Two pivotal conferences on the topic of “death” coming up!!
First at the INSERM Liliane Bettencourt School on March 16–18 will be “Death: From Cells to Societies — Aging, Dying, and Beyond” -
Then, April 11–13 at Harvard Medical School, will be “Defining Death: Organ transplantation and the 50-year legacy of the Harvard report on brain death”
http://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/annual-bioethics-conference-2018
An important inflection point for all!!
Posted in biotech/medical, cryonics, life extension
Frozen corpses could be brought back to life and made to look YOUNGER than when they died using stem cell injections, claims expert…
EXCLUSIVE: Dennis Kowalski, President of the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute, has claimed scientists could revive a frozen human corpse by using stem cells to help repair damaged cells.
On the run up to Undoing Aging 2018, Nicola Bagalà from LEAF did an interview to learn a bit more about our foundation and the story of our involvement in life extension.
As our readers probably already know, from March 15 to March 17 this year, the Undoing Aging 2018 Conference will be held at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. The event is intended to bring together scientists working on repair-based therapies for aging as well as to give life sciences students—and anyone else who may be interested, really—an occasion to deepen their understanding of the current state of rejuvenation research.
Organised by the Forever Healthy Foundation and the SENS Research Foundation, the conference will feature eminent researchers among its many speakers, such as the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Dr. Anthony Atala; Dr. Kristen Fortney, who is an expert on computational drug discovery and aging biomarkers; Dr. Michael West, co-CEO of BioTime and founder of Geron Corporation; Dr. James Kirkland, a world-class expert on cellular senescence; and Dr. Vera Gorbunova, a pioneer of the comparative biology approach to the study of aging and co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center. In addition to its scientific, educational, and networking value, UA2018 will no doubt greatly contribute to the popularisation of this area of research and help spread awareness, both about the problem represented by age-related diseases and the great opportunity we have to finally bring aging under comprehensive medical control within a relatively short time frame.
LEAF, naturally, will attend the event to keep you fully up to date, and our readers can expect extensive coverage during and following the event. Meanwhile, to whet your appetite, we caught up with Forever Healthy’s founder and CEO, Michael Greve, to learn a bit more about his foundation and the story of his involvement in life extension.
In the course of the last century, science fiction has been a harbinger of things to come. From the automatic sliding doors of Star Trek to visual communication, cyberspace, and even the moon landing, many of our present technological achievements were dreamed up in the futuristic visions of science fiction authors of the 1960s and 70s. Indeed, the fantastical world of science fiction, while not intended to be prophetic, has ended up acting as a blueprint for our modern world.
We have learned from science fiction not only the possibilities of technology, however, but also its irreconcilable dangers. Readers of the genre will recognize the many stories warning us of the hazards of space travel, mind enhancement, and artificial intelligence. These fictional accounts cautioned that if we were not careful, our freedom to transform the world around us would transmogrify into a self-enforced slavery.
Nonetheless, while many of us remembered that these were just stories, intended as speculations about a possible future—in other words, they were fiction before science—through them, we became used to the idea that any advanced technology was inherently dangerous and its use always suspect. Moreover, it became a commonplace idea that technologies whose aim was to change or transform the human being—whether genetic, biological or reconstructive—would lead to a future worthy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Before the 7.6 billion people alive today, demographers estimate that about 100 billion people lived and died. This is the reality of the human condition. Memento mori, as medieval Christians reflected—Remember that you have to die.
What if it didn’t have to be this way? There are, in fact, organisms whose bodies steadily and reliably replace cells with healthier cells, and whose tissues and organs self-repair and maintain their vigor. They’re called children. And there are cells in adults that divide indefinitely. They’re called cancer. What if there were a way to genetically re-engineer and chemically reprogram our cells to divide indefinitely like they do in children, and to continue this process throughout adulthood without becoming cancerous? Could we become immortal?
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work,” Woody Allen once said, “I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” There are today well-funded groups of scientists who believe we can do just that. If these techno-dreamers succeed, would you want to live for 150 years? 300 years? Or even 500 years? I’m not talking about being brain-dead and bedridden on a morphine drip. I mean living a full, rich physical and mental life for centuries, possibly forever. Would you opt for immortality?
Is the longevity industry the healthtech investment trend?
Forbes contributor and finance expert Richard Eisenberg discusses with Taimur Hyat, Chief Strategy Officer at Prudential Financial’s investment arm ($963 billion of funds under management).
Hyat shared his views on investinginto the ageing industry. He noted ‘the first wave of tech and apps was designed with millennials in mind — pizza delivery and Uber. The next wave of platforms and technology will be designed with the needs of the elderly in mind.
