Attila Csordás of Partial Immortalization is running a series of interviews with folk in the healthy life extension community, starting with the bloggers. The interview questions are open to anyone to take a stab at:

1. What is the story of your life extension commitment?

2. Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension?

3. What is your favourite argument supporting human life extension?

4. What is the most probable technological draft of human life extension, which technology or discipline has the biggest chance to reach it earliest? (regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, gene therapy, caloric restriction, bionics, hormones, antioxidants, …)

5. When?

6. What can blogs do for LE?

My responses were posted a few days ago, should you be interested, but I think that those of Chris Patil of Ouroboros - an actual life scientist, researching the biology of aging, rather than one of us cheerleaders - are far more worthy of your attention.

On the ideological side, I just think it’s a waste to have to die. It takes us a long time to figure this “life” thing out, and I find the moving-goalposts aspect of aging and decrepitude very frustrating. Additionally, there are so many things that I’d like to see with my own eyes, not just my imagination, things that require what we now think of as generations of time: planetary exploration, for one. Fixing the planet we’ve got, for another.

On the practical side, aging doesn’t seem necessary. The machine of our bodies is great at renewing itself early in our lives, and we know of lots of ways to keep it in good shape for a long time (exercise being my favorite example; and while I’m less convinced than some, I think calorie restriction is very promising). It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine prolonging the process of renewal substantially, if not indefinitely.

For all the advocacy and fundraising we might achieve in the next few years, someone has to perform the research that moves medicine and longevity ahead. You can't change the world with just good will and a fistful of dollars, however hard it was to get both of those line items in hand - you need infrastructure and a research community that can be purposed to the task at hand.

Technorati tags: advocacy, interview, life extension

Posted by Reason at November 3, 2006 8:10 PM | TrackBack (1)