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Avoiding Aging

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Mammon

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http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_...void_aging.html

Another good TED lecture that brings up interesting points as always about avoiding aging. I seriously hope this type of research gets funded and developed, I'd like to live for a few hundred years!

I met De Grey at Aclor's 2007 conference, fascinating guy for sure. As an advocate of a philosophy which attributes almost all great human advancements to individuals and recognizes the role that individual fortitude plays in changing society, technology, and acquiring wealth, I feel inspired and driven to do everything I can, to acquire as much wealth as possible to directly contribute to this kind of research either through funding or directly through my own work. I would certainly enjoy living a few hundred of a few thousand years as I would hope any adherents of a life loving philosophy would.

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I seriously hope this type of research gets funded and developed, I'd like to live for a few hundred years!

I am also watching this. Being a fan of science fiction, I've looked at aging the way he does for... well, as long as I can remember. I find it absolutely dispicable that he actually has to argue in favor of his field. People opposing him are saying that they actually want to shrivel up and die. And not just die, either - a jump from a bridge will achieve that no matter what treatments are developed - but to suffer the wretched effects of aging.

Ugh!

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I find it absolutely dispicable that he actually has to argue in favor of his field. People opposing him are saying that they actually want to shrivel up and die.

And worse, many of them want to make sure everyone else shrivels up and dies as well.

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I listened to the entire lecture, and I was not at all impressed.

De Grey makes many fantastic claims without offering any scientific evidence. For instance, a large portion of the talk revolves around achieving a "breakthrough" in anti-aging medicine that will extend everyone's lives by about 30 years. (Why 30 years? Why not 15 or 100? No answer). This would be accomplished by first extending the lives of rats by 30%, then applying the same method to treat humans. (How are we going to do that? No answer.) He also asserts that the rat-life-extending-medicine will be applied to humans within 15 years of its discovery. (The basis of his claim? No answer.) He later presents an arbitrary list of 7 types of "damage" which cause aging, and he asserts that the list subsumes all possible causes for aging. (Where does he get this list from? How do we know there aren't other items that should be on there? He doesn't even attempt an answer to these questions.)

This lecture didn't reference a single actual scientific study, even referentially. One gets the impression that De Grey knows just barely enough about real biological research to bullshit people. In principle, I have nothing against anti-aging research, but if De Grey is representative of the type who study this field, then I don't think it's worthy of any attention whatsoever.

--Dan Edge

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Thanks for posting this! I enjoyed this and have been interested in de Grey's ideas since hearing of them several years ago.

Dan: Your conclusions might be justified, but I don't think this video is (or is intended to be) any sort of comprehensive or academic statement of what de Grey's after. Seems to me like he spent a few years arguing that this was possible (and talking a lot about the science), and now he's trying to convince people that it's worth doing. Hence the focus in this video on convincing people that this is an important issue in the first place.

de Gray might be a quack to some degree, but at the same time, the idea that we could drastically extend the length of human life is highly plausible to me. We've made so many scientific advances in so many fields, yet we're not living longer than ancient people who lived fully healthy lives. (e.g. old people in our civilization and old people to the ancient Greeks are not that much different in age)

Edited by BrassDragon
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  • 2 months later...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_...void_aging.html

Another good TED lecture that brings up interesting points as always about avoiding aging. I seriously hope this type of research gets funded and developed, I'd like to live for a few hundred years!

The good news is that it already is being funded, in part by the life extension foundation.

Dr. Michael West of Advance Cell Technology (who also heads up Geron), and had done extensive work with BioTime Inc. (a company specifically geared towards regenerative medicine) has been instrumental in helping to develop non-cancerous immortal cells in a lab setting. The work he's done with the "telomere clock" theory is pretty amazing. By continuing to "reset" our cell's inner "clock", theoretically, we should be able to regenerate any specific body part or group of parts we choose.

In the interview I read, Dr. West specifically mentions that President Bush's anti-stem cell attitude and initiatives have delayed progress in development of this type of regenerative medicine.

The good news is that Dr. West believes that within ONE year, the scientific community will have documentation of the first reversal of aging of a human cell. That, to me, is incredible. He goes on to say that commercialization (of certain disease-specific medicine) of stem cell therapy is, barring any government intervention, just around the corner (i.e. viable within most people's lifetime).

I have actually seen a skin cream that uses stem-cell therapy to reduce the signs of aging...so perhaps this is already in use in some limited fashion.

Edited by prosperity
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  • 6 months later...

Ray Kurzweil has a similar opinion to those of De grey:

"In the coming decades, a radical upgrading of our body's physical and mental systems, already underway, will use nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs. We already know how to prevent most degenerative disease through nutrition and supplementation; this will be a bridge to the emerging biotechnology revolution, which in turn will be a bridge to the nanotechnology revolution. By 2030, reverse-engineering of the human brain will have been completed and nonbiological intelligence will merge with our biological brains."

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0551.html?m=5

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