A somewhat random collection of links for you folk today; my attention is wandering far and wide. Let's start with a fairly content-free piece of research promotion via News-Medical.net. These things, while somewhat frustrating, are a good indicator as to what those in the know really think about rates of progress and potential for funding. The latter is a fair proxy for general sentiment in the field and chance of success, if you play the averages.

The technique involves growing cells inside a 'non-reactive biocontainer' which, placed in rats, sees the cells mature into fully functional tissues and organs. Using this breakthrough technology, scientists at BOBIM have successfully produced sufficient tissue to replace a breast.

...

Professor Morrison sees the new approach having potential for repairing many other tissues and organs including muscle (skeletal and beating heart tissue), organoid (pancreas and liver) and glands (hormone secreting, pituitary and sinus).

Moving on, more commentary spurred the recent TransVision 2006 conference, courtesy of queerrel:

Even if the first human to live a 1000 years had indeed been born already, it would take some great amount of time before these technologies could be put to use to benefit the rest of the humankind. This in turn gives us a fair amount of time to solve the overpopulation problem, which, and I can't emphasize this enough, we'll have to solve anyway. So why wait till we've got everything figured out - I have faith in the on-going evolution of the creative spirit of the humankind, so to say.

Another lecturer pointed out the concern some seem to have of becoming very bored if having to live that long. "Well", he said, "if life is boring, then certainly death is going to be even more boring!"

Moving on again, a couple of posts on that recent BBC article that took a brief scan of viewpoints on radical life extension. Attila Csordas rightly notes the poll; while all online polls should be taken with a grain of salt, I don't think I'm imagining the trend of ever more support for ever more healthy life.

The supporters of life extension are not just transhumanists and the members of present day health and beauty establishment.

And more:

If we can make it to 1000, we will have achieved immortality. We won't have to worry about "illness"; we'll worry about altogether bigger threats such as the lifetimes of stars, the hard radiation of supernovae, the gnarled topology of spacetime, and, ultimately, the fate of the universe itself.

Even if you think Ray Kurzweil is way off in his predicted timescales, the technology of a hundred years from now is going to be most impressive. A thousand years on? Hard to think about except in the broadest terms of capabilities; physical immortality is certainly on that list. I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that it can't be done these days, rather the debate is over the very crucial matter of timing. How much, and how soon?

Technorati tags: life extension, medical research, tissue engineering

Posted by Reason at 10:35 PM
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All too many people in the world see the boundaries of the possible end at what they can conceive. I noticed an op-ed piece on the tremendous benefits of embryonic stem cell research by one such character today. The digest version would be "it sounds hard, I don't like change, so let's stop people from doing it." The normal flaws of logic, leaps of faith, ignorance of economic realities, and callous disregard for human suffering and death - dolled up as concern - are in evidence. See for yourself:

One tribe of Native Americans had a saying that the old must die so the young could have their chance to live on the land. We seem about to implement a technology that will have exactly the opposite effect. For the sake of our posterity, once considered sacred but now apparently considered disposable or at least available to be saddled with the financial and emotional care of an ever-expanding geriatric population, let's give this "better living through embryos" mentality a really thorough once over before there's no turning back.

How easily some folk dispose of humanity as soon at it becomes remotely incovenient for their worldview! I have real trouble identifying with a mindset that would sacrifice billions to suffering and death in the name of a poorly defined abstract concept. There are no abstract concepts. There are only individuals - individuals, including us, including this callous writer, who will suffer and die unless progress is made.

The sole merit in this piece is that it correctly identifies the main issue with fixating all resources on one line of medical technology.

It's a fact that all of us eventually will wear out, but we generally do so at a different rate for each organ system. A 70-year-old may have a really good set of kidneys but a ticker that has seen better days, or a superb bony framework and a set of lungs that barely oxygenates him when he is at rest, and a sensory system that doesn't allow him to see or hear. Restoration of one or a couple of parts would not necessarily guarantee a prolonged period of independent, healthy living.

Not to mention the immune system, the brain, miscellaneous tissues that are hard to replace, biochemical changes in mitochondria, genes and telomeres, and so forth. Stem cell based regenerative medicine is not a single solution for aging; it cannot be. Much, much more must be done - but that is no excuse to shy away from moving forward with any area. Partial benefits are far better than no benefits, no matter what some few callous people say. The same arguments in this op-ed can be applied to all cancer research, all advances in surgery, all new medicine in fact. "It's hard, it's a partial solution, I can throw together a few objections, better not move forward."

