Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey will be presenting at TEDMED2009 in October. Registration is now open: "His research interests encompass the causes of all the accumulating and eventually pathogenic molecular and cellular side-effects of metabolism ('damage') that constitute mammalian aging and the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage. He has developed a possibly comprehensive plan for such repair, termed Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), which breaks the aging problem down into seven major classes of damage and identifies detailed approaches to addressing each one. A key aspect of SENS is that it can potentially extend healthy lifespan without limit, even though these repair processes will probably never be perfect, as the repair only needs to approach perfection rapidly enough to keep the overall level of damage below pathogenic levels. Dr. de Grey has termed this required rate of improvement of repair therapies 'longevity escape velocity.'" From the other side of the pro-longevity research community, David Sinclair of Sirtris is also presenting.

Link: http://www.tedmed.com/speakers#degrey