Anticipating the anti-ageing pill. Lessons from the history of the oral contraceptive pill and hormone replacement therapy.

Throughout history, the prospect of extending the human lifespan—with the ultimate aim of living forever— has been an attractive fantasy. Now, some researchers argue that it will soon be possible to increase our average life expectancy to at least 100 years, if not more, by slowing down the processes of ageing (Guarente & Kenyon, 2000). There are several potential methods for life extension interventions (Lucke & Hall, 2006), but perhaps the most likely is an anti-ageing pill, possibly one that mimics the well-described, life-extending effects of caloric restriction (Everitt & Le Couteur, 2007; Michalow, 2008). Let us assume, for the purpose of argument, that a pill could be developed in the next couple of decades that extended the average human lifespan to around 150 years.