While wandering through the open access papers of PubMed Central - which are starting to accumulate more rapidly now - I noticed a readable item on stem cells and aging. You should take a look:

If many adult tissues and organs are continuously replenished by cells derived from stem cells, then why do they show signs of aging? One possibility is that stem cells themselves age and senesce, resulting in a decreased ability to replace worn-out progeny and/or the fact that they pass on aged phenotypes to their progeny.

Missing in this discussion until now is the effect of the cellular and molecular environment on stem cell properties, although the molecular re-programming of epithelial cells into pluripotent stem cells demonstrates the importance of the intracellular environment. Indeed, ample evidence exists showing that intrinsic and extrinsic regulators are inextricably linked in determining stem cell functional properties. Of special current interest is the extracellular stem cell environment, commonly referred to as the stem cell ‘niche’, as originally coined for hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow.

The paper starts with a good review of present thinking on the role of stem cells and their niches in aging. It then moves into the interest of the authors in latexin and modulation of the size of stem cell populations:

The qualitative changes in stem cells and the composition of the stem cell population with respect to qualitatively distinct subclasses is an important factor in stem cell aging. We have shown that amongst mouse strains there is a strong correlation between the rate of early hematopoietic progenitor proliferation and mouse lifespan. Moreover, we and others have observed large strain-specific differences in the maintenance of the [hematopoietic stem cell (HSC)] population during aging, thus suggesting that genetic regulation plays an important role in the way aging affects HSCs.

Using forward genetics, we recently identified a protein, latexin, whose differential expression in stem cells accounts for at least part of these differences in young murine hematopoiesis. We have showed that latexin is a negative regulator of stem cell number and acts through at least two mechanisms to modulate stem cell pool size: a) it decreases HSC cell replication and b) it increases HSC apoptosis. Therefore, in the hematopoietic system, and perhaps other organs, latexin influences aging and perhaps lifespan through its action on stem cells.

You'll recall the ongoing debate on decline in stem cell function: is it fewer stem cells, or is it that the stem cells are less active? Evidence exists to support both sides, but with all the work on age-related changes in stem cell niches over the past couple of years, things seemed to be swinging towards less active stem cells as the dominant explanation. Biology is always more complex than we'd like it to be, however, and the debate continues.

Posted by Reason at 12:37 PM
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Chris Patil at Ouroboros has dropped two sets of recent research into our laps for consideration, with a focus on continuing efforts to understand the intricacies of human biochemistry as it relates to longevity and aging.

• Keeping up with IGF-I and FOXO
• No end to telomeres

I find most of the work on insulin metabolism and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) somewhat heavy going. It's very much down in the depths of metabolic mechanisms, for all that it's related to straightforward demonstrations of single gene longevity mutations in lower animals. It's somewhat analogous to work on calorie restriction mechanisms - in that it draws together energy from food and longevity to a mysterious biochemical middle - but perhaps more opaque because practical applications aren't as advanced at this stage.

Telomeres are more intuitive, however:

Telomeres - the structures at the end of chromosomes - have a long history in biogerontology. Telomeres shorten with every cell division, essentially providing a 'clock' that ticks down until reaching some critical length, at which point the cell will undergo the permanent growth arrest known as senescence. Even though this clock is an important tumor suppression checkpoint (because it prevents cells that have divided many times from continuing to proliferate), senescent cells themselves contribute both directly and indirectly to aging (by diminishing regenerative capacity and secreting deleterious signaling molecules, respectively). Telomere length is also a useful biomarker: it is positively correlated with life expectancy, and appears to respond to environmental influences including chronic infection and psychological stress.

One item of note in the list is that telomerase appears to have other roles beyond lengthening telomeres:

recent studies have led some investigators to suggest novel biochemical properties of telomerase in several essential cell signaling pathways without apparent involvement of its well established function in telomere maintenance. … This review will provide an update on the extracurricular activities of telomerase in apoptosis, DNA repair, stem cell function, and in the regulation of gene expression.

This is important for those groups working on telomerase-based therapies, and has implications for the viability of the proposed WILT strategy that would disable telomerase in order to eliminate cancer. As always, it's a challenge to interfere precisely in human biochemistry when every component has multiple important functions.