Sadly, the author has an "M.D." after their name. With the attitude towards human suffering and death on display there, I'll be damned if I can see how that happened.

Technorati tags: aging, life extension, regenerative medicine

Posted by Reason at 5:53 PM
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Chronic inflammation is bad for your long term health and longevity. Inflammation as a system is pretty complex, but scientists are making good progress in understanding just how it all works - in painstaking detail. This opens the door for the existing drug development infrastructure and community to attempt to turn down inflammation in any number of ways; in theory, and as for early nanomedicine in cancer research, the attempts should become ever more directed, precise and lacking in side effects as the science advances.

At the moment, a number of groups are focusing on the biochemistry of cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFa, cachexin or cachectin). Interfering in the operation of cytokines seems to be a promising method for controlling the inflammatory response. A few examples in development:

QR-433:

QR-443 is an all natural broad spectrum anti-inflammatory compound that is being concurrently studied as a drug for Rheumatoid Arthritis (under the designation QR-440) in humans and dogs. QR-443 has been shown in previous pre-clinical studies to inhibit the production of TNFa and IFN gamma

As yet unnamed:

Devgen scientists have discovered compounds that inhibit the secretion of specific hormones that are the primary cause of rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that causes chronic inflammation of the joints. ... following encouraging results from studies in animals, one of its preclinical programs may show promise for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. ... A key competitive edge of the Devgen molecules is that they are small molecule drugs that can be orally administered. The current treatments are protein based therapeutics, applied by injection and are costly to produce. Hence, they are infrequently administered early in the development of the disease. ... Finding orally active TNFa inhibitors is a 'holy grail' in inflammation research as it may provide patients with convenient, cost effective and hence earlier treatment options in the development of these progressive diseases

Filter out the standard press release hype; the interesting point is that groups are working on these sorts of solutions. Many will fail, some will succeed. As knowledge grows and the tools become better, the solutions will also become better - and cheaper and more widely available. The direction here is towards ever more effective, precise and knowing control over our biochemistry, in this case to prevent an existing system from running out of control and shortening our lives.

Technorati tags: biotechnology, medical research

Posted by Reason at 9:10 PM
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Progress in understanding - and then controlling - the mechanisms of cellular differentiation has been rapid in the past year or two. The more that is learned, the closer we come to advanced regenerative medicine, capable of repairing or replacing any diseased tissue to order. Along the way, just as for cancer research, all that is learned about our cells can be taken and applied to meaningful anti-aging science. Today, I ran across a couple of examples of the sort of work presently taking place:

Wnt Protein Helps Stem Cells Specialise:

The lining of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, the pancreas, the liver, the thymus and the thyroid all have their origin in a structure of the early embryo called the anterior endoderm. Josh Brickman and his team have shown that, in the African clawed frog, the anterior endoderm forms through a cascade of activities of different molecules, leading, ultimately, to the increased activity of a protein called Wnt.

They then used mouse embryonic stem cells to demonstrate that the same cascade exists in mammals and to suggest that this activity of Wnt might be exploited to contribute to current efforts to direct embryonic stem cells to become pure anterior endoderm cells. This would be the first step in obtaining, for example, liver cells and insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas, in the laboratory.

This next article is particularly exciting; modern tools are enabling deep and detailed insight into the way in which our cells actually work.

Decision-Making Circuitry of Blood Stem Cells Mapped:

There is a lot of excitement in stem cell biology these days about the possibility of rationally and efficiently generating particular cell types from different stem cells for therapeutic purposes. As we better understand the underlying genetic circuitry that orchestrates development of a particular kind of stem cell into a specialized cell type, we should be able to manipulate it for such purposes.

...

A major scientific puzzle, said Singh, has been how and why immature hematopoietic stem cells initially express genes that are characteristic of more than one cell lineage. "One can imagine that the cells are molecularly previewing their developmental options by turning on at low levels cell-type-specific genes, and thereby revealing the developmental potential that they have," said Singh.

Understanding the circuitry that controls this critical "transcriptional priming" is central to understanding how different kinds of stem cells develop and what kind of developmental potential they have

Read the whole thing - it really is very promising. Biochemistry is always more complex than you think at first, but the veils are falling away ever more rapidly. Twenty years from now, a range of very impressive regenerative medical technology will result from these first steps.

