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Category: life extension – Page 536

Why eradicating age-related diseases through rejuvenation biotechnology is probably not going to result in ever-living tyrants.

Suppose there was a country ruled by an evil dictator. Further, suppose the entire world was plagued by a terrible disease affecting 100% of the population. The disease isn’t infectious, but it is congenital. It progresses extremely slowly over the course of several decades, but it eventually ends up severely impairing one’s quality of life, and it is always fatal; it’ll take its own sweet time to kill a patient, but it always will, and it isn’t going to be fun.

If it was suggested that a cure for this disease should not be developed so that we could be sure the aforementioned dictator will eventually pass away, would you agree? Would your answer change if you lived in that country?

If I had to bet on your answers, my money would be on “no way” for both questions, and your reasons would probably be not too different from mine below.

Continue reading “Why Eradicating Age-related Diseases is Unlikely to Create Immortal Dictators” | >

The Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, in collaboration with Singularity University Moscow Chapter and consulting group Deloitte, is hosting in Moscow an expert discussion on how to inform society about the potential and the advancement of gerontology and preventive medicine.

Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, in collaboration with Singularity University Moscow Chapter and consulting group Deloitte, are hosting in Moscow an expert discussion on how to inform society about the potential and the advancement of gerontology and preventive medicine. These experts believe that attracting people’s attention to the capabilities of medical technologies to prevent aging might help extend the healthy period of life and significantly decrease morbidity from age-related diseases.

The panel discussion “6 ways to talk to people about ending aging” will bring together famous futurists, scientists, science popularizers and public figures who foster the dissemination of the idea to prevent aging in Russia and other countries.

Jose Luis Cordeiro, fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), director of life extension advocacy organization Humanity Plus.

Continue reading “6 Ways to Talk to People about Ending Aging – Moscow Nov 4th” | >

Dr. Aubrey De Grey is a biomedical gerontologist and the Chief Science Officer at SENS Research Foundation, a biomedical charity that funds research dedicated to combating aging. His research interests encompass the characterization of all the accumulating and eventually pathogenic molecular and cellular side-effects of metabolism (“damage”) that constitute mammalian aging, and the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage. In line with his research, De Grey gave a talk at The Aspen Abu Dhabi Ideas Festival focusing on “Rejuvenating Biotechnology: Why age may soon cease to mean aging”.

In March 2017, the Aspen Abu Dhabi Ideas Forum welcomed some of the brightest and most interesting minds from the UAE and around the world to discuss four of the most important moonshot challenges facing our planet. The event was inspired by the world-famous Aspen Ideas Festival that has been taking place in Colorado since 2005, as a place for scientists, artists, politicians, business leaders, historians and educators to discuss some of the most fascinating ideas of our time. The 2017 Aspen Abu Dhabi Ideas Forum topics included: “System Shock: Calming the ‘politics of anger’”, “Beyond GDP: Targeting ‘all-in’ human welfare”, “Health: Extending the healthy human lifespan” and “Space: Living Sustainably beyond Earth”.

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Everlasting boredom is a common concern when it comes to the idea of extended human lifespans but is it likely to happen? We take a look at this common concern.

Everlasting boredom is a common concern when it comes to the idea of extended human lifespans. There are many who expect life to become empty and meaningless with time because everything has been already experienced; there is nothing else to discover, nothing else can surprise or please.

This idea has become so ingrained in our collective psyche that its mark appears constantly in our most popular works of fiction. The elves from the Lord of the Rings, for example, are described as lacking passion and ambition because of their extended lives, as compared to humans whose short lifespans impel them to bold action. Another omnipresent trope is the tale of the tortured immortal who would do anything to become human again or to end the curse with the finality of death.

The thinking goes that people living longer than a century will become tired of such hollow lives, eventually leading to the decision to terminate their pitiful existences. The loss of the thirst for life in the elderly is supposed to illustrate the probability of this outcome.

Continue reading “Will increased lifespans be boring?” | >

Juvenescence: investing in the age of longevity.

With their previous books published over the past 9 years, Mellon and Chalabi have established an excellent track record of recognising investment opportunities before they become mainstream, starting with forecasting the Great Recession in 2008, and identifying gold as an excellent hedge. More recently, they have written about life sciences, and their recommended stocks in Cracking the Code have outperformed every major market in the world. Equally their main stock picks in Fast Forward have yielded market busting returns.

They believe that to be successful, investors need to be curious, adaptable and apply themselves before they commit capital to an idea. For this new book, Jim and Al have spent a year sifting through the cutting-edge research, visiting laboratories and interviewing key opinion leaders in the field of life extension. They have written this up for the investor, stripping away the technical jargon and demystifying the information to help you to understand the science and clearly identify the key industry participants and investment opportunities.

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Defeating age-related diseases may create challenges for society, but is that worse than not doing anything?

In these six years, I’ve spent as a rejuvenation advocate, I’ve had to deal with the traditional objections raised against the idea of longer lifespans. These objections touch a variety of different topics, but they aren’t terribly many: we’re talking about maybe a dozen of them, and these days, I hardly ever hear an objection I haven’t discussed before.

However few or many, and deserving of specific answers, these objections may be, they can all be reduced down to a single, general form: “Rejuvenation biotechnologies would cause [insert problem here], so it’s best not to go there.” And just like there are specific answers for each specific objection, there are general answers for their general form—Aubrey de Grey’s famous “two more general answers”.

These two general answers question the validity of two implicit assumptions contained in all objections, general or specific.

Continue reading “Rejuvenation May Bring Challenges to Society but are they Worse than Age-related Diseases?” | >

The first results of two human clinical trials using stem cell therapy for age-related frailty have been published, and the results are very impressive indeed. The studies show that the approach used is effective in tackling multiple key age-related factors.

Aging research has made significant progress in the last few years, with senescent cell clearing therapies entering human trials this year, DNA repair in human trials, and a number of other exciting therapies nearing human testing. We are reaching the point where therapies that target aging processes are no longer a matter of speculation; they are now an undeniable matter of fact.

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