With the addition of a generous donation from entrepreneur Brian Cartmell, the Methuselah Foundation now has seven six-figure pledges to its name, the other foward-looking supporters of healthy life extension research being Gary Hudson, Brad A. Armstrong, David Fisher, the Scott B. and Anne P. Appleby Charitable Trust, the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and one anonymous philanthropist. Above that, two seven-figure pledges, from Peter Thiel and an anonymous philanthropist. Below that, 140 or so $25,000 pledges from members of The Three Hundred, of which twelve have donated five-figure sums already.

I point this out because I realized it wasn't all that long ago that the five-figure pledges were beginning to roll in to the Foundation on a regular basis, and I marked it as a real sign of progress at the time. Six figures are the new five figures as the Methuselah Foundation continues to grow - we should all be pleased to see resources attracted at an increasing rate to the best of efforts to defeat age-related degeneration, suffering and death.

The Methuselah Foundation has a real shot at growing into a large, sustaining, influential and shaping body in aging research, steering not just its own research funds to best effect but lighting the way for millions and then billions of dollars more from other organizations. Convincing the mainstream of research funding that repair of aging is in fact very plausible and comparatively close at hand, given large-scale funding - now there's a goal. Every boulder is a pebble at the head of a larger avalanche, and revolutions start with a single idea spoken out loud and single dollar on the table to fund the first step.

The stranglehold of conservatism on a field of science is broken by obtaining enough independent resources to move down the path ahead - at which point the rest of the field will follow, loudly declaiming that they knew you were right all along. Which I'm happy to suffer, provided they get started soonest; there is a great deal of work to be done if we are to live in good health for as long as we'd like to.

Technorati tags: activism, aging, life extension, science

Posted by Reason at August 21, 2007 9:11 PM | TrackBack (0)