Technorati tags: biotechnology, medical research, stem cell research

Posted by Reason at 10:22 PM
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A good example of a call for caution that would, if enacted, amount to a form of sabotage can be found amongst the essays of the Healthful Life Project. It's a good illustration of the way in which some of those who might appear at first glance to be in favor of healthy life extension are in fact putting forth a message little different from the rhetoric of the more obvious opposition.

Surely common sense would suggest that excessive population growth is very likely to have some very unpleasant consequences, and that the health and prosperity of humankind, as well as other creatures that share the planet with us, is likely to require that population be stabilized at some reasonable level (say 10 to 12 billion persons). If that notion is accepted, then it follows that the greatest threat to achieving population stability at reasonable levels will not be a failure to control birth rates, but rather the extension of adult life span. That, in turn, invites the conclusion that the greatest threat to planetary stability is within the scientific community.

...

I would suggest that we concentrate on conquering diseases and slowing the aging process so people can live out their maximal physiologic life span. That will benefit individuals; it will simultaneously challenge the global society as average life expectancy increases by 20 or 30 years, but with a reasonable amount of thought and planning, we can cope with those changes. On the other hand, we should approach changing the boundaries of aging with great caution, insisting on debating the questions I posed at the beginning of this essay and requiring that any attempt to change the boundaries in human beings be kept experimental and be accompanied by rigorous long-term assessment that includes evaluating the quality of life of these very old persons.

In sum, my view is: Maximizing physiologic life span - full speed ahead. Changing the boundaries of human aging - go slow with extreme caution. The research into aging is spectacular, but the implications and potential consequences are so profound that we cannot afford to leave it solely in the hands of the scientific community. We had better figure out where we are going or we may find some unpleasant surprises when we get there.

The Malthusians are convinced that the sky will fall if people live longer or use more resources. Never mind that overpopulation through longevity seems just as unlikely to come to pass, judging by the data we have on hand: Malthusians been convinced of this for quite some time - and proven absolutely wrong in their specific predictions time and time again. Here's a newsflash for the Malthusians: it's too late; the sky has already fallen. We are already in the midst of a disaster far greater, immediate and proven than any postulations about population on your part. What is more, you fail to understand the nature of change and are ignorant of economics; your actions will only prolong this present disaster by blocking progress.

More than 100,000 people died yesterday - and the day before, and the day before that. More than 100,000 people will die tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that - and forever on unless we do something. They are dying of aging, of root causes that scientists are comparatively close to understanding and addressing. It takes a particular sort of mindset to put future issues based upon an ignorant view of human action and economics in front of this present ongoing toll. Personally, I'm glad I do not think that way.

The precautionary principle is a distillation of inaction forced by excessive caution. More extreme expressions of the precautionary principle have been seized upon and promoted by all sorts of opponents of progress because they represent a halt to all progress: no advance is ever risk-free. Demanding - and attempting to enforce - risk free progress is one and the same with halting the engine of science and technology. Many foolish people want just this, sadly, and would condemn every living person to suffer and die from degenerative aging to achieve their ends.

Sadly, the popularity of extreme expressions of the precautionary principle obscure the high costs of adhering to even moderate versions. If you attach a ball and chain to those working on medical progress, medical progress will be slow. How can anyone advocate slowing down progress in the face of 100,000 deaths each and every day? Yet this seems to be the mainstream position; those who do not contribute to getting the work done have largely fallen down the rabbit hole of doing nothing but throwing roadblocks in the path ahead. Great job, you all - I hope you manage to live with yourselves if scientists create working anti-aging medicine within our lifetime despite your efforts. If science is held back well enough ... well, then we all age, suffer and die. Well done. Applause. A pity you won't be there to receive the gratitude of the masses - who won't be there either.

A couple of years ago, the Proactionary Principle was proposed as an answer to all this anti-progress waffling and nonsense:

People's freedom to innovate technologically is highly valuable, even critical, to humanity. This implies several imperatives when restrictive measures are proposed: Assess risks and opportunities according to available science, not popular perception. Account for both the costs of the restrictions themselves, and those of opportunities foregone. Favor measures that are proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that have a high expectation value. Protect people's freedom to experiment, innovate, and progress.

I think it continues to stand as a much more sensible viewpoint. The sky has fallen, and we see tens of millions of deaths each year: we should be moving the earth and sky to do something about it.

