准备好，长命百岁有望成为普遍现象

    医学革命前沿领域的两位顶尖科学家相信，人类的寿命或将向三位数延伸。

    南加州大学药物工程学教授大卫·阿古斯在本周举行的财富全球论坛上表示，他认为依靠现有技术，人们活到九十多、一百多岁有望成为普遍现象。

    基因组分析和细胞治疗机构Human Longevity Inc.首席执行官克雷格·文特尔指出，人类寿命也许没有理论上限，但“我们得确保地球能养活寿命特别长的人类”。

    究其原因，还是医学和科技的交叉领域，例如大数据研究进展迅速，抗衰老方面实现突破才成为可能。

    文特尔解释说，15年前他首次确定人类基因组排序时没有任何可供参考对象。而现在我们知道，人们从父母那里得到的64亿对DNA中，有大约3%会发生变异。

    文特尔表示，10年前绝想不到有一天我们能根据遗传密码来预测寿命。现在，我们还知道人类的遗传密码一直在变化。比如说，男性会从40多岁或50多岁开始失去y染色体。

    为了破解信息量巨大的遗传密码，文特尔说他和他的团队聘请了设计谷歌翻译的工程师：“我们正在让机器进行学习，目的是理解和诠释所有数据。”他说，现在他们已经有能力根据一个人的遗传密码来直接生成此人的照片。

    那么，掌握了这些数据就能自动延长人类寿命吗？实际情况要更复杂一些。

    阿古斯说：“人类每六个月都会习得新特质，正是这些特质让人类变得越发复杂。”这同时意味着，我们永远也无法完全理解疾病的原理，不过阿古斯补充道，控制疾病并不一定需要理解它。

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

    Two of the leading scientists at the edge of the medical revolution believe that our life expectancy could start creeping up toward the triple digits.

    David Agus, a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California, said at the Fortune Global Forum on Monday that he believes that with our current technology humans have the potential to regularly live into their ninth or tenth decade.

    Craig Venter, co-founder and CEO of Human Longevity Inc., said there might be no hypothetical limit to how long we can live, but that “we need to make sure we can support extra long life on this planet.”

    Huge advancements at the intersection of medicine and technology, such as big data, are making these kinds of developments in aging possible.

    Venter explained that when he first sequenced the human genome 15 years ago, there was nothing for him to compare it to. For example, we now know that we vary about 3% from the 6.4 billion letters of DNA that we get from our parents.

    Ten years ago, Venter said he wouldn’t have thought that we’d be able to predict someone’s age from their genetic code. We also now know that our genetic code is constantly changing, he said. Men, for example, start losing y chromosomes in their 40s and 50s.

    To help crack the big data code in medicine, Venter said he and his team have hired the engineer who designed Google Translate. “We’re using machine learning to try to understand and interpret all that data,” he explained. He said that they now have the capability to generate a photo of someone straight from their genetic code.

    So will all this data automatically extend our lifespan. That’s a bit more complicated.

    “We’re learning new dimensions to each of us every six months,” Agus said. “These dimensions make us more complex.” That means we’re never going to totally understand disease, he added, but we don’t need to understand it to control it.