Commentary by Saul Justin Newman – why everything you think you know about longevity is wrong | Books on science and nature

Tthere is a special place in hell reserved for doctors who sell their authority, their position and their medical training to make money from people’s fear and stupidity. Every time I pass a medical practitioner who dispenses elixirs that promise youthful energy, cellulite-free thighs or microbiome makeovers, I want to poke out their deceptive eyes. Well, these scammers have chosen to stay in their own pockets rather than helping others. Worse, as with Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers, he is dangerous – something I saw firsthand in hospitals in 2021 when unvaccinated patients contracted the disease.

Nowhere is human hope more mercilessly cashed in by the medical community than by the anti-aging industry. Our inescapable fate – decline and death – makes us ready to be exploited. Who doesn’t want to pop a pill or get themselves an IV infusion that, for just $99.99 a month, can magically prevent you from turning into your grandmother? In Morbid, First author Saul Justin Newman, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Population Aging, wants to demolish the whole ugly house of cards. His main argument is that our fear of frailty and death has “opened the door to all kinds of skulduggery in the science of aging”, a field of research that is rife, he argues, with “misleading claims, misconceptions, and outright fraud.” The oldest man in the world is a liar, hundreds of years of dead people, thousands of years of people around the world and fifty years of dead people around the world. Long life is easy. “

That’s a shocking claim, especially when it’s made by someone whose Amazon author page reads like it’s intended to entertain, but written on acid. Among other things, Newman “met a man who had the tips of a walrus-skull book, he saved two people from drowning… My frustration grew with his publisher, MIT Press, explaining the book as descending “into a pleasant, if stimulating, confusion”. I’m a curmudgeon who seeks from the absurd not confusion, but education and inspiration. MIT Press sells its author short, though — because that’s what this impressive book delivers.

Take the world’s oldest person, Jiroemon Kimura, who died in Japan in 2013 at the age of 116 and 54 days. Mr. Newman points out that despite his age being determined by a thorough analysis of human history, Kimura had at least two names, two birthdays and three wives listed, although he had no recorded divorces. When Newman researched the cases of famous “old” people from around the world, he found inconsistencies. Another example emerged: “A case of long life is announced, broadcast in the world’s press and praised by everyone, and disappears years later when the evidence is confirmed.”

Worryingly, the abnormal aging of the world’s oldest humans appears to exist on a human scale. In 2010 in Tokyo, for example, the famous 111-year-old Sogen Kato was found dead in his house – where he had been dead for at least 30 years while his family continued to receive a pension. After the scandal, Japan’s justice ministry searched for everyone over the age of 100. More than 82% of them were found to be dead or “missing”. Newman also found other dead people in Greece. There, in an effort to clear the public record in 2012, the government found that more than 9,000 people who were listed as more than 100 actually died, and many of those who survived were written on paper so that unfaithful relatives could get pension money.

The islands of Okinawa (Japan) and Ikaria (Greece) are two of the six with the most famous “Blue Zones” – areas of late settlement where the population of centenarians, seems to have increased. Newman cleverly skewers Dan Buettner, an American businessman who created a profitable brand during a famous period, setting up the company Blue Zones and selling books, food and lifestyle that promise nine “secrets” to a long life. In many ways, Buettner is a forerunner of professional biohackers like Bryan Johnson, also played by Newman, who wants to defy death by injecting himself into his son’s blood, injecting his penis with Botox and publicly tracking his movements. Sure enough, Johnson’s website promises “lifelong insights” when you buy a “Biomarkers membership” for just $365 a year.

In an age of internet unrest and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy as US health secretary, Newman’s comments are refreshingly simple. The “science” of longevity is built on useless tools. So laugh at people who promise you “cures” for aging or peddle common hokum. Make room for the necessary repetitive research. The scientific method of value. Don’t smoke, eat more plants, move more. There is only one goal I will not allow. Newman should not, cannot, in any way or shape, compete with the longevity of David Attenborough.