Fight Aging!

Practical human rejuvenation lies in the near future: the means to reverse age-related degeneration and restore youthful function to the old, thereby extending healthy life and eliminating age-related disease. With the right sea changes in scientific funding, so that organizations like the SENS Research Foundation become the mainstream of the aging research community, rejuvenation therapies could well arrive by the late 2030s. If the present mainstream focus on gently slowing aging continues as is, however, then it will take much longer to realize rejuvenation. But however long it takes, some fraction of those people presently alive will have been born too early.

A friend of mine in the life extension movement who is approaching age 65 once lamented that he might be part of the last generation that will not be able to take advantage of the rejuvenation biotechnologies that become available to the next generation. I wish I could believe him because it means that I may still be in time! Unfortunately, interest in anti-aging research and cryonics is rather low (to put it mildly), even among baby boomers who one might expect to be painfully aware of the aging process. It is rather disturbing to me that the aging process itself is not being identified as a source of misery, disease, separation, and oblivion. Then again, perhaps I am just too impatient and unable to see the larger picture.

The practical production of liquid nitrogen from liquefied air was first achieved by Carl von Linde in 1905, although liquid nitrogen only became widely available commercially after World War II. The idea of cryonics was introduced to the general public in the mid-1960s. Since liquid nitrogen (or liquid helium) is an essential requirement for human cryopreservation it is interesting to recognize that there was only a difference of roughly 20 years between cryonics being technically possible and the first efforts to practice cryonics. Is this an outrageously long delay? I doubt anyone would argue this.

Similarly, while the idea of rejuvenation has always appealed to humans, I doubt anyone can credibly claim that there has been a long delay between our recognition of biological senescence and the desire to see aging as a biotechnological challenge to overcome. While there is no massive global movement to fight aging yet, the desire to conquer aging is as old as the exposition of (secular) modern evolutionary biology itself. Are we too impatient?

What is disappointing, however, is the widespread passive acceptance of aging and death by the majority of people. Thinking about this issue, it struck me that until recently our (educational) institutions and research programs were shaped by generations that were perhaps eminently amenable to accepting the inevitability of aging. Expecting these institutions and research programs to change their objectives overnight may not be completely realistic. It is undeniable, however, that the idea that aging is not something that is to be passively accepted but something that can be stopped and reversed is gradually winning more converts.

From where I stand, the best thing to do is not to agonize over the odds but rather work to help shape the odds. Donate to research, persuade your friends, advocate for rejuvenation science, help make cryonics an ever more viable alternative for those who do not have enough time to wait for life-extending therapies, and more. There is plenty that can be done, and still all too few people working on it.

Link: http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2013/10/05/born-too-early/