Russian futurologist Danila Medvedev has predicted that future science could allow people to become parents at up to 120 years old. He believes the menopause could be eliminated, removing the natural timeframe women currently have for pregnancy.
Menopause elimination and later pregnancy
In an interview with RU Life, Medvedev said: "At some point in the distant future, menopause will likely be eliminated altogether. People simply won't activate unnecessary biological processes until they're needed." He added that people could choose the timing and "whenever they want, they can turn it on and get pregnant."
However, he noted that becoming pregnant at such an age would also depend on other factors in a woman's life, but he was confident that people would be able to manage reproductive aging in the distant future.
Cloning as a method
Medvedev also hinted at cloning as a possible method, saying: "Even at 120 years old, you could take a person's genome and create a child who would be genetically identical to you."
His comments followed remarks by Russian Academy of Sciences academician Gennady Onishchenko, who said the maximum age for women to be fertile is 60 years.
No current data to support claims
There is currently no data to support whether an elderly person could successfully carry a child if pregnant, due to changes in the reproductive cycle. There is also no real success yet on human reproductive cloning that could back up these claims for the future.
Medvedev, a well-known futurologist in Russia, has made other bold predictions on topics such as cloning, robotics, and cyborgisation. He has also shared ideas on transhumanism and physical immortality, an idea said to have interested Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Future of bionic technologies
In a speech last year at the Dialogues About the Future event at the National Centre RUSSIA, Medvedev spoke about maintaining human life, including growing and replacing organs. He said: "As I see this, the first and the main goal is to maintain a human life. Medicine and technology have come to the point where we can 'repair' anyone in one way or another."
He added: "There must be an extremely urgent goal — to prepare the bionic technologies for mass adoption so that we can replace and grow an organ, develop a tissue structure, reprogram cells, replace a part of a person with an artificial part. For the next 25 years, the task is to make sure that nothing of this breaks, and if any of it breaks, we need to repair in a habitual way, just like we currently repair smartphones."