Posted by Reason at 4:45 PM
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Molecular biologist Attila Chordash recently conducted a short interview with Dave Gobel, co-founder of the Methuselah Foundation. He's been determinedly working away to make this thing a success since the beginning. You can find the interview over at Pimm. His thoughts on the Mprize for longevity research caught my eye:

You put up the money and tell competitors what they need to do. The larger the prize, the more competitors. It's like an inexpensive way of being able to put chips on every single spot on a roulette table. The best way to find a solution to unknown problems is to generate high motivation among the greatest number of thinkers/actors without too much regard to reputation of the competitors - let the best outcome win - I don’t care how they dress.

Incentives make the world go round, which is why research prizes are so effective. The prospect of money and fame are wonderful motivators, as is demonstrated in the business community each and every day. It's a pity that this obvious truth is so often forgotten when it comes to the highly regulated field of medical research and development.

Posted by Reason at 5:31 PM
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It's a shame that the people most harmed by the existence of the FDA - and the culture of "I have power over you and you shall do as I say" that supports it - are not up in arms. The most vocal opponents of the FDA over the past decade or so are probably folk in the supplement industry. They, despite the threat of jail, losses, and other indignities for doing no more than providing a desired and responsible commercial service, are by no means the most harmed. No, the most harmed are the dying, and we are all counted in that group while the FDA continues in its position that potential longevity therapies will not be approved. No approval means no funds for development, and hence little evidence to show in support of radical change.

The cancer patients, the Alzheimer's sufferers, and all those with other named medical conditions suffer as well: the FDA and associated regulatory bodies form a huge ball and chain that slows progress in science to a fraction of what it might be. When medical development costs much more due to regulation, you will see fewer new medicines. When government employees have greater incentive to deny than approve, you will see fewer new medicines. This is exactly what happens, and the cost is measured in lives.

Back to the supplement industry. One of their voices can be found at the Consumers Against High Drug Prices site, an earnest place that nonetheless seems to me to be missing the real point of the exercise. But it is a supplement industry effort, and that narrows their focus to bottles and herbs - the here and now, rather than what could be, and what might have been in medical research. They would like to largely dismantle the FDA in their neck of the woods - but that sort of renegotiation of the contract with government employees never really works. When was the last time you recall government employees giving up the option to interfere in a given area of commerce? That option to interfere - and cause destruction and mayhem - is how politicians maintain their influence. It's the rule of the sword for a modern age.

You have to keep the incentives in mind. Politicians and government employees have no incentive to play nice and leave you be, no matter what the paper says. So they won't. Trying to redirect or reclassify the power held by others to your benefit is a form of self-delusion: once you're set on that course, the politicians already own your mind. It's a shell game, slightly more complicated and obscure than the voting shell game, but really no different in essence. The only solution to government abuse of power is the absence of that power.

Centralization of power - the state and regulation, in other words - is a form of age-related damage for human societies. It accumulates, piling ever deeper and broader, and leads to degeneration and disease. Look no further than the Soviet Union for an example of where it all leads in the end, but the place we are now is a far cry from the best of all worlds. If you have an interest in a long, healthy life, then you should also have an interest in why modern democracies are greatly slowing progress to that end.

Posted by Reason at 5:06 PM
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The brain is a singular organ - our selves are defined by its structure. The aging brain can't be replaced by the same near-future tissue engineering techniques that will give us new hearts and other organs grown fresh from our own stem cells. Thus we are going to have to become very good at repairing the brain in situ, cell by cell, aggregate by aggregate.

One of the biotechnologies needed to achieve this goal is mature regenerative medicine, specifically the ability to manipulate and reprogram stem cells within the brain. Those stem cells must first be found and categorized, and progress continues on that front:

Evidence strongly shows that the true stem cells in the mammalian brain are the ependymal cells that line the ventricles in the brain and spinal cord, rather than cells in the subventricular zone as biologists previously believed. Brain ventricles are hollow chambers filled with fluid that supports brain tissue, and a layer of ependymal cells lines these ventricles.

Knowing the cell source is crucial when developing stem cell-based therapies. Additionally, knowing that these normally dormant cells can be coaxed into dividing lays the groundwork for future therapies in which a patient's own stem cells produce new brain cells to treat neurological disorders and injuries such as Parkinson's disease, stroke or traumatic brain injury.

"With such a therapy, we would know which cells in the body to target for activation, and their offspring would have all the properties necessary to replace damaged or missing cells," said Darius Gleason, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology. "It is a very promising approach to stem cell therapy."

