John Harris is surely right to scorn the grotesque sums being spent on “transhumanism” (If the super-rich want to live for ever our planet is truly doomed, 7 November), but not all of us can afford, or want to move into, co-housing or a retirement village. Fortunately, a more practical solution is at hand. Research demonstrates consistently that the three most reliable strategies to live longer and well are learning new things, social interaction and physical exercise. All three are readily available from the u3a, a self-help learning organisation for people who have left full-time work.
Paul Martinez
Gedling, Nottinghamshire
• John Harris has neglected rather an important consideration: if the super-rich expect to live for, say, 500 years, then they will want the planet to be habitable in 500 years’ time. Long-term problems require long-term agencies to address them, like the foresters of New College Oxford, who grow oaks centuries in advance as replacement roof beams for hall and chapel.
If I were a wealthy potential quinquecentenarian, I would be investing in nuclear fusion and rewilding, and promoting negative population growth – including for my own brats (currently none).
Luce Gilmore
Cambridge
• John Harris does well exposing the ridiculous ambitions of billionaire would-be immortals or long-livers. They should read Gulliver’s Travels (Part III, chapter 10). Visiting Luggnagg, Gulliver is “struck with inexpressible delight” on hearing of the immortal Struldbrugs, “living like foreigners in their own country”. But “I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old … They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous.
“They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described…” Among later writers, John Wyndham perceptively linked age-slowing research to power-seeking in Trouble with Lichen.
George Baugh
Much Wenlock, Shropshire
• The desire of super-rich persons to live forever is either a disease or a delusion, but I am sure there is counselling available for both.
Geoff Reid
Bradford
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