Fight Aging!

Aubrey de Grey is originator of the SENS rejuvenation research programs and presently Chief Science Officer at the SENS Research Foundation, the umbrella organization dedicated to ensuring that therapies to treat and reverse degenerative aging are developed as soon as possible. The Foundation funds a range of research into the underlying biotechnologies needed to produce regenerative medicine for aging, and is supported by a number of noted philanthropists and luminaries in the scientific community.

Success here is as much a matter of convincing the broader medical research community as it is of proving the case via scientific research: like all sweeping changes in the making, this is a bootstrap process of growing the funding and the research results until SENS effectively becomes the mainstream of aging research. This will happen because SENS research programs will prove capable of delivering far better results than the present approaches to aging, and at a fraction of the cost. SENS is based on repair of damage, while today's mainstream is much more interested in finding ways to alter the operation of our metabolism to slightly slow down the accumulation of further damage. It doesn't take a scientist to understand that repair will always win out in terms of cost-effectiveness, and that repair is the only way to rejuvenate the old, those who will benefit very little from ways to slow down the damage of aging.

Yesterday de Grey appeared on CNBC in a short segment to summarize some of his views. It is always good to see a broader audience get a taste of these things, but I should note that in the past decade television has shown itself to be a terrible medium to convey the exciting prospects for longevity science. Even fairly involved treatments of the research and researchers involved produced very little in return: no great visitation of web sites, no donations, no follow up. No doubt we can all theorize as to why this is the case, but it is what it is.

Do you really want to live to 1,000?

At this year's Exponential Medicine conference, CNBC was present to probe faculty about some of the exciting developments within accelerating technologies. One of the most eye-opening speakers is Aubrey de Grey, cofounder and Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, who was interviewed about longevity and the prospect of regenerative medicine extending our lives to 1,000 years or more.

By way of a contrast here is a longer audio podcast interview with de Grey from last month, in which he covers the established SENS vision and the long-term goal for the entire research community of eliminating degenerative aging from the human condition:

Eliminating aging (it's more obvious than it sounds) with Aubrey de Grey

It sound crazy when you put it into perspective but at the moment there is a 100% chance of death. I don't want to sound too morbid but this includes you, your friends and your family...

Aubrey de Grey joins me [to] discuss his work on resolving the issue of aging which at it's fundamental level is just a problem with our mechanics breaking down over time. We cover neurodegenerative diseases to mitochondrial damage and he gives us the 7 key targets his research as suggested will have the biggest impact on the aging process. The interview was a fascinating insight into Aubrey's work and he will be appearing again soon do to a show about cancer and the potential to solve it.