Michael Anissimov, whose interests these days lie more in the realm of general artificial intelligence, has penned a good introduction to SENS, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. You should certainly read the whole thing:
It is an engineering approach that seeks to slow and then halt aging processes that are the side effects of our body's metabolic cycles. The proposal originates with Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge biogerontologist who has appeared in CNN, the New York Times, New Scientist, Popular Science, MIT's Technology Review, Fortune magazine, BBC News, etc. De Grey's Methuselah Institute has raised $3M in donation committments towards the Methuselah Mouse Prize, which rewards researchers who achieve breakthroughs in substantially extending the lifespan of middle-aged laboratory mice. After reliable life extension is achieved with mice, therapies for humans would follow....
Quite a project, but this framework gives us an abundance of starting points. And people are beginning to take it more seriously. SENS is an effort I encourage people to give to that surpasses the humanitarian value of the vast majority of conventional charities.
Donations to the MPrize for anti-aging research go towards encouraging and supporting the science that will extend our healthy life spans - and are always greatly appreciated. Step up and make a difference to the future of medicine! If you maintain your own blog, take the time to pen your own thoughts on SENS. Every addition to the worldwide conversation on the ways and means of radical life extension helps to build support - and support ultimately translates into funding for research, one way or another.
Thanks for the links, million-dollar-man! I aspire to be as useful of an activist to AGI as you are to anti-aging research.