Replacing cells is only one part of repairing an age-damaged brain, however. You might take a look at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence to see the many other issues that accumulate in brain tissue over the course of a lifetime. A lot of work lies ahead.

Posted by Reason at 3:18 PM
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An interesting post over at In Search of Enlightenment:

Firstly, support for legitimate longevity science is hampered by the vast number of products currently being sold as "anti-aging" therapies without any science to substantiate their claims. See here, for example. And thus one has to be very careful when convincing people that (1) aging is something that ought to be retarded (as it increases our risks of morbidity and mortality); and yet at the same time convince them that (2) we might actually be able to slow human aging and yet (3) none of the current products being sold on the market have been demonstrated to do this (indeed, they might be harmful). The latter point is emphasized, for example, in this excellent piece in the Scientific American by Jay Olshansky, Leonard Hayflick and Bruce A. Carnes.

Now if one is pressing (as indeed I am) (1) and (2), it is of course understandable that people will be want to do something about aging (and thus be tempted to violate (3)). But when asked "So what can I do to slow aging?" my response is "(a) support increasing the amount of public funding we invest in the biology of aging and (b) encourage linkages between different fields of research-- from genetics and evolutionary biology to engineering and statistics". Well, as you can imagine, many people will find that answer rather flat! They want the solution and they want it now (today)! The same is true about climate change. Few people have an interest in being told the best solution is investing in new R&D and might be long-term. Patience never was a human virtue.

There's more in that vein, so take a look. I'm not in the "slow aging by massive government funding of the same community that's strongly resisted progress to date" clade, but the excerpt above is a fair summary of the immediacy problem - that once you've convinced people to think about healthy life extension on the merits, the natural result is a lot of waste and noise in addition to helpful additions to the community. That's the way that humans tend to act; we're given to look for the backsliding easy way out, even when we know it's not going to work. For every person who donates to the Methuselah Foundation's longevity research program, there will be another who decides to look into a new wrinkle cream.

You can lose a lot of sleep over things like this, but I think we advocates are better for accepting that other peoples' choices are not our responsibility. Everyone has free will; our task is to make better information available and persuade those who can be persuaded to help advance the state of longevity science. However well we do, there will continue to be a dubious "anti-aging" snake-oil industry and some number of people making poor choices.

Posted by Reason at 4:07 PM
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If you're the type who likes to inspect the mechanisms behind the sausage, you should take a look at an article on Alcor's board over at Depressed Metabolism:

In January 2008, Alcor’s self perpetuating Board came under renewed scrutiny after long-time Alcor member and cryonics activist David Pizer tried to raise interest for changing the current system to a member elected Board.

Scrutiny of the board is a fine tradition for stakeholders in for-profit and non-profit initiatives, as is stakeholder activism to produce desired change. The concern voiced in the article is that born of the perceived need for change at Alcor - to better produce growth, increased professionalism, and so forth - and the concern that a self-perpetuating board has little incentive to make the changes that the writer would like to see happen.

Member-voted boards have their own issues, of course, not least that a member (as opposed to stakeholder) has no meaningful ownership right connected to their vote - but the pendulum swings as it chooses.

This is all, I think, I fairly good illustration of the transitionary period from volunteerism to professionalism one sees in any growing industry. The cryonics industry has been going through this phase for a long time, and remaining very small in size, for reasons that are much debated. Is it the fault of the business model, incredulous public perception, heavy regulation, a comparatively undiversified technology base, or the laundry list of other potential factors? Can be solved by changing the way people pay, by changes in regulatory structures, or by increased investment in research and building spin-off technology businesses? And so forth. These are all questions that have been debated at length over the years.

What I think is most telling with regard to where the cryonics industry is at present is that you don't see a lot of discussion focused on change through competition. The traditional solution to undesirable characteristics within an industry is for entrepreneurs to set forth and compete, as "undesirable" usually means "customers will pay for something less undesirable." If you want change, then help to found a new company and do things the "right" way. Ongoing for-profit experiments in any number of different "right" ways are how progress is achieved and benefit brought to customers in the long term.

There needs to be more of that in the cryonics industry if the goal is directed change. The best way to make a board change their stripes is to look like you're going to eat their lunch out from under them; by doing that, you will also have gone a long way towards proving that your "right" way is in fact the right way for progress.

