An article from the Carnegie Mellon student newspaper on biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey: "People like to characterize me as an immortalist. What I'm interested in doing is helping people from getting sick. ... Life extension research is a controversial topic - partly because the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does not classify aging as a disease. ... Metabolism is not understood well enough to be improved upon, and so it is not possible to prevent damage from occurring. The disease, resulting from large concentrations of damage, can only be reined in for a while - some time can be bought - before other problems stemming from the still-present damage become apparent. Given that it is difficult either to prevent the damage from occurring or to control the effects of damage, de Grey offers a third strategy: limit the damage. As long as damage is kept below a certain threshold, he claims, we can indefinitely postpone the corresponding disease, a process that de Grey calls 'the engineering approach.' ... These [prospective] treatments are what de Grey collectively refers to as SENS, which he opines may lead to 'robust human rejuvenation,' the total circumvention of the aging process. The Methuselah Foundation, of which he is a co-founder, offers a cash prize to the research team that extends the life of the common laboratory mouse."

Link: http://thetartan.org/2009/3/2/scitech/aubrey