Never Say Die

Some people live far longer than others. If you could find out how, would you bottle it?

NIR BARZILAI IS 57 YEARS OLD. There are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his hair is turning grey. As the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, Barzilai is more interested than most of us in the process of getting older. He studies ‘super-agers’, people between the ages of 95 and 112 who have never experienced any of the four most common diseases of aging: heart disease, diabetes, cancer and cognitive decline. But after years spent tracking how and why people age, he can’t help noticing the telltale changes taking place in his own body. “You’re bothered by subtle signs of aging in yourself, like rapidly recalling colleagues’ names, or changes in your sense of coordination while biking,” he says. “Your line of work makes you extra aware of these.” He’s trying to find ways to forestall aging and death, but his work seems to just make him more anxious about the process.

David Sinclair, a close friend of Barzilai’s who also studies aging—although in mice, worms and yeast instead of people—has a more acute version of the same problem. He says he’s been haunted by death since he was four years old, when he realized that everyone around him was going to die. First his pets, then his…