What If You Never Had to Get Old? A Harvard Professor Says It's Coming

There's a 2011 sci-fi film called In Time that I was reminded about this week.

In it, humans are genetically engineered to stop ageing on their 25th birthday. A one-year countdown then appears on their forearm – that's all the time they have left. When the timer reaches zero, death is instant. The twist: time has replaced money. People work to earn it, spend it to survive, and the wealthy accumulate centuries of it while the poor scrape by on minutes.

The film's central idea is this: time is the real currency. Not money. And no matter how much money you have today, the number of years available to you as a human being is roughly the same as everyone else's. Roughly.

I've been sitting with that idea since listening to a podcast this week that felt, in some ways, like a real-world foreshadowing of it.

Dr David Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. He has spent 30 years studying one question: why do we age? And – more provocatively – whether we have to.

Sinclair's starting point is personal. When he was around four or five, his grandmother Vera crouched down next to him and, without softening it, told him the truth: she was going to die. His parents would die. His cat would die soon. And one day, so would he.

"I thought: that's not fair," Sinclair says. "Why would any species be made or created that knew that fact? That's cruel."

That moment, he says, is what led him to vow at 18 to get a PhD, move to the United States, and spend his career trying to do something about it.

What he has found, after three decades, is that his lab can now literally reverse the ageing process in animals – and is preparing, as of this year, to test it in humans.

The framework he uses is striking: the body is not just wearing out. It's a computer running software. And the software can be reinstalled. His theory is that ageing is essentially information loss – the biological instructions encoded in our cells gradually degrade over time, like a scratched disc. But inside every old person, he believes, there is a backup copy of that original youthful information. The goal of his lab is to find it, access it, and reinstall it.

In mice, the results are extraordinary. Old mice – the equivalent of 80-85 year old humans – were given the treatment and saw their remaining lifespan double. Eyesight, reversed. Multiple sclerosis markers, reversed. The same three-gene sequence used in the eye experiment has been applied to skin, the brain, hearing, and motor neuron disease, with significant effects across all of them.

"It's not a question of if," Sinclair says, "it's a question of when."

And here's the part that made me put down my coffee: the reset isn't a one-shot deal. In mice, they've reversed ageing at least twice. The cells age out again, you reset them again. You just keep going.

The logical endpoint of that – the question the podcast host puts directly to Sinclair – is whether humans could, one day, live forever.

Sinclair is careful here. He doesn't claim it. He says he's "skeptical" that it will happen within his lifetime. But he won't rule it out either. The futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted the 2040s as the point at which human beings may be able to extend life indefinitely, and Sinclair says it's "dangerous to bet against" Kurzweil's predictions. What he does say is that people who do the right things today are "probably going to live into the 22nd century."

That's not forever. But it's a very long time.

Which brings me back to In Time – and to the question I haven't been able to stop turning over.

The film's uncomfortable insight is that living longer doesn't automatically mean living better. In that world, time is hoarded by the wealthy, while the poor die young. Sinclair acknowledges the social implications directly: if age reversal becomes real, there will be enormous disruption to social security systems, employment, retirement frameworks – everything built around the assumption that humans live for roughly 80 years and then stop.

But there's an even more personal question buried underneath all of that. One the podcast host asks himself out loud, and I found myself answering.

Would you want to live forever?

At first, my instinct was no. The thought of going on indefinitely – watching the world change beyond recognition, outliving generation after generation – has a quality to it that feels more like a curse than a gift.

But then the host reframes it. Not "would you live forever in principle" – but "if you were healthy, mentally sharp, still doing things that gave you purpose, still surrounded by people you love – would you ever choose to go?"

And the honest answer, sitting in that framing, is no. I wouldn't. Not yet.

The host says the same thing: "Just like there hasn't come a day in the last 33 years where I've chosen to go now." Sinclair smiles. "Exactly."

Sinclair's answer to the purpose of life question is worth holding onto regardless of where you stand on the science: "To do your best with the skills that you've been given, every day, to make the world a better place for future generations."

Not to live as long as possible. To do your best with whatever you have.

If the science one day makes "whatever you have" considerably longer than it is today, the question of what to do with that time will still be ours to answer.

I'm genuinely not sure if I'd want a reset. But I find it increasingly difficult to argue that ageing is natural, therefore acceptable – which is how most of us have been quietly living.

Maybe the more useful question isn't "would you live forever?" It's what would you do differently if you knew the clock was less fixed than you thought.

Your Turn: 
If you could reset your biological age – not live forever, just get back a decade or two of health and function – would you? And what would you do with it? 
Sinclair says living into the 22nd century may be realistic for people who make the right choices today. Does that possibility change anything about how you're living right now?
In the world of In Time, the wealthy buy centuries while the poor die young. If age reversal becomes real, do you think it will be accessible to everyone – or is this the next great inequality?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – I’d love to hear what’s resonating with you.

☕ If this musing sent you down a rabbit hole you didn't expect – welcome to my week, and consider buying L-Plate Retiree a coffee on Ko-fi. I can't promise it'll help you live longer, but it'll definitely keep the newsletter alive a little while yet.

Spreading Your Bets – The Power of Global Diversification

Alright, L-Plate Retirees! We've built our portfolio blueprint with Asset Allocation understood the science of Portfolio Construction, and even learned to manage our own behavioral biases. Today, we're adding another crucial layer to our fortress: Global Diversification. Think of it as not putting all your eggs in one country's basket!

Global Diversification simply means spreading your investments across different countries and regions around the world. Why is this so important? Because different economies and markets don't always move in perfect sync. When one region is having a tough time, another might be booming. By investing globally, you can:

• Reduce Overall Risk: If the economy in your home country hits a snag, your international investments might help cushion the blow. This directly relates to our discussions on Risk and Return Fundamentals.

• Smooth Out Returns: Global diversification can lead to more consistent, less volatile returns over the long term.

• Mitigate Country-Specific Risks: You're less exposed to the unique economic shocks, political instability, or regulatory changes of any single nation.

• Manage Currency Risk: Fluctuations in one currency can be balanced by movements in others, though this is a more advanced consideration.

Remember our chat about Home Country Bias? That's the tendency to invest disproportionately in domestic assets because they feel familiar. While understandable, it can leave you under-diversified. A truly global portfolio consciously overcomes this bias.

Of course, global investing isn't without its challenges. You might face currency fluctuations, political instability, different regulatory environments, and potentially higher transaction costs. However, the benefits of reduced risk and smoother returns often outweigh these hurdles, especially when implemented through simple, low-cost vehicles like global mutual funds or ETFs.

Consider the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s. Investors heavily concentrated in U.S. tech stocks faced significant losses. But those with globally diversified portfolios, including exposure to European or Asian markets, would have experienced a less severe impact. It's a real-world example of how global diversification protects your portfolio.

L-Plate Takeaways:

• Don't Be a Homebody: Invest beyond your home country to reduce risk and smooth out returns, building on the Foundations of Investing.

• Risk Reduction: Global diversification helps mitigate country-specific economic shocks and political instability, a key aspect of Risk Management.

• Currency Awareness: Be mindful that currency fluctuations can impact your foreign investment returns.

• Overcome Bias: Actively fight Home Country Bias to achieve true diversification.

• Simple Implementation: Use global mutual funds or ETFs for easy and cost-effective global exposure, leveraging Investment Vehicles.