Technorati tag: life extension

Posted by Reason at 2:20 PM
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We need more people in the community who get out there and write as a matter of course - it broadens the conversation and helps to raise awareness of plausible near term gains in healthy life extension. It also helps to wake people up from the knee-jerk acceptance of age-related degeneration and knee-jerk condemnation of attempts to lengthen healthy life span. This is very important. So let me open with a quote from one of Anne C.'s latest posts:

At any rate, while I don't think it's "important" to get everyone all excited about cyborg implants and do-it-yourself gill slits and other potentially cool modifications that might happen at some point in the future, I do think it is a very good idea to try to break people out of the "pro-aging trance", at least those who think that since they can't fathom living indefinitely nobody else should be allowed to even attempt it.

The ones who just want to age out and die, but who are perfectly fine with the idea of other people trying to avoid that fate are probably harmless (and when they see those around them living longer, healthier lives they might start reconsidering anyway!) But in order to serve as examples of what a healthy, extended life could be, first we need the means to achieve those extended lives. And I am happy to report that I've become involved in part of a very cool project that could potentially contribute to real anti-aging science (I don't want to say too much yet, but I will say that I'm tremendously excited and looking forward to any opportunity in this realm.)

As noted, we also need more people to start in on getting the work done. Twenty or thirty years from now, people will look back and see that it was the vast funding from source X or Y that made all the difference in the development of first generation healthy life extension medicine and the research infrastructure to support further gains. That funding has not yet come to pass. It isn't going to come to pass without (a) success in raising awareness, educating the public and creating the right atmosphere of understanding and support, and (b) success in pilot projects that seek to attain meaningful early milestones in healthy life extension science.

The ideal progression sees modes (a) and (b) advancing in parallel and supporting one another. If one side moves too far ahead of the other, it loses efficiency and effectiveness: it's hard to grow support for year after year without ongoing material progress to point at; it's equally hard to raise minor funding for pilot projects without sufficient widespread support and understanding.

Thus, activist and advocacy groups forge alliances with researchers. None of this is rocket science or a new path forward. For groups like the Methuselah Foundation and its supporters, the only novelty lies in the degree of success enjoyed for the topic at hand: an effective, scientific path forward to longer, healthier lives.

It has become very clear that this is the right time for this activism and new science to make significant gains. If we want to live to see a future of far longer, healthier lives, then we need to get our shoulders behind the wheel of progress.

Technorati tags: activism, advocacy, life extension

Posted by Reason at 4:44 PM
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While wandering the web, I bumped into an educational article on the continuing development and application of the VesCell therapy from TheraVitae in Thailand. I've noted this topic previously, both as an important advance in first generation regenerative medicine and in the context of the natural end result of costly, wasteful, useless regulation in the US. But take a look at the article:

Doctors in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh and the Texas Heart Institute, among others, also are conducting early stem-cell therapies to heal the heart, according to the National Institutes of Health clinical trials site.

"I would like to see randomized trials," comparing it with other established treatments for the heart, Schechtmann said. "Not immediately, but in the next three to five years, hopefully, we will see some significant discoveries."

Don Margolis, one of TheraVitae's founders, said the company has almost completed a clinical study, involving 24 patients, in which investigators are looking at ejection fractions -- a measure of how well the heart pumps -- and patients' stamina, as determined in a six-mile walk, to assess the therapy's success.

Because the last patient to enroll has not been followed out six months, he said, no data has been published yet.

"But overall, our success rate is 70 to 80 percent, as measured by how the patients themselves feel" after treatment, he said. "At least half feel markedly better; another 25 percent feel somewhat better or no worse; and 25 percent have little benefit."

I should note an example of a knee-jerk reaction from those used to the days in which US medical research led the world:

He also got a second opinion from another heart doctor in Brevard County, as well.

"He said, 'If it was worth anything, we would be doing it here,' " Strickland recalled.

If we permit socialism and regulation to continue to destroy the incentives for investment, research and quality in the US, we'll see far more examples of the best new development happening elsewhere. Alongside far more examples of folk in denial of that truth, no doubt.

Researchers will develop - are already in the process of developing - far better and more effective medical technologies than VesCell. But it's hard to commercialize and deploy better medicine with the weight of the FDA resting on your neck.

Technorati tags: libertarian, medicine, stem cell research

Posted by Reason at 7:34 PM
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It's a simple motto to try to live by: no appeasement; don't bow down to those who would steal your freedom. It's increasingly hard to live that way, of course, what with armies of government employees willing to apply force to back up any number of cages upon your behavior. But it's human nature to want to live free, just as, sadly, it's human nature to shrug when forcing the loss of freedom upon others. This might go a little way to explaining the mixed reception to Advanced Cell Technology's latest technology demonstration:

researchers at Advanced Cell Technology have created a line of such cells from a single human embryonic cell. Unlike existing methods, the procedure leaves the embryo viable, raising the possibility it could be widely used to create embryonic cells without destroying embryos.

