That didn't take long.

I'm pleased to note that there are now 100 members of The Three Hundred, philanthropists of ordinary means who have stepped forward to support the Methuselah Foundation and the MPrize for longevity research. This is real progress: it's been little more than two years since the first of The Three Hundred; you'll find early thoughts way back in the Fight Aging! archives, as it so happens.

Given that successful organizations tend to show increasing growth with time, I'm confident that the next 200 members will arrive within the next two years - if we continue to work hard at it. So if you've been thinking of joining, why not join now? There may not be any room left by mid-2008!

Kevin Perrott, executive director of the MPrize competition, took a moment to look back in an Immortality Institute thread:

Absolutely bizarre to remember back to the fall of 2003 when I got involved with [Aubrey de Grey] and Dave Gobel... not even 3 years ago. I'm sure there are many here who remember a time on ImmInst when there wasn't an Mprize or a Methuselah Foundation. It's amazing how far we've come and how fast and quickly The Three Hundred are truly morphing into something like their namesake.

...

We will likely be making a much bigger deal of this just because it is a significant milestone to have achieved and a testament to the convictions of the volunteers and supporters of the Mprize and the Foundation but what's really great is that the fact that it was a milestone didn't matter to our 100th donor, he just wanted to help.

The Methuselah Foundation, generous donors and many other supporters in the community continue to do their part to ensure that the potential of serious, direct approaches to reversing age-related degeneration remain in the public eye. This foundation of advocacy and activism will be absolutely essential in the years ahead, in which much more significant funding will be directed towards healthy life extension research. Without widespread awareness and support for the defeat of aging, that funding simply will not be available.

We stand at the very beginning of the construction of a research infrastructure and culture of support for anti-aging research that will one day rival the cancer establishment in size and dedication. The more effective our support today, the sooner large-scale research into greatly extending the healthy human life span will get underway.

Technorati tags: activism, advocacy, life extension, MPrize

Posted by Reason at July 15, 2006 5:32 PM | TrackBack (0)