Posted by Reason at 11:50 AM
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You might recall that the chemical alpha-synuclein is an aggregate that appears to be a proximate cause of Parkinson's disease (and like many biochemical aggregates, its buildup is slowed by the practice of calorie restriction). Researchers are delving deeper into the chain of mechanisms:

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have elevated levels of the protein called alpha-synuclein in their brains. As the protein clumps, or aggregates, the resulting toxicity causes the death of neurons that produce the brain chemical dopamine. Consequently, nerves and muscles that control movement and coordination are destroyed.

The researchers discovered that the activity of three genes that control the synthesis of heme, the major component of hemoglobin that allows red blood cells to carry oxygen, precisely matched the activity of the alpha-synuclein gene, suggesting a common switch controlling both.

The scientists then found that a protein called GATA-1, which turns on the blood-related genes, was also a major switch for alpha-synuclein expression, and that it induced a significant increase in alpha-synuclein protein. Finally, they demonstrated that a related protein -- GATA-2 -- was expressed in PD-vulnerable brain cells and directly controlled alpha-synuclein production.

Researchers are taking a similar tack to that of mainstream Alzheimer's research now that a greater understanding of alpha-synuclein exists. Get rid of the aggregate, in other words:

"Simply lowering alpha-synuclein levels by 40 percent may be enough to treat some forms of Parkinson's disease," says Dr. Clemens Scherzer of Harvard. "So far, researchers have focused on ways to get rid of too much 'bad' alpha-synuclein in Parkinson patients' brains. Now we will be able to tackle the problem from the production site, and search for new therapies that lower alpha-synuclein production up front."

...

The studies showed that GATA-1 and GATA-2 proteins find the alpha-synuclein gene, stick to it and then directly control it.

"This is not an indirect pathway; it is direct regulation of the gene," says Bresnick. "This directness provides the simplest scenario for creating a therapeutic strategy."

The problem with influencing the production side is, of course, that everything in our biochemistry has many different roles. It's next to impossible to alter any gene or mechanism without causing unwanted side-effects. This is a strong incentive to focus primarily on cleaning up aggregates rather than re-engineering our metabolism, if those are the only two options on the table. Further options will hopefully emerge as researchers progress towards an understanding of why these mechanisms change with age. What form of known age-related biochemical damage is causing changes in GATA regulation - and thus alpha-synuclein levels - and how is it doing that?

Posted by Reason at 3:06 PM
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How does one determine whether or not an advocacy website is actually working? A firm conviction that benefits are created is all well and good, but that won't get you very far in circles where resources are allocated on performance. The objectives of Fight Aging! are laid out in one of my annual signs of incredulity that I've been doing this for yet another year:

I have sought to bring those who stop by, or who otherwise stumble upon my writings, around to a more productive way of looking at aging, longevity, science and human action.

...

Sometimes our conversation is hard to find, however. People who might have learned and contributed do not do so; opportunities to broaden the healthy life extension community are lost. ... someone has to be talking on topic to keep the conversation growing, to avoid lapses in which newcomers might miss the party.

A nicely nebulous set of goals upon which to pin metrics. We can look at web statistics (one step beyond damned lies), participation in the healthy life extension community, funds raised for specific goals ... but it's a real challenge to determine what contribution my efforts made to a dynamic community or process of many contributers. Never mind how it could have all be accomplished more effectively or efficiently.

Those of you with longer memories will recall that sometimes people turn up out of the blue, lay down a seven-figure check, and say "yup, it was because of this advocacy initiative that I chose to donate." But it's rare - you can't base an analysis of success on huge checks from the blue. If you have enough of those to start counting, you've already won.

That particular seven-figure check justifies Fight Aging! for a good few more years yet, but vindication isn't really the purpose of metrics. Good advocates are one step removed from fanatics - they'll keep at it until the rest of the world gives in and admits the advocate was right all along. Metrics are about improvement: how can you do better with the resources to hand.

The online metric of first resort is web statistics, the damned lies mentioned above. I'm not all that sure that anything of worth can be derived from web statistics with respect to the goals of Fight Aging!. It's not even clear that more links, more traffic, or more aggregation are necessarily better - this is where those folk who are simply interested in monetizing websites have a much easier time of it. At the end of the day they can look at the dollars and rate of conversions to sale. Meanwhile I ponder the nature of my most popular page for this past year and wonder what most of my page views actually represent.

