The Immortality Games
Scientists who pride themselves on their objectivity turn out to be just as capable of enmity as those in the humanities. The longevity wars between David Sinclair and Charles Brenner have a theatrical quality—albeit with considerably higher stakes. After all, we’re not debating political theory here but our future health.
It reminds me of an academic rivalry I once witnessed between two historians at university. The vituperation they hurled at each other was the verbal equivalent of confrontations between drug overlords, their book reviews growing ever more venomous as graduate students were forced to pick sides.
Repainting vs Engine Repair
At the heart of this conflict lie two competing visions of how ageing works. David Sinclair believes ageing resembles a computer losing its programming. His “information theory of ageing” suggests our cells don’t inherently wear out—they just lose the instructions for staying young. Fix the instructions (the “epigenetic information”) and you potentially fix ageing.
Sinclair’s chosen miracles are NAD+—vital coenzymes involved in energy production and DNA repair, whose levels decline as we age. His approach promotes molecules like resveratrol (found in red wine) and NAD+ boosters such as NMN, claiming they activate “longevity pathways”. By this logic, swallowing his preparations will smarten up our synapses and send us zipping along with renewed energy.
Brenner thinks this is far too simplistic. He argues that ageing isn’t just one thing going wrong but many systems declining simultaneously. Specialising in mitochondrial function, he sees mitochondrial dysfunction as the primary driver of ageing. For Brenner, Sinclair’s theory is akin to restoring an old car by simply repainting it—ignoring the failing engine, transmission, and electrics.
Science vs Commerce
Brenner’s second objection is that Sinclair is jumping ahead of the evidence. “Selling supplements before the science is settled,” he said in one particularly cutting interview, “is putting commercial interests ahead of clinical evidence.”
It’s a reproach Sinclair can’t easily shrug off, as supplement regulations differ fundamentally from those governing pharmaceuticals. The products he promotes exist in natural foodstuffs but at higher concentrations—exempting them from the scrutiny required for new compounds. So far, Sinclair is using his own health regime as an open experiment, treading carefully between promising lab results in mice and the supplementation he applies to himself.
But is Brenner himself squeaky clean? Not quite. He too has commercial interests and is a vocal advocate of a rival view. Brenner is one of the key figures behind Tru Niagen—one of the most successful NR supplement brands. In fact, he discovered NR as a vitamin and its metabolic pathway. Self-evidently, this means he too has a vested interest—and something to sell off the back of his scientific stance.
Tricky.
Philosophies in Conflict
Behind this enmity lies something deeper than professional rivalry. It’s a fundamental disagreement about how science should progress—and how it should be communicated.
Sinclair’s vision of extended life has a distinctly heroic ring to it. It’s as though he’s taken Nietzsche’s übermensch, dressed it in a lab coat, and given it a TED Talk. “Age is just a technical problem waiting for a solution,” he seems to say, with the confident smile of a man convinced he’s found the body’s instruction manual—complete with a reset button.
When Sinclair speaks of reprogramming our cells back to a youthful state, you can almost hear the Hollywood soundtrack swelling. It’s scientific optimism with a cinematic arc—and perhaps most compellingly to his audience: you too can join the revolution, just follow this supplement regime while we work out the complicated bits.
Believing we can rewrite the manual for human lifespan is like believing in the tooth fairy.
Brenner, by contrast, looks at human biology with the resigned wisdom of a seasoned mechanic examining a vintage car. “Beautiful machine,” he might say, “but built with planned obsolescence.” His approach is grounded in the deflating idea that evolution optimised our bodies for reproduction—not for running marathons at 120. His strict adherence to antagonistic pleiotropy—the idea that genes beneficial in youth become harmful with age—suggests that our expiry date isn’t a bug, but a feature of the reproductive blueprint.
This quarrel between two anti-ageing experts is more than a technical disagreement. It cuts into the very essence of what it means to be human. Are we, as Sinclair’s approach implies, infinitely malleable beings, capable of transcending our biology through clever engineering? Or are we, as Brenner believes, ultimately limited by evolutionary trade-offs that prioritise passing on our genes over prolonging our lives?
A Case for Collaboration
The irony? Their approaches might well complement rather than contradict each other. Both NAD+ processes and mitochondrial functions are critical to cellular health. The quest for longer, healthier lives might advance far more swiftly if these researchers worked together instead of tearing each other apart.
A collaborative approach would acknowledge that ageing is multi-layered and complex, requiring intervention at several levels—from epigenetic reprogramming to metabolic and mitochondrial support. Their competing emphases may in fact be two vital parts of the same puzzle.
For us, the spectators, it’s hard to know whether to take our resveratrol with breakfast while these scientists, probing telomeres and mitochondria, continue their academic cage match. Perhaps the key to our future lies not in picking sides, but in integrating insights.
Their feud is a timely reminder that science, despite its ideals of objectivity, remains a profoundly human endeavour—complete with ambition, pettiness, and the same unresolved insecurities the rest of us carry to our (somewhat shorter) graves.
