Immortality is an ancient fantasy of human beings for their own individual lives, from the mummies in the pyramids, Xu Fu’s ship to the east, 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 in this area of effort: if death is inevitable, can we retreat to the second best, to fight to prolong life, “to borrow another 500 years from heaven”? 1, Steinacher surgery Just over a hundred years ago, many doctors were convinced that “vasectomy” would help men stay young forever. The theory behind this surgery was founded by the famous Austrian physiologist Steinacher, who believed that the testicles produce a substance that can be called the “source of life”, and as long as the vas deferens is blocked, these substances will not flow into the sperm and remain in their own bodies. In other words: “Give life not to the child, but to yourself.” Ironically, although Steinacher’s theory had long been denied, decades later the Steinacher procedure was prevalent in some ancient civilization in the far East because of the curative effects of sterilization. But at that time, there were many people who accepted this idea and performed the surgery, none more famous than Freud, the psychologist and founder of the psychoanalytic school, and Yeats, the Nobel Prize winner in literature and poet. After the operation, Yeats’s life seemed to be renewed, filled with a vitality that he himself “used to crave”. He wrote a great deal of moving poetry and experienced a love affair after love affair. But this was more likely the result of psychological suggestion than of surgery. Today, compared to our ancestors, the average life expectancy of human beings has increased significantly, which should be attributed to a combination of scientific and social factors such as leaps in medical treatment, improved public and personal hygiene, and a relatively peaceful living environment. 2, metformin No drug or procedure has ever been proven to make people immortal, including the recently hyped “metformin”. Many media reports say, “Metformin is expected to let people live to 120 years old.” Is this possible? Metformin has been introduced for more than eighty years and is not only the drug of choice for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, but is also being used as a “new drug” to treat polycystic ovary syndrome, improve non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, prevent uveitis, reduce the prevalence of Parkinson’s disease, and is even considered to have tumor suppressive effects. It is a classic old drug comparable to “aspirin”. The claim that metformin is “anti-aging” is not an empty one. A series of animal studies, from nematodes to mice, have confirmed that metformin application extends their life span. There is even a population-based study that found that diabetics taking metformin lived longer than non-diabetics, even though diabetes should theoretically shorten the average life span of patients. Encouraged by these findings, U.S. scientists plan to launch a clinical trial enrolling 3,000 older adults with or at risk of future cancer, heart disease and dementia. In this way, they are trying to prove that metformin can slow down the aging process. 3, anti-aging!” The “miracle drug” metformin really has this “miracle skill”? Not to mention that the conclusions of experiments on lower animals cannot 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 cancer, heart disease and dementia and other age-related diseases in the elderly, so as to achieve the health and longevity of the elderly. In fact, this is something that other drugs for aging-related diseases have been doing, and have achieved, with modest success. Living forever is an unrealistic fantasy, but staying healthy and living longer is a goal that can be achieved through a good lifestyle and with the aid of medications. If the quality of life cannot be maintained, the number of years of life is instead a disaster. In this sense, “death is the most important invention of life”.