " said Lovelock wryly before embarking on a forensic discussion of Darwinism's shortcomings and launching a broadside against agribusiness and its "rape" of the countryside.

Inspiring stuff.