Reporting on Aubrey de Grey at Stanford
Mike Linksvayer reports on the recent presentations given by Aubrey de Grey at Stanford University:
The second talk, apparently more intended for biologists, was a repeat of the first to a disappointing extent. I was prepared to understand very little, but de Grey only spoke for awhile on one of his proposed solutions to one of the seven types of damage - extracellular junk. The solution takes a cue from bioremediation: find microbes that break down the extracellular junk. Where? Human remains of course. From Appropriating microbial catabolism: a proposal to treat and prevent neurodegeneration:"Soil microbes display astonishing catabolic diversity, something exploited for decades in the bioremediation industry. Environments enriched in human remains impose selective pressure on the microbial population to evolve the ability to degrade any recalcitrant, energy-rich human material. Thus, microbes may exist that can degrade these lysosomal toxins. If so, it should be possible to isolate the genes responsible and modify them for therapeutic activity in the mammalian lysosome."
Neat idea. Later de Grey said that this idea is the easiest to explain to non-specialists and that the others that he has personally worked on would have required far longer to introduce than the hour lecture format allowed.
de Grey is attempting to jump start anti-aging interventions with the Methuselah Mouse Prize[s] for extending the lifespan of mice, inspired by the X Prize. His "engineering" approach sounds good to me and I wholly endorse the goal of defeating aging. I will donate more once more information is provided about the participating scientists and their mice - not much is available at this point.
I'll take that as a sign that we volunteers need to put more effort into obtaining information from the Mprize competitors and potential competitors - as anyone who works in science knows, getting usefully formatted information out of busy scientists is hard work in and of itself. However, donors who are invested in the march towards healthy life extension technologies (which would be all of them, I hope) need to see progress in order to validate their donations - I know I feel that way about the use of my money. So, more effort needed!
This is somewhat on a tangent, so I appologize in advance.
While I strongly agree with you and de Grey on the goal of "curing aging", I find the belief you have in the Mprize's ability to generate excitement and funding for anti-aging efforts overblown. I simply don't believe that, whatever the possible scientific benefits, doubling a mouse's lifespan or extending an aged mouse's life are going to make much of an impression on the general public.
If someone were to make a mouse ageless, on the other hand....
Given my doubts above, I personally see little reason to make an Mprize donation. For me (and others like me) who would like to make a financial contribution towards anti-aging other than the Mprize, what would you suggest?
Jim,
Many thanks for your comments. The "Expenses" category of donations to the Methuselah Foundation may be for you. It was initially set up to support travel and conference expenses on MF-related business (especially me), but it has progressively grown so that now it supports one full-time employee (Michael Rae, who works as my research assistant) and is also supporting a few pilot projects in one of the SENS areas this summer. We plan that this growth will continue and that this "expenses" category will become a full-blown funding source for key SENS-related research.