reason

Aging

2008-06-18T00:52:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) There's nothing wrong with becoming old, but everything wrong with aging. Old means experienced, invested, wealthier, time-tested and just all-round better for having been around the block. Aging, on the other hand, is the direct result of biochemical damage you picked up along the way - ongoing deterioration that is a side-effect of being alive. The passage of years brings a constant flow of opportunities for growth and self-improvement, until aging takes away...(read more)

500 Scientists

2008-06-14T00:23:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) The rough estimate of resources required to develop - for mice - the medical capabilities called for by the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is presently $1 billion over ten years , give or take. Each of these [six lines of research] would require total funding in the range of $2m to $15m per year, spread over at least three and sometimes ~15 research teams. These teams will typically be working in a university or other research setting. [The...(read more)

Next Steps For Longevity Science at the Methuselah Foundation

2008-06-05T01:26:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) As you might know, Aubrey de Grey's Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) places the known forms of biochemical damage that cause aging into seven categories, each with a recommended path towards repair or prevention: 1) Too few cells: Some tissues lose cells with advancing age, like the heart and areas of the brain. Stem cell research and regenerative medicine are already providing very promising answers to degeneration through cell loss. 2)...(read more)

The Million Year Lifespan

2008-05-30T13:55:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) Aschwin de Wolf continues to republish important writing from the early days of the modern healthy life extension community at Depressed Metabolism. Those were the years of the late 1960s, in which the seeds were laid for the cryonics community on the one hand and pro-longevity supplement and "anti-aging" groups on the other. There's really a deep divide between the two factions in terms of fundamental philosophy: on the one hand aiming a few more years...(read more)

Engineering an End to Aging

2008-05-23T20:58:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) Michael Anissimov is back to writing on the topic of healthy life extension once more, and a good thing too. As more writers craft works of common sense on aging and advocacy for longevity science, it becomes easier to raise significant funding for research and development aimed at repairing the damage of aging . Raising the tide of awareness to float the boats of endeavor is a labor in and of itself - but it must happen if we are to succeed. You'll find Anissimov's...(read more)

To Conquer Aging

2008-05-21T17:55:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) The goal of the more activist end of the healthy life extension community is nothing less than to engineer the defeat of degenerative aging: to develop medical technologies that make it possible to live in good health with no ticking clock driving you ever closer to suffering and death. This has been the case across decades of the modern community, from pre-internet years through to present day Methuselah Foundation initiatives, online collaborations and cryonics...(read more)

Waking Up

2008-05-19T23:11:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) One day, you wake up to realize that a particularly vital assumption about the world is wrong. Everyone who buys into it is wrong. Which is almost everyone in the world. Everything in the world that depends on it is wrong. Which is almost everything in the world. Now what? Waking up is an apt way to put it; the reconfiguration of realization is not unlike passing through a slow instance of the stage of booting up in the morning. (Who am I? What am I doing today?...(read more)

Things We Don't Need To Know In Order To Cure Aging

2008-05-17T19:47:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) Engineering might be regarded as the process of production of working technology in the absence of complete knowledge - the strategies for managing the unknown, and applying what we do know with rigor and to good effect. Bridge building and large-scale construction came to a fair and effective maturity long before the scientific, mathematical and computation tools that enabled rigorous models and full understanding of the underlying principles, for example. So too...(read more)

The Value of a Longevity Therapy

2008-05-14T20:08:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) It is useful to think about the potential cost of future longevity therapies in the clinic - and changes in that cost over time - and compare this with the value people place on the results. This sort of exercise can help guide our expectations on commercialization: how long will it take for companies to form and deliver laboratory results to the clinic? Progress is a matter of incentive. If you have the new science to produce a super-widget for $1 that happens to...(read more)

Understanding Aging Conference, Los Angeles, June 27th

2008-05-10T19:23:00Z

( Crossposted from Fight Aging! ) Don't forget to mark your calendars for the Understanding Aging conference at UCLA, Los Angeles this June 27th, organized by the Methuselah Foundation and biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey . Despite the unassuming name, this is all about how to develop the medical technologies of rejuvenation by repairing the damage of aging: You are cordially invited to participate in the scientific conference "Understanding Aging: Biomedical and Bioengineering Approaches,"...(read more)