(Via CRNano). This interview is a little more of the Kurzweil I like and a little less of the Kurzweil I don't like:

We're in the early stages of biotechnology. We just finished the genome. We haven't finished reverse-assembling it yet, and we don't understand how the genes express themselves in proteins. Just now, we're getting machines powerful enough to simulate protein folding. We're learning the information processing methods underlying biology, disease and aging. We're finding very finely tuned interventions to reverse aging and to reverse disease processes. And there are very profound bio-technology-based therapies in the pipeline already. There are drugs in the pipeline that will enable us to eat as much as we want and remain slim, that will reverse type-2 diabetes by getting rid of excess glucose. I'm very confident that over the next decade we'll largely eliminate the diseases that kill 95 percent of people today. We've identified a dozen or so aging processes, and we have strategies for reversing them all. I believe that within 10 years we'll produce a mouse that doesn't age, and we'll translate that into human therapies within another five to 10 years after that.

I think that this 10 year timeline is overly optimistic, to say the least. Who was it said that we always greatly overestimate what can be done in a decade and greatly underestimate what can be done in two decades? The length of the business cycle and regulatory regimes ensure that the pace of commercializing new therapies will continue to lag behind accelerating medical research. While Aubrey de Grey presents a convincing case for radical life extension in mice within ten years, this is a) a project currently lacking the necessary $100 million per year in funding, support and infrastructure, and b) not "a mouse that doesn't age." Still, even adding a few decades to the healthy human life span within the next 30 years would be a major achievement and place us well on the way to "acturial escape velocity." I think that this is a plausible, possible goal - but one that will require the same order of activism and scientific support that efforts to cure cancer, Alzheimer's or AIDS have received. It won't just fall into our laps.

This next sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly:

We've rationalized death, which in my view is a profound tragedy and a tremendous loss of knowledge and expertise. And we have rationalized it as a good thing. I guess if there's nothing you can do about it, the best thing you can do is rationalize it, but there will be things that we can do about it.

If this strikes a chord in you, you may want to go ahead and read "Death is an Outrage" and "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant".

Posted by Reason at October 19, 2004 1:26 AM | TrackBack (0)