SCIENTISTS are predicting that longevity drugs will be available by 2012.

In the future, people could live longer and healthier lives to way beyond 100, by taking a pill once a day.

This was the vision of a kind of immortality presented by Professor Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York at the conference Turning Back The Clock, organised by the Royal Society.

“I’m seeing 100-year-olds who are not only 100 years old but in great shape. They’re driving and painting, and they say life is beautiful. I have this bias that makes me believe we have the ability, as a species, to get to 100 if we prevent some of these age-related diseases.”

To achieve longevity would need a fundamental shift in medical opinion to view ageing as a treatable condition rather than inevitable.

“Ageing needs to be defined as a disease,” he said.

The medical research is in place to develop a pill that could be taken once a day by people when they reach their forties or fifties that would stave off the effects of old age, he suggested.

By heck, where do I sign up for a supply? I already take an aspirin a day and a cod liver oil capsule but an immortality pill would be just the job. Except that, if I should have started taking one when I reached 40, I may have missed the boat.

Perhaps scientists should also look at ways of really turning back the clock. Television advertisements promise women smooth wrinkle free skin. Mind you, they usually feature models who are no more than 30. Of course they don’t have wrinkles. They’re 30. But it doesn’t stop ladies buying the products anyway, just in case.

So, as well as developing a long-life pill, maybe scientists should look for an elixir of youth for our new generation of centenarians, so that great-grandma can look like Jane Fonda in Barbarella and great-grandad, once his cap has been removed and he’s put his teeth in, will look like Gladiator Russell Crowe.

People in the West are already living longer because of improvements in health, lifestyle and environment. Life expectancy increased by more than 30 years during the 20th century and we now have more pensioners than ever before.

In 1900, the average lifespan in the UK was 45 for men and 48 for women. Today it is 77 for men and 81 for women and we are nowhere near the top of the lifespan league. The world average is 64 and 70, while in Swaziland, which is at the bottom, it is 39.

Scientists have long believed there is no reason to think ageing has hit a limit. Add the once-a-day pill suggested by the Professor into the equation and the sky’s the limit. Because reaching 100 is only the start.

Some researchers believe a person has already been born who will live to be 150. One recently claimed the Methuselah Mouse Prize by keeping a mouse alive for almost five years – almost 50% longer than normal – by altering a gene.

The Methuselah Prize’s co-founder, Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University, a theoretical biogerontologist, believes there is a 50-50 chance that by 2030, medical science will be able to repair human body cells faster than they are damaged.

Never mind living to 150, we are talking about a real Methuselah lifespan of 969 years and more.

But would anyone want to live for a thousand years?