Could anyone live to be 150? The recent discussion that opened a private conversation between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

A few days ago, during the military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war with Japan, an open microphone captured a conversation that soon spread around the world. Xi Jinping spoke of the possibility of human beings living 150 years before the end of this century, while Vladimir Putin mentioned successive transplants as a way to achieve this. The media broadcast the audio and confirmed the translation.

Beyond the anecdotal nature of the conversation, the episode reflects a profound political impulse: the temptation of the powerful to project dominance even over biological time. It wasn't a light comment, but a scene in Tiananmen Square, amid missiles and symbols of power, where two leaders imagined a future in which life itself could be managed.

To begin with, transplants are one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine, but not the key to 150-year lives. The first milestone was set by Joseph Murray in Boston in 1954, when he successfully performed a kidney transplant between identical twins, a breakthrough that earned him the Nobel Prize in 1990. Since then, progress has been remarkable: in 2023, more than 172,000 transplants were performed worldwide, 9.5% more than in 2022, according to the WHO's Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation. But the shortage remains dramatic: only one in ten patients on the list actually receives an organ.

The figures show both the power and the limits of this technique. A kidney graft from a living donor can last between 15 and 20 years; one from a deceased donor, between 8 and 12. A liver offers a five-year survival rate of nearly 75%, a transplanted heart extends life by an average of 12 years, and a lung only between 6 and 7. These are second chances that save lives, but they do not rejuvenate the body. The nervous system, blood vessels, the immune system, and the genetic clock continue to tick. Talking about serial transplants as a passport to 150 years of age is not an academic vision, but a political license.

The true horizon of longevity is emerging in other scenarios. Stem cells already make it possible to grow partially functional liver, heart, and kidney tissue; organoids, tiny miniature organs that reproduce biological processes and could be used both for disease research and for the manufacture of functional organs, have been developed in Cambridge. In Tel Aviv and the United States, 3D hearts have been printed using patients' own cells, still experimental advances that anticipate a future in which the donor shortage will be resolved through biomanufacturing. The Methuselah Foundation in Virginia funds projects with a clear goal: to bring these bioprinted organs from the laboratory to the operating room in the coming decades.

Even more daring is the attempt to rejuvenate existing organs. At the Salk Institute (USA), Spaniard Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte has demonstrated that epigenetic reprogramming can restore youthful characteristics to aged cells. In mice, the technique extended lifespan by up to 30% and allowed the recovery of lost functions. In 2020, a study published in Nature showed that applying the so-called "Yamanaka factors" regenerated optic nerves and restored vision in animals.

This is where the most high-profile figure in this field emerges: David Sinclair, a geneticist at Harvard University, who claims that "the first person who will live to be 150 has already been born." Sinclair relies on laboratory results on tissue regeneration and the use of artificial intelligence to identify molecules with rejuvenating potential. His statements have turned longevity into a global topic of conversation, although much of the scientific community insists that, for now, these are expectations rather than certainties.

Other avenues are also underway. Senolytics, drugs that eliminate aged and dysfunctional cells, have shown improvements in heart and bone function in animals. Gene editing with CRISPR opens the possibility of correcting mutations that predispose to premature aging or degenerative diseases. And artificial intelligence has become an ally in screening millions of compounds and predicting which ones could become effective therapies.

This set of advances does not yet guarantee that anyone will reach 150 years of age, but it does outline a change in the narrative: it is not about adding empty decades to the calendar, but rather about prolonging healthy life, compressing disease, and stretching vitality beyond what seems natural today.

Demographics, meanwhile, are a reminder of the gap between expectations and reality. A study published in PNAS in 2025 revealed that in 23 wealthy countries, the historical increase in longevity has slowed by between 37% and 52% . While in the first half of the 20th century, each generation added almost half a year of life, today it barely gains two or three months. The reason is not an absolute biological ceiling, but rather that major achievements were already made in childhood and youth—with vaccines, antibiotics, sanitation—and replicating that acceleration in later life is much more difficult.

Human records also call for caution. Jeanne Calment, the Frenchwoman who died in 1997 at 122 years and 164 days, remains the oldest person ever validated. No other human being has surpassed that mark. Studies published in Nature Communications place the human biological limit between 115 and 125 years. The 150 dreamed of in Beijing is not only far off: it represents a chasm between evidence and ambition.

For example, today, according to the UN, global life expectancy stands at 73.3 years. Japan leads the way with 84.6; China reaches 78, and Russia is close to 73. The most disturbing aspect is the gap of almost nine years between the years lived and the years lived in comfort. People are living longer, yes, but with long periods of illness and dependency.

In the end, the scene in Beijing says more about power than science. Imagining 150-year lives is projecting dominion even over death, while science advances with a different language: that of transplants that prolong but do not rejuvenate, that of laboratories testing stem cells, organoids, senolytics, CRISPR, and epigenetic reprogramming. In the face of political grandiloquence, reality reminds us of something more urgent: even the current increase in life expectancy has put entire societies against the wall, not because of the promise of mythical longevity, but because of the real burden of physical disability, dependency, and mental decline experienced by millions of older adults. That, not the illusion of doubling one's life span, is the immediate challenge: ensuring that old age is lived with care, dignity, and meaning.

Carlos Francisco Fernandez