Scientific Logic: Why Must It be Necessary for Us to Age and Die?

Dr. Lawrence Ong, a former doctor colleague of mine in a WhatsApp chat was sharing with us by asking me a question why must we all die? He sought my comment why can't we live forever?

Thank you, Dr. Lawrence, for sharing your interesting question soliciting my views.

Let me handle this question with care from all perspective I know - biological, social, economics to spiritual.

Here are my views - Why Must We Age and Die?

Title:

Biological Necessity, Evolutionary Logic, and the Meaning of Mortality

Abstract

Aging and death are often experienced as biological injustices and existential tragedies, unwanted intrusions into conscious life. Yet when viewed through the combined lenses of evolutionary biology, molecular science, thermodynamics, and philosophy, aging reveals itself not as an error of nature, but as an intrinsic consequence of how life itself is organized. Far from being mere failures of repair, aging and death emerge as structural features of living systems: products of genetic trade-offs, energetic limitations, molecular imperfection, and the relentless arrow of time. Mortality, in this deeper sense, is not simply the end of life, but one of the fundamental conditions that make biological renewal, adaptation, and meaning possible.

First

Aging as an Evolutionary Consequence, Not a Design Error

Natural selection does not shape organisms for immortality. It shapes them for successful reproduction within a finite world. Evolution “cares” about survival only insofar as survival leads to the passing on of genes. Once reproduction has occurred, the selective pressure to preserve the body indefinitely declines dramatically.

This explains a profound asymmetry in biology: organisms are exquisitely robust in youth yet increasingly fragile with age. Traits that cause harm only in later life are weakly opposed by evolution, because their effects fall outside the critical window of reproduction. Aging, therefore, is not directly selected for, but it is permitted. And in evolution, what is permitted becomes inevitable.

In this sense, aging is not a design flaw. It is a tolerated consequence of a system optimized for reproduction rather than permanence.

Second

Genetic Trade-offs: The Price of Early Success

Life is built on compromise. Many of the same genes that confer strength, fertility, and resilience in youth carry hidden costs that manifest only later. This principle, known as antagonistic pleiotropy, reveals a central truth: biological traits are rarely purely beneficial. They are negotiated settlements between immediate survival and long-term deterioration.

The very pathways that stimulate growth and cell division in early life increase the risk of cancer in old age. Inflammation that protects against infection in youth becomes the seed of chronic disease later. These are not biological mistakes; they are the price paid for early success.

Closely related is the disposable soma theory, which proposes that organisms possess limited energy. Evolution consistently favors investing this energy in reproduction rather than in perfect cellular maintenance. The body, therefore, is not engineered for eternity. It is engineered to last long enough.

Third

Cellular Aging and the Accumulation of Damage

At the deepest level, aging is the slow triumph of damage over repair.

Each time a cell divides, its telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes shorten. When they reach a critical length, the cell can no longer divide and enters senescence or programmed death. This protects against cancer yet contributes inexorably to tissue aging.

Meanwhile, normal metabolism continuously generates free radicals, those highly reactive molecules produced especially within mitochondria during energy production. These molecules are not foreign enemies; they are unavoidable by-products of being alive.

Over time, free radicals damage DNA, proteins, and lipid membranes. Mitochondrial DNA, poorly protected and highly exposed, accumulates mutations, reducing energy production and generating even more free radicals in a vicious cycle. The cell slowly becomes less efficient, more unstable, and more inflammatory.

Aging, therefore, is not caused by a single mechanism. It is the cumulative effect of countless microscopic imperfections, magnified relentlessly by time.

Even our best repair systems operate under the constraints of thermodynamics. Absolute fidelity is physically impossible. Life can delay entropy, but it cannot defeat it.

Fourth

Why Evolution Requires Not Only the Young, but the New

It is tempting to imagine that if organisms could remain youthful indefinitely, evolution would still proceed. But this is a misconception.

Evolution depends not merely on survival, but on generational turnover. Each new generation introduces novel genetic combinations, new solutions tested against changing environments, emerging pathogens, and shifting ecosystems.

