Jaipur: Tech billionaires who want to live longer are investing in anti-ageing research but a society growing old and hanging around does not make a vibrant society, molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan said at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).
“You wouldn’t want [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin still hanging around years from now!” Ramakrishnan quipped.
On Saturday, in a session at the JLF called ‘Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality’, he talked about the ethics and realities of anti-ageing research and how to live a healthy, long life.
Venki Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath for his work on the structure and function of ribosomes. He has authored two books, ‘Gene Machine’ and his latest ‘Why We Die’.
On death, he said, “All sorts of entities die. Cities die and companies die.” Humans die “when there is a loss of ability to function as individuals”, he added.
Tech billionaires, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, don’t mind sparing a few dollars on human resuscitation or longevity research, according to Ramakrishnan. However, creativity and cognitive functions decline with age, and an increasingly older society is going to bring more challenges than solutions, he added.
The average lifespan of humans has already increased, but the fertility rates are dropping, and the chances of diseases such as cancer are more in an ageing population, Ramakrishnan told the audience, asserting that an increased lifespan comes at a cost.
There should be more focus on quality of life than longevity because it is still unclear whether there can be an extension of healthy life, said the renowned molecular biologist.
“The rich live longer,” he said, pointing out that the most important factors for a healthy life are a diet of mostly plants but not too much, weight-bearing or cardiovascular exercises, and sleep, all of which are inter-dependent. Sleep is not only necessary for rejuvenation of cells but also to reduce stress, which can contribute to ageing, he said.
Another advice he had: stay away from alcohol. There is no threshold for drinking alcohol without letting it affect health, and every dose of alcohol does DNA damage, Ramakrishnan said. He added that people who do not live isolated lives but are instead surrounded by community and have a sense of purpose also seem to be living longer, healthier lives than others.
On scientific advances in anti-ageing, Ramakrishna cited calorie restriction drugs and GLP-1 drugs, which help to regulate weight, and reducing stem cell loss without causing cancer or other serious diseases.
Asked if he had any suggestion on how to save companies from dying in the context of anti-ageing research, Ramakrishnan said that a company, which has many autonomous units, is more vibrant and opening more such units could make the lifespan of a company longer by allowing for the shutdown of those units rather than the entire company when it comes to closure.
ThePrint is a digital media partner for Jaipur Literature Festival 2025.