For Fight Aging!, a "conversion to sale" might be someone who sets off to become a molecular biologist or organize a fundraising conference for the Methuselah Foundation. I might be able to claim partial credit for one or two of those. At the less radical end of the scale, you'll find people who donate to fund SENS longevity research, or discuss healthy life extension with a friend where they might otherwise not have done. You get the idea - and I have no idea as to how well I'm doing there. Realistically, I'm never likely to know. Contributing to the new zeitgeist is not an activity for those who need personal validation, nor those who enjoy a nice, clean balance sheet of expenditure versus result.

So: I'm fairly convinced my work produces a continuing net positive influence, but proving that to anyone's satisfaction - beyond the generous million-dollar donor - is quite another story. In terms of improvement for the future, I'm left with the same old unsatisfactory metric of bulk visits and mailing list membership; I must assume that more is merrier until conclusively proven wrong on that front.

Posted by Reason at 3:44 PM
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Jeriska continues the good work at Future Current, here posting a transcript of Gregory Stock's presentation at Aging 2008 last month:

Dealing with aging and death has always been a challenge. People have different ways of handling it. I see it in four categories: One is to just ignore it. This is pretty easy for awhile - you can just pretend it isn’t happening, particularly when you are young and when the manifestations of aging are not really apparent at all.

Another is, you deny it. "Death is not really real, because our soul will live eternally." Or, we will live eternally through our creations - those sorts of things. A lot of people like to feel that; it makes them feel better about the situation. Another is just to accept it. That is a common practice too, to say it is inevitable, natural, even the best thing. Leon Kass, for example, has said it is life’s finitude that gives it its meaning - as though young people who do not think about their mortality don’t enjoy life.

The final approach is to battle it. This was the strategy of Ponce de Leon, who was wandering around in the jungles of Florida. It could be Aubrey de Grey, too, who is trying to catalyze a serious effort to control the aging process. What is different now, though, is that suddenly, for the first time ever, it is actually quite plausible. As you heard from the comments of earlier speakers, we might actually be able to accomplish that.

What is interesting is that this is not the goal of biogerontology today. Its goal is not to control aging, or extend our natural lifespan, but to somehow compress morbidity, so that we can be healthier for a longer period of time and then fade away quickly. Initially that sounds reasonable, but at its logical conclusion, it really is completely out of sync with our aspirations.

As I've said elsewhere, the most important cultural battle of our time is that which started inside the gerontological community. It is the fight to build a research community whose members eagerly and vocally work to achieve what is possible with the future of biotechnology: the repair of aging and defeat of age-related degeneration.

At present that community is in only its earliest stages. The rest of the field is still mired in the views of yesterday, a place where no-one can talk about healthy life extension for fear of ridicule and loss of funding opportunities. Societies have a way of working themselves into a conservatism that holds back progress. This is slowly changing, but that change must continue and accelerate if we are to see significant progress within our lifetime.

Posted by Reason at 8:53 PM
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A few points on cryonics and planning for emergencies from Aschwin de Wolf at Depressed Metabolism:

There are a lot of people who believe in the technical feasibility of cryonics and intend to make cryonics arrangements ... when necessary. As cryonics observers know, this is an extremely risky attitude because when people need cryonics the most, they often are unable to communicate their wishes, may meet resistance from relatives who benefit from their not making cryonics arrangements, or lack financial resources because life insurance is no longer an option to fund cryonics.

The best time to make cryonics arrangements is when it seems least likely that you need them soon.

Which is true of all preparation. As de Wolf also points out, cryonics - in the pleasant future in which for-profit cryopreservation concerns are established with solid business models and a sizeable presence - will remain an important critical care option even in the era in which science has conquered aging. Having rapid access to cryosuspension in the event of traumatic accident will be an important item of preparation for ageless individuals.

Many bridges remain to be crossed to reach that stage, not least in the expansion of the cryonics industry to a form in which greater growth and sustainability are ensured. For the moment, it's important to remember that thinking positively about cryonics isn't enough to ensure your cryosuspension. Some effort in preparation is required to ensure that you have the best possible chance of taking advantage of this alternative to the grave and oblivion.

