Could organ transplants really help you live to 150? Experts weigh in.
Some biohackers dream of a future where organ transplants help humans achieve immortality. But scientists say there are still major hurdles—for one, we can't yet transplant the human brain.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin gathered this week in Beijing, many expected discussion on geopolitical issues like energy security, global trade, or military conflict. Instead the world leaders, both 72, were caught on a hot mic talking about using organ transplants and modern medicine to live longer, possibly forever.
“Biotechnology is making advances,” Putin told Xi via translator, in an audio recording originally picked up on CCTV. “There’ll be constant transplants of human organs, and maybe even people will grow younger as they age—even achieving immortality.”
“It could be that in this century humans might be able to live to 150 years old,” Xi predicted.
But can organ transplants really help you live to 150 years old? Not exactly, experts say.
“Organ transplantation is not the road to immortality,” says Arthur Caplan, a professor, head of the division of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and expert on the ethics of organ transplantation.
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For those suffering with a failing organ, transplants can be lifesaving. But for others trying to combat aging, organ transplants are too risky, expensive, and come with serious limitations: A transplant won’t cure many of the common systemic diseases of aging. There also aren’t enough organs to meet existing demand, let alone support widespread organ replacement. And it’s currently impossible to transplant the brain. Imagine living with a strong heart and a deteriorating brain—that’s a nightmare, Caplan says.
“The longevity movement is at the molecular level, not at the organ replacement level,” he adds.
Nir Barzilai, professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and president of the Academy for Health & Lifespan Research, agrees. Scientists have developed much better strategies like gene editing, anti-aging drugs, and stem cell therapies to live longer, he says, adding, “We can slow aging and even reverse it.”
The rise of organ transplants
For thousands of years, ancient mythology detailed miraculous tales of organ transplants to heal disease. But it wasn't until the mid-1950s that these myths became modern medicine. In 1954, surgeons carried out the first successful human organ transplant, relocating a kidney from one identical twin to another. By the late 1960s, surgeons had successfully performed liver, heart, and pancreas transplants, while lung and intestinal organ transplants began in the 1980s.
Over the next decades, scientists overcame complex technical hurdles to make organ transplants safer and more effective: Researchers learned how to better connect blood vessels, preserve organ function outside the body during storage, and manage the immune response to avoid organ rejection via immunosuppressant drugs.
Today, in the United States alone, over 800,000 patients have had their lives saved or quality of life improved thanks to transplants since national recording began in 1988.
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Even with major advancements, organ transplants are still high-risk.
The major worry with these operations is organ rejection. Without intervention, the immune system attacks the transplanted organ as a foreign invader. Immunosuppressant drugs, developed in the 1980s, enable clinicians to manipulate the body’s immune defenses to accept the new organ.
But the same powerful drugs that block organ rejection also significantly raise the risk of bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, which can be severe and life-threatening. So clinicians must strike a delicate balance between suppressing the immune system to block rejection, while keeping it strong enough to fight off pathogens.
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Immunosuppressants typically have to be taken for life and can also cause side effects like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even cancer over the long-term. Undergoing rounds of immunosuppressants for multiple transplants compounds these effects.
“To transplant every organ in your body, you'd be taking about 100 gallons of immunosuppression every day,” explains Caplan—a dangerous prospect.
Another problem with using organ transplants to live longer is that our bodies become less resilient as we age. It’s harder to bounce back after surgery, withstand physical stressors, and fight infections.
“There’s no transplant for frailty or dementia as yet,” says Henry Pleass, a professor of surgery at the University of Sydney and a transplant surgeon at Westmead Hospital.
And while transplanted organs do last longer than ever before—often decades—they don’t necessarily last a lifetime, meaning organ replacement isn’t a miracle fix.
“First, you have to survive a transplant,” Barzilai explains. “It depends on the organ but if you're old or frail, you may not recover to baseline. And eventually, you may need another organ. This is not a strategy for longevity.”
Caplan compares this futuristic biohacker approach to cosmetic surgery. “You may change your appearance, but you're still going to die at the same age.”
Are continual organ transplants even feasible?
As it stands, the demand for transplant organs far exceeds the supply, even for the highest-need patients. Worldwide, only about 10 percent of transplant demand is met—with stark disparities between countries. This global shortage means widespread organ upgrades to live longer aren’t feasible—let alone ethical, Caplan says.
“The longevity movement diverts attention from real health needs of the majority of people in the world who are dying early from preventable problems,” Caplan says, noting that proposed anti-aging interventions must be affordable for the masses.
