"Why am I waiting to do something about this?"
Here is a little more context for yesterday's launch of the Palo Alto Longevity Prize. Like myself all of the regular readers of Fight Aging! had an awakening at some point in time, a moment in which we suddenly realized that aging could and should be cured with future advances in medicine. With progress in advocacy and research a larger number of fellow travelers will join us, ever more of whom will possess the means to make large strides ahead and the vision to realize that we are entering an age in which wealth can purchase time and an end to suffering if wisely spent:
"We spend more than $2 trillion per year on health care and do a pretty good job helping people live longer, but ultimately you still die," says Dr. Joon Yun, a doctor, investor and the main backer of the prize. "The way we are innovating in health care addresses the consequences of aging, but we're not addressing the root cause. So as a result of that, we ultimately can't save people. Your intrinsic homeostasis erodes at 40. Hangovers that used to last a day now last three days. Coughs drag on for months. You come off a roller coaster, and you feel awful, because you can't self center and your blood vessels don't recalibrate fast enough." The goal with the prize would be to find a way to reverse these degrading processes and return the body to a more youthful state.Yun says his father-in-law recently passed away at the age of 68, and this, combined with conversations with his friends, inspired him to tackle aging. "I come from an old school Korean farming family where you were just expected to till the farms and die. There was something grand and dignified in that. But after my wife's father died of something pretty preventable, I asked myself, 'Why am I waiting to do something about this?'"
"Based on the rapid rate of biomedical breakthroughs, we believe the question is not if we can crack the aging code, but when will it happen," says Keith Powers, the producer of the prize group. Yun has set aside a large chunk of money to fund not just this initial prize but subsequent attempts at solving the aging puzzle. "The prize is winnable, but I don't think we will hit a grand slam on the first one," he says. "I expect to be writing lots of checks."