In the past, I've mentioned that you can't expect advancing science to save you from the consequences of negligence - meaning that you have to get up and do something to ensure that your personal future of health and longevity turns out for the best. In the same vein, you can't just sit around and wait for the future of medical science to arrive on schedule, in time. Progress doesn't work that way. The only way technology advances - in medicine, anti-aging science, or any other field of human endeavor - is when folk step up to do the job.

Research and development is hard work: it requires sufficient funding and support to develop the sort of community and infrastructure required to bring new technologies into the world. As I have often mentioned here, the science of repairing the cellular and molecular damage that causes aging is presently lacking such a community and infrastructure. If you would like to see a future in which we do as well as is possible in the healthy longevity stakes, then you'd better jump on in and help out. It isn't going to happen any other way, and we can all contribute to make a difference.

On that note, I'd like to welcome Kevin Dewalt to the growing club of Methuselah Foundation supporters; he has an eminently sensible view of it all:

Ok, I confess that I have an agenda here. My donation to the Methuselah foundation is somewhat selfish. Simply put, I don’t want to die. Since this organization is trying to help me achieve that goal, why wouldn’t I want to donate some resources to help them out?

Let’s think about this from a larger perspective: We are entering an era where it is up to us - you, me, and everyone else who is educated and technically competent enough to be reading this - to turn the world into the place we want it to be.

...

Bottom line: if you don’t like the way the world is, start changing it.

Want to make a difference to the future of aging research and healthy longevity? No-one's stopping you from doing your part: head on over to the Methuselah Foundation and see what you can do to help change the world for the better.

Technorati tags: activism, life extension

Posted by Reason at January 9, 2007 10:17 PM | TrackBack (0)