May You Be Forever Young

Aubrey de Grey on “Why Fight Aging”. Amusing and pointed. Worth your time.

If SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) is your thing, you’re going to want the up-coming book from Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae called Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Biotechnologies That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime (Amazon). Here’s how Reason described it:

Aimed squarely at folk who want to know more about the science of repairing the molecular damage that causes aging, but find navigating the wild waterways of scientific publications too intimidating or time-consuming, this is a step by step, detailed explanation of how we could achieve radical life extension within our lifetimes, as best we understand from our present knowledge of our biochemistry.

If you’re used to the “eat this, take supplements and exercise” longevity bookshelf, Ending Aging is a big step up - very much more “research this science to develop this specific therapy based upon that sound basis established over the past two decades.” You’ll be seeing more of that in the years ahead, and this exactly where your attention should be focused if you care about your own longevity.

I put in my order.

The Methuselah Foundation folks are telling us biochemist John Schloendorn, one of their researchers, has won a $30,000 scholarship. From their press release:

Schloendorn’s pioneering work concerns a new field of research called medical bioremediation. The research focuses on identifying microbes that possess particularly effective mechanisms to biodegrade the molecular “junk” that accumulates inside cells over time, and is at the root of many of the debilities caused by aging. Schloendorn‚s research has been and is supported by a seed grant made by the Methuselah Foundation, a charity dedicated to accelerating the process of discovering methods to defeat the debilities caused by aging.

Congrats.

Research takes bucks, and the SENS folks are letting us know that the guy who started PayPal has just tossed some money at them. From the press release:

Mr. [Peter] Thiel will donate a total of $500,000 over the next three years to fund pilot research projects intended to deliver early stage validation of the “SENS” approach to combating the debilitation caused by aging.

Additionally, from now until the end of 2009, Mr. Thiel promises to match every Dollar donated to the Methuselah Foundation for SENS research with a 50 cent matching contribution from himself, up to a maximum of $3 Million of matching funds.

So while it isn’t quite an all-out $3.5M bucket in one hit, it’s a hefty chunk of change, and fans of Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s engineering approach to anti-aging will be heartened. The money will be given to the non-profit Methuselah Foundation. Their Mprize site keeps a tally of their donations, so it’ll be interesting to see if they bump the numbers or if it goes into a different bucket from the Mprize Fund.

De Grey always qualifies his predictions with “subject to adequate funding”, and PIMM puts the amount in perspective:

This amount of money is not enough to solve the problem, just compare it to the $3 billion of Proposition 71 for stem cell research funding in California, where the annual limit is $350 million. Proposition 71 provides General Fund loan up to $3 million for Institute’s initial administration/implementation costs. But the $3.5 million comes from one wealthy man, and the 3 billion comes from a very wealthy state.

It’s got to help.

There are a few Aubrey de Grey videos around, so I thought I’d do a round-up of some of the ones I like, with the videos embedded for convenience. There’s a more comprehensive list here.

Presentations
First, here are a few videos of presentations made at conferences.

This is de Grey’s presentation to the Immortality Institute Conference on November 5, 2005. He does the stuff that should be familiar to his audience in about 13 minutes, then then discusses the SENS Challenge, which has now been judged. If you’re asking, “What’s this guy on about?”, then this is half an hour well spent. (28:49 on Google Video. Link)

The next one is his presentation to the TED 2006 Conference. Here he is not speaking to the converted, so there’s a fair discussion of his motivations, and an overview of his approach. Very spirited. (23:05 on Google Video. Link)

“Taking the Defeat of Aging Seriously: The Time is Now” is the title of de Grey’s talk at the Ted Global conference. Again, a lot of overview material and some interesting Q&A. He fields a question at the end where a woman quotes Neal Donald Walsh (Conversations with God). As someone who believes that a spiritual (not religious) component is important to the longevity process, it is interesting to hear his response. (29:59 on Google Video. Link)

De Grey’s presentation at Poptech, put on by Popular Technology, is preceded by an amusing, if disturbing, song called “It’s Gonna Be the Future Soon”. De Grey’s talk is called Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS): How Foreseeable Bioengineering Can Comprehensively Reverse Human Aging. The video qualtiy is pretty poor, but because he has a bit more time, he covers a bit more ground. (45:06 on Google Video. Link)

Media Encounters
The following are media appearances.

This one is on Bloomberg Encounters. It is a good look at social implications, and is light on the technical side. The inteviewer, Janet Street-Porter, has done a reasonable job of doing her preparation, so the discussion has some depth. (12:29 on Google Video. Link)

Next, a short and reasonably sober interview with decent questions, from CBC Canada Now. (5:53 on YouTube. Link)

Next is an interview with on GMTV’s Good Morning. This one’s worth watching, if for no other reason, than the woman interviewer equates radical life extension with the End of Christmans As We Know It. Otherwise, a reasonable high-level pitch, and de Grey handles the inanities well. (7:23 on YouTube. Link)

And if you feel like pursuing the issue in Italian, this one’s definitely for you: (2:23 on YouTube. Link)
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