If older individuals dominated indefinitely, even in perfect health, they would genetically anchor the species to past conditions. Innovation would slow. Adaptation would weaken. Immortality, paradoxically, would make life more fragile, not more resilient.

Death does not merely make room for the young. It makes room for the new.

Fifth

Ecological and Population Constraints

Life unfolds within finite ecosystems. Resources are limited. Mortality regulates population size and prevents ecological collapse.

Without aging and death, competition would intensify endlessly. Younger individuals would be denied opportunities to mature and reproduce. Social and biological systems would lose balance and resilience.

In this sense, death is not merely an individual event. It is a population-level stabilizer, an ecological necessity.

Sixth

Entropy and the Arrow of Time

From a physical standpoint, aging reflects the second law of thermodynamics. All ordered systems require constant energy input to resist disorder. Living organisms are extraordinarily ordered systems, perpetually fighting entropy.

Yet entropy always wins in the long run.

Aging is simply the biological expression of the arrow of time. Immortality would require perfect error correction in a universe where perfection is forbidden by physical law. Thus, aging is not merely biological, it is cosmological.

Seventh

Mortality, Suffering, and the Human Condition

Beyond molecules and genes lies the human experience.

Aging brings not only biological decline, but social, psychological, and economic challenges: chronic disease, frailty, sensory loss, cognitive decline, loneliness, financial insecurity, and social invisibility. These are not abstract concepts; they are lived realities.

And here we arrive at the deepest question:

Should we seek to abolish aging altogether?

To fully “medicalize” aging, to treat it solely as a disease to be cured, risks erasing a fundamental dimension of what it means to be human. While extending healthy life is a noble goal, the pursuit of absolute longevity raises profound ethical dilemmas.

An indefinitely extended lifespan would reshape society in troubling ways:
fewer young people, slower turnover of leadership, concentration of power in increasingly older generations, and diminished space for new minds, new genes, and new ideas.

It may be that what benefits the individual conflicts with what sustains the species.

In this light, the death of the individual may be biologically necessary for the health of humanity itself.

For instance, South Korean doctors and medical students began a massive, prolonged walkout in February 2024 to protest the government’s plan to significantly increase the number of medical school admissions. As of February 2026, the initial 18-month strike (February 2024–late 2025) has officially ended, but the conflict is ongoing with new, slightly modified proposals, and the medical community remains heavily critical.

Various reasons were given by the doctors why they disagree with their government proposal to train more younger doctors – but we shall not go into them. But I think this would be a disadvantage to the whole country and to the older doctors too when they too must grow old and die. Without younger and more creative doctors to replace them, the whole future generations of Koreans who need health care will suffer. But they are medical doctors - tens of thousands of them on long-hauled strike throughout their country. Though they are doctors they cannot think with wisdom the consequences of their action on their society, except their own field of medicine. In biological evolution we label this as self-preservation, and selfishness, not altruism

Aging and death arise from the very forces that make life possible: evolution, energy limitation, molecular imperfection, entropy, and environmental changes. They are not arbitrary punishment, nor signs of biological incompetence. They are the cost of adaptability, diversity, and progress.

Evolution does not invest in eternal individuals.
It invests in enduring lineages.
Not in permanence, but in renewal.

Seen this way, aging and death are not merely endings.
They are the hidden mechanisms by which life continues.

Or, to put it more gently:

We do not die because life has failed.
We die because life must move forward.

And perhaps that, dear readers, is the deepest and most humbling truth of all.

By the way the oldest person that ever lived was Jeanne Calment of France who was born on February 21, 1875, and died on August 4, 1997, at the age of 122 years and 164 days, other than Methuselah as the oldest person mentioned in the Bible, reported to have lived to the age of 969. According to the Book of Genesis, he was the son of Enoch, grandfather of Noah, and died just before the great flood.

Despite their exceptional longevity, they too finally died.

Scientific Logic

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Why Must It be Necessary for Us to Age and Die?

No comments:

Why Must It be Necessary for Us to Age and Die?

Search This Blog