Mixing Calorie Restriction and Gerontology Conferences

The Calorie Restriction Society is trying something a little different for this year's society conference in November, the sixth in the series:

The Sixth CR Society Conference (CR-VI) will be held in Atlanta from November 18-22, 2009 as a part of The Gerontological Society of America's 62nd Annual Scientific Meeting at the Hilton Atlanta and Atlanta Marriott Marquis.

The first five CR Society conferences were small "CRS only" events attracting between 25 and 85 attendees. This time we are partnering with the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) to have our conference as a part of the much larger GSA Meeting. The GSA has over 5000 members with over 3300 attending their last conference. The theme of this year's conference is "Creative Approaches to Healthy Aging," fitting our goals perfectly!

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CR Society members (paying membership levels) will be able to register for the Conference at the GSA member rate ($275 Early Bird). The CR Society member registration includes both the CR Society conference and the GSA Conference. Instructions for registering are in the Members Only Area of [the CR Society website]. To view the instructions, you must be a paid CR Society member and login with your CR Society account information. Non-members must first join the CR Society in order to register for the conference.

For an example of the sort of conference the Society hosts, you might look back into the Fight Aging! archives. It's a lot of calorie restriction research and biochemistry mixed in with the nuts and bolts of practicing calorie restriction as a lifestyle:

While we're on the subject, I should also point out noted calorie restriction practitioner Michael Rae (and co-author of Ending Aging) waxing enthusiastic in the Immortality Institute forums:

Even if you're not on CR, there are plenty of reasons to attend: wanting to learn more about the science of CR and possible CR mimetics; to attend, at a discounted rate, the scientific session of the GSA, which is solid, often-unpublished biogerontological (including but not limted to CR) research; to hang out with fellow prolongevists, CR or not; and to mix it up a bit with the gerontological establishment and hopefully push some paradigms. As I also say in my review, "considering the total coup that Robert and David have pulled off in getting us into GSA, I'd especially like to encourage anyone with a serious interest in the science of aging and CR to attend, both because you'll have the opportunity to track down most of the big players in the field to ask about scientific developments and research issues [and] because we will make a more favorable impression on THEM - and thereby humanize their interest in CR [and serious life extension research] and maybe help spur more thought about human translation and more CR human research."

One of the big long term goals now in longevity research circles is building a research community that is set up to grow and generate results over the next twenty to thirty years. This is something akin to what the cancer researchers of the 1960s were up to: groundwork to create sustainable growth in the field and the progress it produces.

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