Dreams of Eternal Youth

Prolog With Cranach Nudes

I have sniffed around the margins of this topic in previous posts on this site, some on general theories of aging, some specific to brain aging. This book, should it ever be written would have a far broader scope. Posts under this heading will appear occasionally, whether I proceed with the book or not.

As the subtitle indicates, the book will include lots of fun historical anecdotes. As the subtitle also indicates, I am keen to address some of the latest scientific claims of progress in reversing the aging process. The mindset of all seekers of a fountain of youth, past and present, is that age is a pathological condition that can be cured. I will attempt to provide the reader a balanced perspective as to the cure for this mother of all pathologies. Hype abounds in that regard. As does ignorance of evolutionary constraints on life extension or age reversal. We should at least entertain the possibility that biotechnology will hit a wall in this endeavor.

I will also consider the ethics of this research. The first question to ask would be whether age-reversal, or even age extension, is desirable for human societies. What would be the social ramifications? A second ethical consideration concerns access to the fruits of this research should it bear any fruit at all. Will it benefit all equally? Or will access be restricted to the privileged few? It’s safe to bet on the latter.

Curing Old Age?

Legends of youth restoring elixirs, potions, and bathing waters span the entire course of human (written) history, testimony to a near universal aversion to aging. Throughout European history, the fountain of youth has been the prevailing metaphor.

My favorite visual representation of the fountain of youth is a painting by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. Cranach the Elder was quite elderly when he commenced the project; it was left to his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, to apply most of the paint to canvas.

I have never been much drawn to Cranach esthetically. Considered an exemplar of the Northern Renaissance, to my eye he still has one foot firmly planted in the earlier Gothic period, as evidenced by the poorly modeled, etiolated and seemingly boneless nudes for which he is best known. But in his painting of the Garden of Youth (Der Jungbrunnen, 1546) the Gothic sensibility serves him well. When I first viewed it in Berlin (Gemäldegalerie) I was transfixed. (The public domain (Wikipedia) reproduction shown below is poor, almost drained of color.) There’s a lot going on here. My eye wandered erratically after initial inspection until settling on a narrative course.

The format for this painting was large (roughly 4’ X 6’) by Northern European Renaissance standards, more typical of southern Europe at that time. The foreground is dominated by a rectangular pool in which numerous nude figures frolic, mostly, if not all, female. The fountain itself is unimpressive—as if secondary--and pushed to the back end of the pool, not at the center, where you would expect it to be. More room to observe the transformation from left to right.

To the left of the pool, elderly folk, again mostly female, are brought to the Fountain of Youth in various conveyances. One woman seems to have prematurely doffed her clothes far from the pool’s edge, which elicits an exaggerated leer from one dodgy chap. Another woman is seemingly too decrepit to completely disrobe and/or enter the water. Instead, she just sits by the waterside, half nude, gazing wistfully. Those that have entered the water become increasingly animated as the eye moves from left to right, and not coincidentally, younger.

By the time they emerge from the water at the right end of the pool they are rejuvenated to a much more youthful state. The goal of the cure, age wise, seems an obvious question that any participant must face: how young do you want to be when you come out on the other side? Cranach clearly assumes that infancy is not the desired outcome. (Not surprising in an age of high infant mortality.) But according to Cranach, childhood needs to be skipped as well. For females, he clearly targets an age after sexual maturity but before sexual activity. Have these women reacquired their virginity?

Cranach depict the physical changes that signify the age reversal in several ways. The aged approach the pool stooped and shuffling. Their white unkempt hair is also a signifier of old age. Wrinkles, especially on the torso are apparent but only on close inspection. Cranach also uses noses to indicate age. Those of the elderly are enlarged, sometimes hooked; youth regained, noses become more truncated, some approaching the pug state. More obvious age signifiers are the breasts, which hang pendulously in the elderly, one reason, perhaps, that Cranach prefers female subjects in this setting. The transformation of the breasts during age reversal is twofold. Not only do the breasts “firm up”, but they also seem to shrink as well, perhaps in keeping with a return to virginity.

It is also worth noting the change in behavior that accompanies the age reduction, beyond that of posture and more limber movement. When the elderly women arrive, they seem unselfconscious once they doff their clothes. In stark contrast, when their younger selves emerge, they modestly cover their genitals.

When the virgins exit the pool on the right side they are directed to a red velvet tent where they acquire new attire to go with their new skin. They are then directed to a luxurious outdoor banquet to celebrate their metamorphosis. The “healing” waters seem to bestow wealth as well as youth.

The New Fountain of Youth

Cranach depicts the most obvious outward signs of rejuvenation. But an effective age reversal would not be confined to the externals. Any fountain of youth worthy of the name would restore the internal organs as well, not least the brain. Age related cognitive declines would be reversed. Such all-encompassing age reversal is the goal of modern-day quests for a Fountain of Youth.

Never in human history has aging seemed so problematic. For obvious reasons. More of us are experiencing the malign effects of advanced age, from skin to brain. The elderly have never been so bountiful, not only in sheer number, but proportionately as well. This trend will not soon abate.

So demand for rejuvenation is high. In this environment of eager consumers, there is ample opportunity to make money, no matter the quality of the putative remedy. The space for misinformation is vast. Outright quackery abounds, but I am more concerned with the more subtle hypesters, many of them with stakes in private industries, but some who conduct publicly funded research at prestigious universities. And some with one foot in each endeavor.

Any evidence of success is exaggerated in media pronouncements, and often by self-promoting researchers themselves. David Sinclair of Harvard University is an exemplar in that regard. He seems utterly shameless, having moved on from his discredited work on sirtuins--from which he nonetheless profited greatly--to a new epigenetic remedy, from which he will certainly also profit no matter how doubtful its long-range prospects.