Fight Aging!

Cryonics Magazine is published by Alcor, a cryonics service provider. Aubrey de Grey is a noted biogerontologist, advocate for research into human rejuvenation, and co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation:

Cryonics Magazine: At what age, currently, should someone feel that there is very little chance of life extension research benefiting him before the end of his (current, average projected) life expectancy?

Aubrey de Grey: There's no way to answer that in terms of chronological age, because different people aged (say) 60 have such different states of health and chances of living another (say) 30 years. All we can say is that there seems to be a good chance - I'd say at least 50% - that we will be able to control aging pretty comprehensively within 20-25 years from now, allowing those who are not too frail to be treated to benefit greatly. I think anyone who is in a good enough state of health that they can reasonably expect to avoid serious age-related disease or disability for another 10 years has a non-negligible chance of benefiting. But I should point out that the humanitarian motivation for striving to hasten the defeat of aging is much the most powerful in my view - much more powerful than the desire to benefit oneself, or to benefit any particular other person.

Cryonics Magazine: What advice can you give to cryonics organizations and activists to improve the public's perception of cryonics?

Aubrey de Grey: That's pretty hard: very smart people have been trying to perfect a pitch that works for a long time, so I'm unlikely to have any ideas that are really new. The only thing I think might be more effective is to promote certain aspects of the logic of cryonics a bit more aggressively, and especially to educate the public better concerning aspects of that logic that are already mainstream. For example, I think it would be useful if the public knew that mainstream cryobiologists, the type who publicly deride cryonics with great vigor, nevertheless typically have a very positive view of research aimed at vitrifying organs and reviving them for transplant purposes. If this were better known, the question of what makes the brain any less revivable in principle than a kidney becomes rather obvious, and the absence of any good answer from the mainstream critics of cryonics becomes rather conspicuous.

Link: http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2013/09/26/interview-with-dr-aubrey-de-grey/