Alex Beam of the Boston Globe authored a rather characteristic filler piece on the Technology Review cover article profiling biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey - sniping at all sides without examining anything so prosaic as, say, the actual science involved. I am singled out as an invading crackpot at one point; I feel I've crossed a threshold of some sort. At least he bothered to e-mail me to verify my name and gender before starting in with the slander.
Still, no such thing as bad publicity. Let the know-nothings snipe and make snide remarks. If we've seen anything, it's that people open to examining the merits of healthy life extension research will hear the message loud and clear through many layers of pro-death (and other forms of) humbug.
Well, you have to hand it to him, he pokes fun at everybody pretty evenly. I like the remark to the typical "Bible-thumper" best:
And where science leads, Bible-thumpers must follow. A typical comment: ''I wonder how Aubrey de Grey will reconcile his search with Genesis 6:3 which clearly states man will live 120 years." Oh, really? I thought the ''days of our years are threescore and ten" (Psalm 90:10). Bears checking.
Bears checking? That's hilarious!
I can't help but think that this article is all tongue-in-cheek: good publicity for all sides of the debate... Well, except maybe for the Bible-thumpers; that was pretty harsh.
Everytime in the late 80's a slam piece was run on Alcor, Alcor got free publicity and occasionally got new members. All publicity is good publicity as long as there are no internal shananagans or corruption in the organization/people attracting the publicity.
In others words, articles attacking the concept of life extension and cryonics are still positive publicity. An article documenting corruption or employee embezellment in a cryonics organization is not.
I suspect that many people will read the TR or the Boston Globe piece and will ask themselves "Who is this Aubry de grey guy?", "Can he be for real?", "Is SENS for real?"","Where can I find out more about Aubry de grey and SENS?".
The bio-luddites can play into our hands the same way that Peg and others played right into the hands of Alcor in the late 80's.
There is a saying: The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.