Advances in the efficient development of stem cell lines are important - researchers will likely need access to thousands of lines in the course of developing therapies and cures through embryonic stem cell research. This demonstration was presented in more of a political context, however:

There is now no rational ethical argument against stem cell research, now that we can preserve the embryo," he says. "The existing cell lines are weak, they're old, there are too few of them, and they are difficult to maintain. What we wanted to do with this process was to ensure that there are enough lines available. This should give the entire field a boost."

This strikes me as an attempt to mollify people who are not really all that rational when it comes to their opposition to stem cell research. This is not a sound strategy, and I'm not alone in that view:

the idea that blastomere derived cell lines are an 'alternative' to embryonic is quite simply all hype. ... the only people who will let you pull a blastomere off of one of their embryos are people who dont plan to use them anyway!

...

some of these scientists are worried about showing any acquiescence to the anti-abortion folks who have been campaigning against embryonic stem cell research.

If you're going to fight for your freedom of research (and fight we certainly should), then don't fight on their terms and their ground. The freedom to research human cellular biochemistry is essential to rapid progress towards the medicine of the future. Without the results of this research, tens of millions will die every year from age-related diseases and conditions that might already have been cured.

Technorati tags: libertarian, politics, stem cell research

Posted by Reason at 7:18 PM
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I'm pleased to note that Chris Patil's Ouroboros now joins the extremely informal blogging collective gracing the homepage of the MPrize for anti-aging research. Welcome aboard!

Given that Telomolecular is in the press of late, alongside interesting research on telomere length and stress, you should take a look at the latest Ouroboros post on telomere science:

One of my fantasies (and I think it should be the fantasy of every biogerontologist) is to be able to walk up to a human subject with my handy futuristic and minimally invasive device, and make a measurement to determine how old they are. I don’t mean their chronological age, but rather how old they are really — let's call it "physiological age", a value that would (in the fantasy) be more powerfully predictive of risk for age-related disease and decline. Intuitionally and anecdotally we know that different people simply age at different rates, but at the moment it's painfully hard to quantify what we mean by that.

I don't necessarily think telomere measurements are a magic biomarker bullet, but these results make me wonder whether they might end up being an important part of the toolkit.

You'll find more on the search for low-cost biomarkers for aging back in the Fight Aging! archives. It's worth noting that the SENS approach advocated by biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is something of an end-run around this absence of easy biomarkers, amongst other things. If you have any interest in living a longer, healthier life, you should read up on it.

Technorati tags: aging, blogging, gerontology, medical research

Posted by Reason at 11:46 PM
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Any excess fat is not good for you; it shortens your life, increases your medical expenses and leads to suffering and age-related disease. The scientific evidence for that statement piles ever more weighty with each passing year - much like the unrepaired cellular damage at the root of aging that your body fat helps to accumulate in your tissues.

With that in mind, here is another round of support for the common wisdom of good health:

Being a little overweight can kill you, according to new research that leaves little room for denial that a few extra pounds is harmful. Baby boomers who were even just a tad pudgy were more likely to die prematurely than those who were at a healthy weight, U.S. researchers reported Tuesday.

While obesity has been known to contribute to early death, the link between being overweight and dying prematurely has been controversial. Some experts have argued that a few extra pounds does no harm.

However, this is one of the first major studies to account for the factors of smoking and chronic illness, which can complicate efforts to figure out how much weight itself is responsible for early death.

"The cumulative evidence is now even stronger," said Dr. Michael Thun, chief epidemiologist of the American Cancer Society who had no role in the research. "Being overweight does increase health risks. It's not simply a cosmetic or social problem."

A separate large study of Korean patients, also released Tuesday, reached the same conclusion. Both are being published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Relatedly, and via the Gerontology Research Group list, you might take a look at this recent study of supercentenarians performed by some of the list folk:

Age range was 110 to 119. Fifty-nine percent had Barthel Index scores in the partially to totally dependent range, whereas 41% required minimal assistance or were independent. Few subjects had a history of clinically evident vascular-related diseases, including myocardial infarction (n=2, 6%) and stroke (n=4, 13%). Twenty-two percent (n=7) were taking medications for hypertension. Twenty-five percent (n=8) had a history of cancer (all cured). Diabetes mellitus (n=1, 3%) and Parkinson's disease (n=1, 3%) were rare. Osteoporosis (n=14, 44%) and cataract history (n=28, 88%) were common.

