A Message on Aging From the Science for Life Extension Foundation
The Science for Life Extension Foundation is the Russian group behind the Science Against Aging initiative. Vladimir Skulachev, whose work I occasionally discuss here is amongst their advisory board, as are researchers you might more readily recognize such as Aubrey de Grey and Leonid Gavrilov. You might think of the Science for Life Extension Foundation as a sort of Russian language version of the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Foundation: similarities include strong relationships with the biogerontology community, advocacy initiatives driven by strong personalities from the transhumanist community, and fundraising for the research required to extend healthy human lives. This sort of message, and the goal of radical life extension, is apparently more popular in Russian culture than in the English-language West. (Not that this is saying much - it's an uphill battle for advocates in any culture to raise significant funds for engineered longevity research).
In any case, allow me to direct your attention to a rather well done English langage video from Maria Konovalenko, one of the Program Coordinators at the Science for Life Extension Foundation.
I'd like to tell you about a major issue. Its your personal concern. It's the concern of your nearest and dearest, of all the people living on the planet. It's inevitable absolutely for everybody! But surprisingly little is known about it. Its not a common practice to talk about this problem and moreover to try to solve it. What do you think about 30 million lives? Just imagine that all the people in Denmark, Austria, Finland, Israel and New Zealand disappeared in one year. Would you consider it a problem? But no one pays attention.
UPDATE 05/31/2010: As noted in a more recent post, Konovalenko also writes a blog focused on advocacy for engineered longevity that you may find interesting.