Posted by Reason at 3:47 PM
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The ability of immune system cells to identify and kill cells of a particular type of cancer varies enormously from person to person, even with medical interventions designed to point the immune system in the right direction. This is demonstrated in the variability of some forms of cancer vaccine:

When a tumor is surgically removed, proteins are collected, cultured and introduced in a Petri dish to dendritic cells taken from the patient's blood. The new, "educated" dendritic cells are then injected into the patient where they are intended to recognize and destroy lingering tumor cells. Patients receive three vaccinations at two-week intervals. A fourth vaccination is given six weeks after the third.

....

This study centered on the immune responses of 32 patients enrolled in a Phase II clinical trial. Seventeen patients had a significant positive response after three vaccinations; 15 showed no such responsiveness.

...

Forty-one percent of vaccine responders, compared to seven percent of non-responders, survived at least two years.

It is this variability that led to the work of Zheng Cui in transferring cancer fighting immune cells between mice, which you might recall from past SENS conferences:

the simple transfusion of the cancer-fighting immune cells from the resistant mice effectively transfered the same remarkable protection to the normal mice. And even more excitingly, the treatment didn't just prevent cancers from forming, but actually fought off existing cancer: when researchers transfused the anti-cancer white blood cells into normal mice with existing skin tumors, the tumors regressed completely in a matter of weeks. Moreover, a single dose of the cancer-fighting immune cells gave the normal animals a cancer immunity that often lasted for the rest of their lives.

A recent article looks at Cui's work and attitudes towards getting the job done - if you have something that demonstrably works, getting it to the clinic should run in parallel with figuring out how it works. That's a tough sell these days, however, yet another consequence of rabid over-regulation of medical research and development.

14 New Questions for Cancer Research Maverick Zheng Cui

First, we had cancer-resistant mice and asked, 'What can we learn from it?' The reason it’s resistant is because it has very different white cells. So then that immediately prompted the concept of therapy, because you can easily transfer white cells. You can extract them as a therapeutic agent and give them to another mouse. It’s a therapy. It’s much better than to find the gene. If you find the gene, then you have to understand the mechanism, and you have to find a way to put the gene into the cell, into all the cells you want to, and that would not work very easily. The technology as we speak right now is not really mature for that area. You might have to wait another 10, 20 years before that technology catches up with the concept. However, what we found is a cell as a therapeutic agent, so why not go ahead and see how it works. It worked really well in mice, so the next question, very obviously, is can we find a similar cancer resistance for humans as a donor for a therapeutic agent. And the answer is yes, we did find quite a few of them

...

A lot of people don’t like this because they said I have not a single idea of how it works. And I said, "Why should I?" If I can already go into therapy, why should I spend so much time now to find out how it works? That dispute was with the establishment, that’s why this trial has not been funded.

Posted by Reason at 7:57 AM
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Via Marginal Revolution:

If [cryonics] works, the benefits are high, and the probability of it working is greater than zero. Yet few people sign up for it. I think that we are afraid of looking weird if we sign up for it.

The way to think about how and why people make decisions is to look at costs and benefits - which go far beyond mere money, of course. The discussion in the post revolves around "looking weird" as a cost. That's important for we folk descended from apes, possessed of a deep-seated and hardwired need for peer validation. Other costs exist, such as the need to get up and sort out paperwork - people die and become sick in many ways through similar laziness, especially in health matters stretched across the years. I think the comments to the post demonstrate that the more important costs are the perceived financial ones, however.

I suspect the eccentric childless millionaire demographic is overrepresented. Who else can afford it?

People look at the pay-at-the-door cost of cryonic suspension and decide they can't afford it, that cryonics is only for the rich. That is very much not the case, however. Next to no-one pays for their suspension in a lump sum at the door. Instead it's done via assignment of a life insurance policy for a very small number of dollars per month. There have been very few cryosuspensions of extremely wealthy people.

This suggests to me that if cryonics organizations want to grow, they should stop outsourcing organization of payment. Cryonics should be marketed from the very first touch to the potential customer as an insurance service you pay for monthly: people understand that, and do it all the time. What you are buying is cryosuspension should you be unfortunate enough to die, and the cryonics company handles the mechanisms of insurance - or however else the finances are sorted out - behind the scenes.

Monthly income for a company also allows for the sort of growth and professionalization that has been a challenge in the cryonics industry under the present model of funding for research and development. All in all, a potential win-win situation. One might ask why it hasn't been tried yet.