this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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In short:

A live-stream broadcast of China's military parade has captured Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin discussing biotechnology's potential to extend life.

An interpreter translating Mr Putin can be heard saying in Mandarin that human organ transplants could let "us live younger and younger, and perhaps even achieve immortality".

Mr Xi responded that it may be possible for people to live to 150 years this century.

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[–] npcknapsack@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

Gross. Absolutely gross. Powerful old people are already living too long.

[–] Star@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

God they are so posturing to eachother. Small-egoed dictators.

[–] Alloi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

too bad organ transplants dont make you bulletproof.

[–] Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world 103 points 3 days ago (7 children)

That sounds like the average conversation of a group of guys on their 3rd beer on a Friday afternoon.

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[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I will happily help transplant their organs.

[–] Visstix@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Oh is he doing experiments on Uyghur people

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] StarMerchant938@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (18 children)

More than one country can be bad. Israel is very bad. China is also very bad.

[–] sus@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

I was going to say there was no actual evidence, but huh, I actually fell for some of the tankie lies after enough time. China's deputy health minister Huang Jiefu repeatedly publicly acknowledged that most organ transplants came from death row inmates, and separately China was exporting organs to south korea on a massive scale prior to 2007.

(though it's notable that this has not been connected to the Uyghur situation specifically)

(Also noting that it's Israel claimed to end the practice in 2000, while China claimed to end the practice in 2015)

sources pre-emptively posted: the guardian, (old) beijing times, zhenhua.163.com, der spiegel

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[–] Visstix@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

So it's likely

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[–] its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works 72 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I hope they try it. At their age recovering from major surgery will be a breeze. I wish I was on immune suppressants for the rest of my life. Oh and don't forget another surgery when the organ fails! Sounds like immortality to me

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[–] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 48 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Apart from the fact that your brain ages too and it's 100% irreplaceable, the main issue with turning yourself into the human Ship of Theseus is that you're going to be on immunosuppressant drugs forever.

I guess if you were a monster you could raise clones of yourself to adulthood and then murder them for their body parts. This doesn't solve the problem of some parts not being reasonably replaceable, but it could protect you from some organ failures.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Apart from the fact that your brain ages too and it’s 100% irreplaceable

Braincells are irreplaceable (barring some experimental stem cell work) but the networks between those brain cells keep growing and intertwining. It's the network between the cells that defines your mental aptitude. Plenty of stories about people with severe brain damage who still continue to function comparatively normally after a period of recovery and rehabilitation. The human brain is remarkably plastic.

I guess if you were a monster you could raise clones of yourself to adulthood and then murder them for their body parts.

Even that isn't strictly practical. The failure rate on cloning is enormous. What's legit more monstrous than killing someone for organs is producing all of the failed clones necessary to land on a copy that's viable.

Dolly the Sheep was a "successful" clone, and even it didn't live a particularly long or happy life, being euthanized at half the normal age of a domesticated sheep of her breed due to arthritis and lung disease.

No doubt someone is out there doing human cloning illegally. But I would not bank on it as a viable alternative to simply getting bumped up the organ donor list the old fashioned way.

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not without brain transplants

[–] vane@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist, has written "Head transplants are fake news. Those who promote such claims and who would subject any human being to unproven cruel surgery merit not headlines but only contempt and condemnation."[10]

[–] vane@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if they will transplant head to another body or to the robot or just make a wolverine with artificial heart. China have it's own rules.
https://interestingengineering.com/science/china-paralyzed-patients-walk-brain-spinal-implant

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

If that is really true, they can probably create many more cybernetic devices. Far as keeping dear leader alive that way they would need to keep secrecy of it tight enough that nobody would be aware of it until it was too late.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago

In china, heart surgeon, number 1!...

[–] DegenerationIP@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Damn. They gonna make me retire at 140 then. Shit.

[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago

us as in literally "the two of us". fucking hell, die already and stop leeching

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 days ago (8 children)

I honestly believe people could live to 150 within the next century and if organ transplants are part of it it will either be due to cloning or far better control of the immune system than we have now. I don't expect those advances to be soon enough to help either of these guys, no matter how much money they have.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I honestly believe people could live to 150 within the next century

It's a fun and easy thing to believe. Significantly harder to accomplish.

