Healthy life extension, making money, losing weight, learning a new skill. You name it - if it requires hard work, you'll find any number of people who think there are hidden secrets to it all; knowledge held by the few that will enable you to succeed if you can but uncover the key.

No such thing, however. There are no secrets.

You can find the high level synopsis - and a fair stack of details for later reading - of everything presently known or proven to be of use relating to extending the healthy human life span in a single afternoon online. You'll have to wade through a moat of nonsense and idiots who don't know what they're talking about, but no-one is hiding anything. All the latest knowledge is right there, out in the open.

The general health matters, those line items that seem to attract the most attention, are trivial in the grand scheme of things. They are also very simple. Eat right, eat little, exercise, take supplements. You're never going to know whether you're at 70% or 80% of the best you can do, but you're still going to age and die on roughly the same timeframe regardless of all of that. It doesn't matter how much effort you spend - unless you look beyond those horizons to science and research:

• We stand within a few decades of developing technologies to significantly extend healthy human life span

• This has been said many times in past decades, incorrectly each time, but this modern age and biotechnology revolution are different - we mean it now, and have the science to back this assertion

• Scientific progress could move fast enough to accomplish this vision, but is presently failing to do so for a variety of very human reasons: conservatism, a focus on a slower path, and all the reasons people give for refusing to believe that it is possible to successfully tackle aging and win

• We are all responsible for the futures we build for ourselves, individually and in collaboration with one another - so if you want working longevity medicine and a longer, healthier life, then help to make it happen

• We can collaborate to create a better engine of progress towards near-term longevity and the long-term defeat of aging; all you have to do to help is to make the decision and step forward

• If you like life, there's nothing wrong with wanting more of it; if you want to age and die, please step aside and live the life you desire - we respect your choice, but don't act to slow us down

• In an age of possibility and astounding advances in biotechnology, the greatest hurdles to great longevity are those we create ourselves: regulation, disbelief, ignorance, fear of change and worship of death

Or you could just keep on thinking of the world as a patchwork of cults and their secrets, deluding yourself into avoiding the work required to achieve anything of value. It's your choice.

Technorati tags: life extension

Posted by Reason at June 20, 2007 10:34 PM | TrackBack (0)