Longevity, is the human individual life of their own unchanging fantasies, from the pyramids of the mummy, Xufu Dongdu sailing ship, to the great philosopher Bacon’s experimental exploration, ancient and modern, no exception. These efforts undoubtedly ended in failure, but even after the birth of modern science, there are still many scientists have not given up efforts in this area: if death is inevitable, can not the second best thing, to strive for a longer life, “borrowed from the sky for another 500 years”? Steinach’s operation Just over a hundred years ago, many doctors were convinced that “vasectomy” could help men to stay young forever. The theory behind this procedure was developed by the famous Austrian physiologist Steinach, who believed that the testes produce a substance called the “source of life”, and that by blocking the vas deferens, this substance would not flow into the sperm but would be kept in the body. In other words: “Give life not to the child, but to yourself.” Ironically, while Steinach’s theory has long been denied, the Steinach procedure flourished decades later in some ancient civilization in the far east because of the efficacy of sterilization. At the time, however, there were many who accepted the idea and performed the operation, none more famous than Freud, psychologist and founder of the school of psychoanalysis, and Yeats, Nobel Prize-winning poet. After the operation, Yeats’s life seemed to be renewed, filled with the vigor he himself “used to crave. He wrote a number of moving poems and had one love affair after another. But this was more likely to be the result of psychological suggestion than of surgery. The average life expectancy of human beings today is significantly higher than that of our ancestors, thanks to a combination of scientific and social factors such as leaps in the development of medical treatments, improvements in public and personal hygiene, and a relatively peaceful living environment. Metformin No drug or procedure has ever been proven to make people live forever, including the recently hyped “metformin”. Many media outlets have reported that “Metformin is expected to allow people to live up to 120 years.” Is this possible? Metformin has been introduced for more than eighty years, is not only the current drug of choice for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, but also “old drugs for new uses”, widely used in the treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome, improve non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, the prevention of uveitis, reduce the prevalence of Parkinson’s disease, and even thought to have a tumor suppression effect. It is a classic old drug comparable to “aspirin”. It is not empty talk to say that Metformin is “anti-aging”. From nematodes to mice, a series of animal experiments have confirmed that the application of metformin can extend their life. Even a population-based study found that diabetics taking metformin lived longer than non-diabetics, even though diabetes is supposed to shorten the average life expectancy. Encouraged by these findings, U.S. scientists plan to launch a clinical trial enrolling 3,000 older adults who have or are at risk of future cancer, heart disease, and dementia. The attempt is to prove that metformin slows down the aging process. Anti-aging!” Does the “miracle drug” metformin really have this “miraculous skill”? Needless to say that the conclusions of low-level animal experiments can not be simply applied to humans, in fact, the clinical trial itself has already made a statement: it is trying to prove that Metformin can reduce the risk of aging-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease and dementia in the elderly, so as to achieve the health and longevity of the elderly. In fact, this is something that other drugs for age-related diseases have been doing, and achieving, with considerable success. “When you’re old and gray, sleepy and drowsy, napping by the fire, please… Take this capsule of metformin.” Living forever is an unrealistic fantasy, but staying healthy and living longer is a goal that can be achieved with a good lifestyle and with the assistance of medication. Years of life are rather a disaster if the quality of life cannot be maintained. In this sense, “death is the most important invention of life.”