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Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping discussed the potential for science to extend the lifespans of men of their age, with the Russian president even suggesting organ transports might allow them to live forever.
Russia’s president told a press conference in China on Wednesday that the leaders had talked about longevity in a conversation first inadvertently broadcast on a television audio feed.
“Modern means and methods of improving health, even various surgical [operations] involving organ replacement, allow humanity to hope that . . . life expectancy will increase significantly,” Putin said during a televised press briefing.
His comments came after small talk between Putin and Xi was caught by a mic and broadcast as they headed to the military parade in Beijing.
On the recording the voice of a Chinese-Russian interpreter is heard translating Xi as saying: “In the past, people rarely reached the age of 70; today, they say that at 70 you are still a child.”
A translator for Putin then says in Chinese that advances in biotechnology means that human organs could be continuously transplanted so that a person could “become younger” and “could even become immortal”.
Xi then replies that there are predictions that “in the current century, humans might live to 150”.
The accidental audio accompanied footage from state broadcaster CCTV showing Xi and Putin walking at the head of a group of leaders that included North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, 41; Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, 71, and Kazakhstan’s leader, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 72.
Putin, whose fifth presidential term runs to 2030, could remain in office for a further six years under the constitutional changes he engineered.
Russian and international media have repeatedly reported on his obsession with longevity: he is said to rely on a personal team of doctors, to have access to a hospital designed primarily for him, and to favour alternative medicine.
One of Putin’s daughters, endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova, has been closely involved in a state genetics programme launched several years ago and overseen by Mikhail Kovalchuk, a longtime Putin ally.
Putin on Wednesday said changes in life expectancy would have profound implications around the world. “By 2050 there will be more people aged over 65 worldwide than five- and six-year-olds,” he said. “That will have social, political and economic consequences.”
