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"Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime" is out in bookstores, real and virtual, all too soon. The book by Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae is one of a series of initiatives aiming to illustrate the plausibility of near-term healthy life extension to enough people - and gain enough widespread support and understanding - to spark a revolution in research.
In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of man-made machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with man-made machines, this damage can periodically be repaired, leading to indefinite extension of the machine’s fully functional lifetime, just as is routinely done with classic cars. We already know what types of damage accumulate in the human body, and we are moving rapidly toward the comprehensive development of technologies to remove that damage. By demystifying aging and its postponement for the nonspecialist reader, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalist presumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.
The goal of greatly extending the healthy, vigorous human life span through repairing the damage that causes aging is very plausible. It is plausible to attain that goal within a few decades of work by a large research establishment. But that establishment doesn't yet exist - resources and people must be gathered and persuaded.
So: one step at a time. We must raise support, and we must help make each new initiative to that end more successful than it would have been if we stood to one side and merely watched. What can we ordinary folk do to help make this book successful? Publishing a book is best thought of as two entirely separate activities: a big gala party up front, a burst of publicity and sharing, followed by a long conversation and building of community across years. The publishing industry is all about the party, while the craft of advocacy and activism is all about the years afterwards.
But let's talk about the party, first things first: how can we help to get this book out there and talked about? Well:
Then a second line of thought began to form in my mind - idly at first, just as a notion. The real issue, surely, was not which metabolic processes cause aging damage in the body, but the damage itself. Forty-year-olds have fewer healthy years to look forward to than twenty-year-olds because of differences in their molecular and cellular composition, not because of the mechanisms that gave rise to those differences. How far could I narrow down the field of candidate causes of aging by focusing on the molecular damage itself?
Well, I thought, it can’t hurt to make a list . . .
There are mutations in our chromosomes, of course, which cause cancer. There is glycation, the warping of proteins by glucose. There are the various kinds of junk that accumulate outside the cell (“extracellular aggregates”): beta-amyloid, the lesser-known transthyretin, and possibly other substances of the same general sort. There is also the unwholesome goo that builds up within the cell (“intracellular aggregates”), such as lipofuscin. There’s cellular senescence, the “aging” of individual cells, which puts them into a state of arrested growth and causes them to produce chemical signals dangerous to their neighbors. And there’s the depletion of the stem cell pools essential to healing and maintenance of tissue.
And of course, there are mitochondrial mutations, which seem to disrupt cellular biochemistry by increasing oxidative stress. I had for a few years felt optimistic that scientists could solve this problem by copying mitochondrial DNA from its vulnerable spot at “ground zero,” within the free-radical generating mitochondria, into the bomb shelter of the cell nucleus, where damage to DNA is vastly rarer.
Now, if only we had solutions like that for all of this other stuff, I mused, we could forget about the “butterfly effect” of interfering with basic metabolic processes, and just take the damage ITSELF out of the picture.
Hmm.
Well, I thought, why the bloody hell not?
Why the bloody hell not, indeed. The aging research establishment needs a kick to the rear and the drive for near-term goals sorely lacking in past years - how else is progress to be made on an aggressive timeline? Over at the Immortality Institute some folk have other good ideas for helping things along:
I contacted of my favorite libraries offering to donate a copy of Ending Aging. I mentioned that Aubrey will be on Good Morning America on September 17th. The library has two sites. After the librarians consulted each other, they checked out the Amazon site then decided that they would match my book contribution, by purchasing another copy or copies so both libraries would have.
They also want to put a display with the book and info about Aubrey and his work in the front of both libraries.
Also at the Methuselah Foundation forums:
I put together a Powerpoint brief (Attached) for the librarians to help them be informed, and they can use in the display.
Be sure to check out the Powerpoint attached to that post. As is noted, Aubrey de Grey will indeed be on the talk show circuit in September; whatever we can do to increase the buzz before then is grist for the mill.
The more people who learn about de Grey's Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), the more support we'll see for plausible research to repair the damage of aging. More support means faster progress, and faster progress means a better chance for all of us to live much longer, much healthier lives, bringing an end to the frailty and age-related diseases that presently kill 100,000 people every day.
Technorati tags: activism, advocacy, book, life extension, SENS
Posted by Reason at August 30, 2007 9:12 PM
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