Discoursive tendencies of the scientific community regarding radical life extension: a systematic review

In the last few years, the topic of Radical Life Extension (RLE) has reached new height in the public discourse as well as in the scientific community, where much of the discourse concerned itself with discussing the scientific truthfulness of such processes, such as regenerative medicine to counter the aging process, brain preservation techniques, and cryonics (Moshakis 2019). The aim of this systematic review is to summarise the evidence on these processes and understand what is the language used by the scientific community to talk about and comment on the processes of RLE. Analysing this type of language, another thing that could be observed is the connotation that the scientific community gives to RLE (does it treat it like a pseudoscience or does it give it some credit?). One last aim, from a CDS perspective, how can the language employed by life extension companies and the scientific community impact on the underlying power imbalance between different actors? Guided by the PRISMA statement, we conducted a comprehensive review across four electronic databases, from the first instance of publication until 30 January 2023. In total, the articles were reviewed for inclusion, and the assessment of methodological quality was based on the Kmet appraisal checklist for both quantitative and qualitative studies. A total of 120 articles was retrieved. An interesting point worth analysing is raised by Fairclough’s notion of democratisation of discourse (Fairclough 1992) and van Dijk’s (2006) discourse on manipulation, intended here is a communicative and interactional practice, in which a manipulator exercises control over other people, involving abuse of power. That is, manipulation implies the exercise of a form of illegitimate influence by means of discourse: manipulators make others believe or do things that are in the interest of the manipulator, and against the best interests of the manipulated.