Immortality still beyond even Putin's ambition

“In a few years, with the development of biotechnology, human organs can be constantly transplanted so that people can live younger and younger, and even become immortal.” – Vladimir Putin caught on hot-mike counselling his septuagenarian buddy, China supremo Xi Jinping.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that Putin has voiced an interest in longevity. He has form in this space. Several years ago, local Russia media reported that he is among the many Russians who have consumed and bathed in blood harvested from the amputated antlers of Siberian red deer, a grizzly ritual  adherents believe reverses the aging process. Putin is also famous for quarantining his guests at the opposite end of inordinately long summit tables to prevent the airborne transmission of foreign bugs (the biological variety). And his daughter, Maria Vorontsova, is an endocrinologist who has received multi-million dollar grants for her work on cellular ageing and longevity.

Apart from these examples of family interest, Putin has also ensured that the taps at treasury are flowing for the antiaging field.

Last year, he oversaw the launch of the New Technologies for Health Preservation program with a remit that includes “regenerative biomedicine, preventive medicine technologies, ensuring active and healthy longevity.” It has been reported US$2.6 billion will be allocated to the project over the next five years.

Russia’s Health Ministry reportedly asked researchers in a June 2024 letter to provide “proposals for developments” in several longevity-related research areas, including cellular aging, bioprinting and organ printing, and even “correcting” the immune system based on “critical markers identified in the aging process.” 

So, is Putin well-founded in claiming that immortality is just a few timely organ replacements away?

Well, not really.

There is no doubt that organ transplants can be credited with having saved countless lives by switching failing organs for functional foster organs, but even one-off organ transplants remain challenging let alone the compounding risks of upscaling them into an ongoing maintenance program.

It is true that transplant survival rates have improved immensely. A living-donor kidney can perform for 20 years and more, liver and heart transplants have achieved 10 year survival rates of up to 70% so yes, on a personal basis, where a transplant is performed due to premature organ failure, they do lead to personal life extension.

And not only by maintaining core functions. As a flow-on benefit a successful transplant can restore vitality and health making the years gained productive and well worthwhile.

But fresh organs of themselves won’t extend human life-span because replacing them doesn’t address other key aspects of ageing.

Ageing is a whole-of-body process, not something confined to organs. A new heart might avoid death by cardiovascular disease but its not going to prevent the big non-organ killers such as cancer, stroke or neurodegenerative disease. You haven’t changed the wheel, just a few of the spokes.

And of course, the new organ will deteriorate over time, each surgical replacements carries its own risk and the powerful immunosuppressive drugs required to prevent organ rejection themselves create an increased risk of infections and lymphomas. The very process of replacing an organ may therefore contribute to damaging others.

So what Is Putin thinking? Surely given his avid personal interest as well as his generosity with the resources of the state he must be aware of these limitations.

Or is he possibly gazing more deeply into the future of bioscience than we credit? Could his insights have been referencing Russia’s burgeoning investment and ambition in bioprinting?

You see Rosatom, the state corporation that specializes in nuclear energy also happens to dabble in organ-printing. While it is still early days in the development cycle, it has proclaimed its intentions to master organ-printing by 2030, including being able to produce blood vessels and even livers.

The Russian private sector is also making strides in anti-aging technology. Its local tech-bros are mimicking the efforts of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in seeing longevity as the next mountain to mine. In 2015 a Russian startup implanted a 3D-printed thyroid gland into a mouse and in 2018 it became the first company to create live tissue in space.

Certainly, cultivating self-replacement organs from human stem cells in the lab gets around two of the constraints posed by a scaled-up transplant program: scarcity of parts and organ rejection. But while scientists have succeeded in producing miniature organelles that mimic some of the functions of organs, full-scale, functional replicas still reflect herculean if not Jurassic ambition.

So while the convenient intersection of interests between some of the most powerful despots and the wealthiest tech bros on earth gives immortality its best shot to date, we ordinary folk should extract some solace in knowing that death will continue for the foreseeable future to be the great social leveller.

And that we’re not going to have to endure Putin, Xi and Trump slugging it out for world supremacy until eternity.