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Recent media attention given to biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) has given rise to a couple of good blog posts in recent days, focused on the science of extending the healthy human life span. That in mind, I should take a moment to remind you all that de Grey will be appearing in a 60 Minutes segment on radical life extension this Sunday, January 1st. Methuselah Foundation Executive Director Kevin Perrott has more:
The high profile and much watched CBS investigative journal program, 60 minutes, will be highlighting the Mprize in a segment dedicated to the discussion of what the prospects for healthy life-extension.
It doesn't get much better than watching Morely Safer asking Mprize Founder Aubrey de Grey seriously what "he is talking about.." when it comes to longevity and hearing Dr. de Grey reply "indefinite" longevity... on international television... to an audience whose mean age is somewhere around 60.
Damn Interesting has a long interview with de Grey and Perrott in a post entitled "Zen and the Art of Human Maintenance." There's a lot in there, so read it all:
There is a disease which causes the human body and mind to gradually deteriorate, causing its sufferers to experience discomfort, memory loss, failed health, disfigurement, and severe physical and mental handicaps. It is always fatal, and there is no known cure. The scientific term for this disease is Senescence, though it is more commonly known as aging or growing old. Every single person is born with this condition, and it kills over a million people a year in the U.S. alone.
Thinking of old age as a curable disease seems strange to some people, but great leaps in medical progress over the past few decades are indicating a future where no one will need to suffer the deteriorating physical condition and the dulling of the mind which occur during aging. Scientists may be able to repair this flaw in evolution's design, and perhaps perpetual youth will become a reality soon enough that you and I might live to enjoy it.
To round off, here is a thoughtful and satisfying post from a blogger new to the concepts of SENS and radical life extension:
Could science offer us immortality one day? How about to those of us already living? Seems too good to be true, but then I'll bet so did cell phones in 1900.
Again, read it all. Good stuff - we advocates have to work harder to get the message out to the hundreds of thousands of other folk who think the same way.
Technorati tags: life extension, SENS
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Posted by Reason
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