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Aging researcher Tom Kirkwood has described biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey's comments on the plausible results of accelerating healthy life extension technologies as "nonsense." Kirkwood, like many other mainstream gerontologists, doesn't buy into the idea that we can make real inroads into the treatment and reversal of age-related damage in next few decades. This, sadly, is a self-fulfilling prophecy - if everyone thinks that way, then it certainly won't happen, regardless of whether it is possible or not. Here is one of de Grey's comments from a BBC article:
I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.
de Grey has a short and explanatory response to Kirkwood published in SAGE KE. Fortunately for those without subscriptions, it has also found its way to the Transhumantech list:
In your August 18th issue, Kirkwood [1] describes my recent claim [2] that the first person to live to 1000 could be 60 already as "laughable" and "arrant nonsense." I derive it as follows:
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Arguable? Certainly. Laughable? MIT Technology Review's $20,000 "SENS Challenge" says not [8]. The longer that prize goes unclaimed, the hollower the skeptics' ex cathedra scoffing will ring.
Go and read the whole thing; I think you'll find it an excellent short justification for devoting high levels of funding to serious anti-aging research.
Technorati tags: gerontology, science, SENS
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Posted by Reason
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