THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Jennifer Dziura
LENGTH: 59 lines
EVER SINCE human beings noticed that we have this way of dying - and what's more, doing so permanently - we have been searching for a fountain of youth.
At last, we may have found our fountain in some curious mutant worms.
``Mutant worms?'' you ask. ``Is that some newfangled cartoon show?'' The answer is no. Gary Ruvkin of Harvard Medical School reported last week that he has been doing some very serious research on worms that possess a gene called ``age-1.''
When age-1 mutates, the life span of the worms increases from a measly eight days to a much improved 30. Ruvkin, a veritable Ponce de Leon, thinks this just may have something to do with human aging.
Let us say, for the sake of example, that he is correct. The life span of a worm can be increased by 375-percent. If mutant genes can do the same for animals with opposable thumbs, then you and I could live to be a full 260 years old.
Just think - two-hundred-and-sixty-years. If humans had always lived that long, every American president, including Washington, could still be alive. Unfortunately, they would each require a pension, a bevy of Secret Service agents and several summer homes. Also, they would each spend their final 10 or 12 decades writing very, very long memoirs.
But then again, you wouldn't have a midlife crisis until your 130s. Oil of Olay commercials would feature mature models boasting, ``I may look 35, but I'm really 140!'' And the world population would be so large that everywhere would look like downtown Tokyo, except without all the briefcases, because everyone would be retired.
Since you would have 10 generations of living relatives, Thanksgiving dinners would become inestimably more complicated. Not the least of your problems would be what to call all of the ancestors - ``Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Dave'' could become a bit unwieldy after a while.
But whether you were to call Harold your ``great-to-the-eighth grandfather'' or Hazel your ``grandmother fifth removed,'' the situation would be hopeless anyway, inasmuch as you would have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great grandparents, and so on, all the way up to your 512 great-to-the-seventh grandparents. This amounts to a grand total of 1,020 living ancestors, not including your parents.
So how do you send your usual chipper holiday cards to 1,020 people? If the price of stamps remained at 32 cents, it would cost you more than $326 just for postage. You would also need a very serious Rolodex to keep track of all those addresses.
My guess is that people would turn over their greeting card responsibilities to professional greeting card services. Since the Social Security Department keeps such meticulous records, perhaps they could adopt the project as a fund-raiser, which they're certainly going to need if they have to pay everyone a pension for a couple of hundred years.
If the secrets held by mutant worms really turn out to be the fountain of youth, we will face all of these problems, plus at least 1,020 more. While I don't begrudge any genetically lucky worms three more weeks of a life, a world of ancient human beings struggling for air and space would not be one in which I would particularly want to live for 260 years. by CNB