As noted in an Immortality Institute discussion, Good Morning America cancelled on the scheduled airtime for Aubrey de Grey, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence and Ending Aging because the whole subject was "too sciencey."

It's somewhat sad that this great world-spanning society of ours, enabled entirely by the dedication of generations of researchers and supporters to science and the scientific method, now sees so many people wealthy and insulated enough to drift through life, ignoring the very foundations upon which their wealth rests. Our ancestors worked hard to lift us from poverty and grinding need, and here we are, dismissive of their sacrifices. Sad, but plain old human nature and economic inevitability at work. One of the Immortality Institute folk suggests:

This is a difficult message to weave as the scaling the scientific disciplines can be a daunting task alone never mind attempting to weave in the philosophical and humanitarian arguments that curing aging should be seen as one of the pinnacles of human achievement.

The idea of living forever cuts across the grain of so many indoctrinated cultural memes that even having this conversation with intelligent and open minded people is like asking someone to try and swallow a giant scoop of a new and bizarrely flavored ice cream on hot day. You're shocking them with an ice-cream headache and a taste-bud overload at the same time.

While casting a wide net like GMA Aubrey may get some 'hits' but in general, immortalists might be best served by studying the demographics in detail and crafting messages for particular groups.

Television is an interesting and increasingly irrelevant venue for actual communication; the work of the Methuselah Foundation has received far more benefit and exposure from a few presentations uploaded to YouTube than from all of the TV appearances of Aubrey de Grey put together. I am more encouraged by the response from other media, as illustrated by this review in the Deseret Morning News:

De Grey has seven categories he calls "the Seven Deadlies" — cell loss or atrophy, junk outside the cells, crosslinks outside the cells, death-resistant cells, mitochondrial mutations, junk inside the cells, and nuclear mutations such as cancer.

That means little to the uninitiated reader. But don't give up.

Central to de Grey's theory is his often-used analogy to automobiles. Essentially, most of us buy cars, and some cars last longer than others. Volvos usually last longer than Chevy Cavaliers. But most cars will go on if we fix the damage as it happens: "A car can be kept going more or less indefinitely with sufficient maintenance. ... We simply repair worn-out parts when they begin to fail."

...

Rae and de Grey attempt to treat these issues in a way that "any educated layman who's willing to put in the time to read it carefully" can understand. In the main, that appears to be true.

Or, much more so by this comment to one of the very scientific SENS reports at the Methuselah Foundation blog:

Thank you for this report! I found it through Ray Kurzweil's site. My awesomely brave husband, Gene, has lived with Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy for 36 years. His vision keeps deteriorating and he fights to keep his spirit strong. This information is vital, not only in its eventual clinical application with humans, but in the hope it gives, right now, to people like Gene who were told that there was no hope. We are not highly educated people and I have great difficulty understanding the terminology and the technology used by these brilliant researchers, but I have to try for Gene. I just don't know what else to do. I search the internet almost every day for any information that might be helpful to LHON patients. Today I feel as though I have struck gold! I am printing a copy of this report so that I may read it over and over again until I gain even the loosest understanding of it. Dr. Alfredo Sadun is coming to our LHON fundraising dinner in Cleveland in October. I'll never be able to discuss this research with him intelligently. Maybe I'll just show him my copy of this article..then run away like Napoleon Dynamite! Again, thanks for the report!

"Too sciencey" is an arrogant nonsense, dismissive of people and their complexities. Folk work at and value what is important to them - and we still live in a culture that respects science, even if that sentiment is well hidden at times by the wealth created and piled high by the application of science.

Technorati tags: life extension, media, science

Posted by Reason at September 17, 2007 7:42 PM | TrackBack (0)