On the 2009 AGE Conference

I thought I'd point out a writeup on the recent AGE conference at Broader Perspective:

That aging is understandable and solvable, not necessarily immediately but ultimately, was one topic not seeing a lot of opposition at the American Aging Association (AGE) conference in Phoenix AZ May 29 - June 1, 2009.

...

Aging is not just a medical condition but a key challenge to be resolved for advanced societies to be successful in the long-term. Productivity, healthcare costs and happiness and comfort could all be improved with advances in the remedy of aging. Aging has advanced from a nebulous concept to concrete mechanisms that can be understood and managed.

Which is very much the case. Within the scientific community, the debate is over how to achieve these ends, not whether or not to move forward. Of course, regulatory bodies such as the FDA still operate in the mode of "all that is not permitted is forbidden" and don't recognize treatment of aging as a valid form of therapy. Changing this state of affairs will be a long battle, probably best fought by moving all significant research, development, and clinical treatment away from the US until such time as the FDA collapses under its own weight.

The Broader Perspective post provides a wealth of links to interesting research presented at the conference, including some you might recognize from past news, such as the tenfold life extension in nematodes through metabolic and genetic engineering. It's good to see that John Schloendorn, SENS Foundation volunteer and funded researcher was presenting on LysoSENS:

Bioremediation: Use natural enzymes to remediate biological build-ups; cholesterol oxidase from Brevibacteria to reduce 7KC cholesterol in atherosclerosis and A2E-degrading enzymes to improve macular degeneration.

A future in which we're all pumped full of useful bacterial enzymes that clean up the mess our cells leave behind is a good future - and one that need not be very far off, from a technical point of view. The real hurdle is regulation, as ever, which delays potential therapies far past the point of sane and very beneficial risk-reward ratios, or worse, blocks them from ever being developed.

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