Serious, scientific efforts to defeat aging and age-related illness depend upon funding and hard work by researchers. We would like to see the development of rejuvenation biotechnology proceeding rapidly, supported by the major funding institutions, and undertaken by a large and enthusiastic research community - but this is not happening yet, and it can only become possible in an environment of widespread public support and understanding.

The present situation of poor funding and lack of awareness must change for the better, and there are many ways in which people like you or I can help to bring about that change. Take a little time to look through the options presented here: every dollar, every act of persuasion, and every helping hand will bring the future of longer, healthier lives for all that much closer.

• Support the SENS Foundation
• Support the Methuselah Foundation
• Learn More: Read "Ending Aging"
• Help Other Longevity Science Initiatives

Support the SENS Foundation

The SENS Foundation funds and encourages development of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, a detailed plan for biotechnologies capable of rejuvenating the old by repairing the biological damage that causes aging. The Foundation relies upon philanthropic donations and the support of many people of lesser means - every donation and offer of assistance helps:

SENS Foundation is the world's leading charity dedicated to advancing the development of rejuvenation biotechnologies for the diseases and disabilities of aging. We need to raise money to support the work of our own Research Center, as well as the extra-mural projects we sponsor in laboratories around the world - and to help train the student researchers who will go on to lead similar teams in the years to come.

We're tightly focused on getting the greatest possible value from all the donations we receive, but pioneering biomedical research is unavoidably expensive. Any contribution makes a difference to our work, which is funded entirely by the public. Please give generously to help us lead the fight against aging-related disease.

Although a donation is the most direct way to help, many of our supporters are able to contribute in other ways - whether it's by conducting research, lobbying policy makers, or simply by raising awareness that illness and disability need not be an inevitable part of growing old. You can also contribute your time and talents as a volunteer.

Support the Methuselah Foundation

The Methuselah Foundation administers the Mprize for longevity science, a program that encourages researchers to compete in developing better biotechnologies that can extend healthy life in mammals, and the NewOrgan Prize, aimed at speeding the development of tissue engineering technologies. These research prizes are funded by donations from the public, and helping to grow the prize pools to attract new competitors is one of the ways in which ordinary people like you and I can make a difference:

• Donate to the Methuselah Foundation
• Volunteer with the Methuselah Foundation

Do you believe in the possibility of controlling aging? Do you feel that you would like to add your pebble to a growing landslide that is sure to bury an old enemy of health and life? We can always use willing and able individuals for the tremendous number of opportunities available in promoting awareness of the near term potential of longevity science.

Regular donors to the Foundation can join The Three Hundred, a group whose names will be inscribed upon a monument designed to last for thousands of years. Read more on this commitment below:

• Join the Three Hundred: A Call to Action
• Why I Joined the Three Hundred

For the price of a cup of coffee per day, would you like to join a select group of humanitarians who will be remembered for their vision and saving millions of lives?

Modern medical science continues to show us that the aging process may no longer be the intractable problem it has been perceived to be for every generation preceding ours. There is a present need to move faster towards a previously unattainable goal: the control of aging. This need for more rapid medical progess is only magnified by the current profound lack of funding for aging research. Funding springs, at root, from widespread public awareness of advances and possibilities in aging research. Educating the public is an essential step in moving philanthropists and governments to allocate more resources to the study of aging. The problems caused by aging leave us poor in body, spirit, and finances. We must step forward to tackle them!

Learn More: Read "Ending Aging"

If you understand more about the medical technologies that must be developed in order to repair and reverse the biological damage of aging, then you are better able to decide how you want to help. So you should read "Ending Aging," in which biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and researcher Michael Rae explain - clearly and for the layman, as best we know based on the scientific knowledge of today - how targeted development of new biotechnologies can greatly extend the healthy human life span within our lifetimes.

Ending Aging at Amazon.com

Nearly all scientists who study the biology of aging agree that we will someday be able to substantially slow down the aging process, extending our productive, youthful lives. Dr. Aubrey de Grey is perhaps the most bullish of all such researchers. As has been reported in media outlets ranging from 60 Minutes to The New York Times, Dr. de Grey believes that the key biomedical technology required to eliminate aging-derived debilitation and death entirely - technology that would not only slow but periodically reverse age-related physiological decay, leaving us biologically young into an indefinite future - is now within reach.

In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of man-made machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with man-made machines, this damage can periodically be repaired, leading to indefinite extension of the machine's fully functional lifetime, just as is routinely done with classic cars. We already know what types of damage accumulate in the human body, and we are moving rapidly toward the comprehensive development of technologies to remove that damage. By demystifying aging and its postponement for the nonspecialist reader, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalist presumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.

Help Other Longevity Science Initiatives

A range of modest initiatives are constantly springing up as the community of grassroots supporters grows. As new initiatives appear they will be featured here at Fight Aging! Some examples from recent years include:

• 10,000 People and $1 Million for Longevity Science
• The Immortality Institute's Longevity Science Project Funding Drives
• The Campaign Against Aging
• Help the Calorie Restriction Society Raise Research Funding

Add Fight Aging! to the list of sites you read regularly, or subscribe to the newsletter, and you'll be kept up to date on new ways to help make the defeat of age-related frailty and disease happen more rapidly.

Last updated: December 25th, 2010.