Ever since human beings noticed that we have been 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 month 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 that 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 our worm specimens 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 most likely a number of 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 mid-life 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 ten generations of living relatives, Thanksgiving dinners would become inestimably more complicated. Not the least of your problems would be what to call all of your 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-eight-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? To begin, you would need a very serious Rolodex. And if the price of stamps remained at 32 cents, it would cost you more than $163 just for postage, and that's assuming that all of your ancestors have remained with their original spouses through a couple hundred years of marriage.
And, if your grandmother and grandfather many times removed do make it to their 200th anniversary, what do you get them? You're already way past bronze, silver, and gold. The appropriate gift for the big 200 would probably have to be something like a plutonium reserve, or perhaps a delightful space station where they could spend their retirement in leisurely weightlessness.
I'm going to venture a prediction that, if we did live to be 260, sending greeting cards for all of those holidays, birthdays, and plutonium anniversaries would overwhelm us. We would therefore turn our Hallmark responsibilities over 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 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 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.