...

Data collected thus far suggest that supercentenarians markedly delay and even escape clinical expression of vascular disease toward the end of their exceptionally long lives. A surprisingly substantial proportion of these individuals were still functionally independent or required minimal assistance.

There is a lesson to be learned here: a large portion of the the burdens of age-related disease are not a matter of luck. Yes, longevity genes exist, but much of your future is a matter of metabolism and the cellular damage that results. You have a great deal of control over this process across a lifetime; remember that there are no fat people amongst the extremely old and hale. The overweight succumb to diseases and damage resulting from their metabolism long before they can become centenarians, let alone supercentenarians.

Your genes won't be under your control for another few decades, but weight is a choice for most of us, and an important one at that. We live on the cusp of great transformations in medicine and biotechnology - but the dead will be dead and the future of greatly extended healthy longevity is lost for those who fall before we get there. Don't be one of the dead; that choice is most likely in your hands.

Technorati tags: health, life extension

Posted by Reason at 9:05 PM
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As I've noted in the past, it seems a number of strategies under development to repair or offset damage done by AIDS to the immune system may also - at some point in the future - be usefully applied to declines in the aging immune system. At least some of the underlying damage is similar in both cases. A recent release from Geron has this to say:

The new studies demonstrate that our orally available telomerase activator drug broadly reactivates anti-HIV immunity in AIDS patients' lymphocytes. The lymphocytes are the primary mechanism for containing HIV infection early in the course of the disease. Over time, telomere loss in these cells results in the gradual decline of their anti-HIV function, leading to clinical disease progression. Our hope is to use TAT0002 to prevent this immune decline and thereby prevent HIV progression.

Telomeres shorten with age; AIDS research would suggest that this shortening is occuring due to overuse. If your immune system is constantly set on high, the level of wear and tear leads this portion of your biochemistry to look and act like that of someone many decades your senior. If you can fix the first case, why not try the same methodologies for the second?

The more is known of human biochemistry, the more we'll see overlapping science between various fields. Research into manipulating telomeres to treat specific age-related conditions is increasingly active, for example.

Technorati tags: medical research, science

Posted by Reason at 8:59 PM
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The TransVision 2006 conference - with the theme of "Emerging Technologies of Human Enhancement" - finished up this weekend in Helsinki. The worldwide transhumanist community provides a great deal of drive and material support to healthy life extension initiatives such as the Methuselah Foundation and MPrize for anti-aging research. As in any distributed collection of like-minded folk, there's a great deal more talk than action, but don't let that fool you into thinking that no action is taking place.

Video, discussion and reports from the event are making their way around the web. Here is a small selection of links:

Flicker photo set (including the obligatory appearance by biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey in the local media)

Linking the real conference to a virtual space in Second Life

Many conference videos. Please do your part to take the bandwidth load off the organizer's servers; reformatting and posting to Google Video or YouTube would be very helpful.

Presentation materials from the various speakers. Aubrey de Grey's presentation is in the mix in both PDF and PowerPoint formats.

"I'm about as un-transhumanist as can be: I don't even want my nipples pierced. I wouldn't mind living longer though" - Chris Gray at HETHR

Conference community blog

Immortality Institute TransVision 2006 discussion thread

Quite interestingly, even though these people are mostly known in transhumanist circles, I was suprised about their considerable agreement that life extension is the most pressing and important issue at the moment and must be prioritized accordingly

...

I got interviewed by an Italian TV crew making documentary about the post-human condition. They said the documentary will probably have couple of million viewers. It will be aired in November, the program is called "C'ERA UNA VOLTA" which I have no idea what it means. The interviewer said the documentary will donwloadable from the tv-station website www.rai.it (the Italian equivalent of BBC, the specific channel is RAI 3) once it comes out.

...

We had quite the speculative fest with Aubrey [de Grey] about the reasons why big pharma companies have yet to take on the issue of anti aging despite the tremendous potential of making major cash and their obvious advantage on that area.

The last point is an interesting one; I believe it has much to do with the extent of regulation in medicine. The present structure and culture of regulation revolves around defining conditions and preventing anyone from commercializing products to do anything other than treat the results of those conditions. If you can't commerciali