I don’t expect those advances to be soon enough to help either of these guys

They've already benefited substantively from the last 70 years of health technology. And I wouldn't be surprised of Xi, in particular, is enjoying some knock-on effects of being the head of state in a nation that's on the cutting edge of medical research.

But there's a huge difference between "living to 100" and "being a functional adult at age 100". Xi's already pushing the line in his 70s and should have been queuing up a successor two terms ago. Putin's in it even worse, having trotted out Medeved and watched him flop in front of Parliament back in... what? 2008? Now he's got the tiger by the tail as he coasts into his own golden years.

The fact that the US is floundering amidst its own techno-fascist gerentocracy should be a giant alarm bell for every other national government. You can't just stack the fate of your country on whether Chucks Grassley and Schumer can maintain a pulse indefinitely. But I guess when its your turn in the big chair, its easy to think you'll live forever.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Life expectancy at 25 hasn't changed dramatically in the last 2000 years, less than 10 years in most parts of the world. Life expectancy at birth has improved dramatically, and that isn't doing much for me, Putin, or Xi at this point. Certainly, the improved healthcare afforded to Putin and Xi is going to help their life expectancy more than the average. All that said, a lot of improvements have happened in the last couple centuries, mostly based on our knowledge. Sure, exponential growth isn't going to happen forever, not even in gaining knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen in biology for the next century. If it does, extending life expectancy at birth to 150 could be quite conservative.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Life expectancy at 25 hasn’t changed dramatically in the last 2000 years

Heavily dependent on where and when you lived. In Tibet, for instance, life expectancy topped out at around 35 years in 1950 and is now cresting 75 in 2025. In the Palestinian Territories, the last ten years have seen life expectancy actually grew from 67 years to 76 years between 1992 and 2022. Then, in 2023, it fell off a cliff for some reason.

A nasty famine, a brutal war, or a global pandemic can clip the lives of senior citizens short very quickly.

But otherwise, sure. Solving the problems of agriculture and sanitation modernization have been comparatively easy relative to addressing telomere erosion or alzhemier's treatments. Simply not killing people is a lot easier than keeping them alive indefinitely.

Although, one might also argue that the problems of aging haven't been felt so acutely prior to the 1950s, because comparatively fewer people were living into their senior years. Now that we have a bumper crop of senior citizens, we've been given a strong economic incentive to pursue technologies at an industrial scale. It's not just The Qin Emperor downing cups of mercury, thinking his exceptional wealth and privilege will grant him an extract century of youthfulness.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is a difference between maximum age and life expectancy, just as there is a difference between life expectancy at different ages. The life expectancy at 25 in Roman times was about 70 years old. All of our advances have added about 10% to a person's life span after they got past childhood diseases, the recklessness of youth, and serving in the military in the case of Romans. And I'm not entirely sure of the relevance of a genocide in Israel to Xi's prospects.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The life expectancy at 25 in Roman times was about 70 years old.

Maybe for a Senator or other member of the patrician class.

But even in the last century, we've seen more movement than what you're describing.

in the early 20th century (around 1900-1902), a 25-year-old could expect to live approximately 39 to 40 more years, reaching around age 64-65. By 2017, a 25-year-old could expect to live about 55 more years, reaching roughly age 80.

So, closer to 20%

of our advances have added about 10% to a person’s life span after they got past childhood diseases, the recklessness of youth, and serving in the military in the case of Romans.

The vast majority of these advanced have occurred in the last 70 years. The intervening 2500 has been relatively flat.

And I’m not entirely sure of the relevance of a genocide in Israel to Xi’s prospects.

Mostly just a comparison of wealth and technology.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They have other sources for organs.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Immune suppression drugs have their own risks, and the older you are, the harder surgeries are on you. Even if they have cloned organs, how does that help systemic frailty?

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[–] BetaBlake@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (9 children)

These people are idiots, because that's definitely not how aging works. But please go through all the organ transplants, it will just kill you both and do the world a big favor.

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