“At this point, the whole idea of using transplantation for longevity is not something that we can do or even consider, especially since there's a huge organ shortage,” agrees Eric Verdin, a geroscientist and the president and CEO of the Buck Institute.
For many, the process is prohibitively expensive. Transplant costs range between $260,000 (U.S.) for a single kidney to more than a million dollars for a new heart, and that’s before the costs of lifelong medication.
Scientists are racing to remedy both of these problems. Some are harnessing gene editing techniques like CRISPR to genetically modify pig organs, making them effectively “rejection-free”—a model that’s been proven viable in two patients. Other strategies include growing organs from human stem cells, developing lab-grown “mini-organs” called organoids, and deploying 3D bioprinting to produce organs on demand. However, none of these strategies have been deployed for large-scale clinical use.
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“Organ transplants are a richer person's solution, and not even a complete solution,” Caplan says. These operations are often substituting an “acutely threatening illness for a chronic one,” because you have to take immunosuppressants, Caplan says.
Rather than transplanting organs, Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez, a professor of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says he thinks the real future of expanding lifespan lies in techniques that reprogram old diseased organs. “I see the future without actual transplants.”
What other strategies might work better for longevity?
While xenotransplants and organ manufacturing have advanced “considerably” in the last five to 10 years, Soto-Gutierrez argues that the field of transcriptional medicine has moved faster. This approach uses technologies like mRNA, CRISPR, and cellular reprogramming to change the way genes are expressed. Scientists hope that targeting the four Yamanaka factors, proteins with the ability to reprogram older adult cells into more youthful pluripotent stem cells, could help reverse the so-called hallmarks of aging in humans—the holy grail in aging research.
“I personally believe that transcriptional medicines will be developed faster and no need for transplantation will exist in the coming years, thus extending the life of younger, fitter organs,” Soto-Gutierrez says.
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Barzilai envisions a treatment that will one day erase signs of aging. “If we can get to 150, I don't think it will be in an old body, but a young one,” Barzilai says, noting that it’s much easier to slow aging down than kick it into reverse. Scientists can now partially manipulate cellular aging, rejuvenate older tissue, and clear senescent cells that drive inflammation and disease. In the future, we may be able to do it systematically, likely by injecting a “cocktail of biologicals.”
“You'll get a treatment, and the treatment will erase parts of your aging, your aging will slow, and you'll stay healthy for much longer,” Barzilai says.
Instead of organ replacement, Barzilai suggests focusing on evidence-based lifestyle changes like eating a plant-rich diet and regular movement. In older age, many drugs show anti-aging potential like metformin, GLP-1s, SGLT2 inhibitors, rapamycin, and bisphosphonates—although it’s important to note that they are FDA–approved for certain health conditions, but not for longevity. Any medications should be taken under the care of your health provider.
“For sure, we will have some molecules that will address aging in a durable way in 20 years,” Verdin predicts.
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However, watch out for “snake oil,” Barzilai warns. Our collective obsession with living longer has created a massive global market for longevity therapies estimated to reach 44.2 billion by 2020. “There are a lot of charlatans out there talking nonsense,” he adds.
So will we someday live to 150?
When it comes to Xi’s predictions, experts don’t agree: Verdin was surprised that Putin and Xi referenced 150 years old as a reachable number.
“150 is more like a pipe dream, something that might inspire people, but not something that most serious scientists believe in today,” Verdin says. “That prediction detracts from some of the amazing things that we can accomplish, which is to help everyone live to 95 or 100.”
Barzilai disagrees: With investment and action, Barzilai says hitting 150 is possible. “I would give Xi high chances of being right,” Barzilai says.
And that investment is happening. Both Xi and Putin’s governments have invested heavily in aging research, as have countless other global leaders, investors, and scientific institutions. Both countries have problems of aging— Russia’s average lifespan is declining, while China juggles the largest aging population in the world.
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Lifespan has grown before. For thousands of years, human lifespan hovered around 30 years old. Then during the industrial revolution and the advent of public health measures like sanitation, food safety, vaccines, and clean water, human lifespan more than doubled to 71 by the 21st century. Now the upper limit of human life is about 122 years old.
Yet adding decades to our current lifespan will also bring unforeseen new diseases, Verdin cautions. That’s why, for now, your best bet is to optimize five tried-and-tested anti-aging strategies: exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and social connectivity.
“A lot of people are looking to us for some magical supplement or pill,” Verdin says. “We don't have anything that gives the same effect of physical activity, nutrition, and a healthy lifestyle.” Better yet, there’s no surgery involved.
