Lifeboat Foundation

Giving Tuesday is two weeks away, on November 28th. As manufactured celebrations go, I think we could do far worse than a holiday that encourages philanthropy. While most people are basically well-meaning, and I think would agree in principle that support for medical research is to the common good, we all lead busy lives and need prompting.

So here is a prompt, to remind you that we are all still aging, that aging causes an enormous toll of suffering and death, and that, absent progress, you too will be one of the victims. To offer material support to the research groups that are working to treat the causes of aging is not just the most compassionate thing you can do for the millions suffering today, it is also in your self-interest for tomorrow. If you are organized enough to save for retirement, because it will make your life easier decades from now, then you should also be organized enough to help establish the new medical technologies that will reduce or eliminate the age-related disease that also lies ahead, waiting.

The most effective way to help make progress through charitable contributions is to give to the SENS Research Foundation or their allies such as the Methuselah Foundation. This year we have put out a call for SENS Patrons, people willing to pledge a monthly contribution to the SENS Research Foundation. Josh Triplett, Christophe and Dominique Cornuejols, and Fight Aging! have put up a $36,000 challenge fund to encourage new supporters, and we will match the next full year of your donations if you sign up before the end of 2017.

Continue reading “Giving Tuesday Approaches: Help us to Fund SENS Rejuvenation Research” »

With the recent surge of enthusiastic support for LEAF/Lifespan.io and the idea of defeating aging, I really shouldn’t be complaining about the lingering holdouts opposing the idea of living healthy and longer lives for whatever reason. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to point out the jarring contradiction of a species whose members are constantly on the lookout to avoid danger, yet need to be reassured that at some point they will die and that science is by no means trying to prevent that.

Fear of life extension

This curious phenomenon was pointed out earlier this year by James Goodwin in the journal of the Gerontological Society of America[1]. In his article “Fear of life extension”, he argues that the commandment of geriatrics is “quality, not quantity” because policymakers fear a future in which longer life means overpopulation of nursing homes, and as a consequence, researchers working on interventions on aging need to clearly state that their goal is just making our final years a little better—but making us live longer? God forbid, no! We only want to live in perfect health for about 80 or 90 years, then magically drop dead for no apparent reason.

If you are a medical doctor and interested in an alternative career researching functional medicine and evaluating true rejuvenation therapies, this is for you!

Forever Healthy is a private non-profit initiative whose mission is to enable people to vastly extend their healthy lifespan and be part of the first generation to cure aging.

We support the development of rejuvenation therapies that undo the damage of aging by funding basic research, bringing together the world’s leading scientists at our Undoing Aging conference and helping startups that work on actual therapies for human use.

Continue reading “Now hiring for project ‘Personal Longevity Strategy’” »

Well, it has been a super busy month due to the popularity of the new Kurzgesagt videos about aging, and we have seen a massive positive response from the audience to the ideas presented there.

At the time of writing, 116,000 people have liked the video so far, and a mere 963 people have disliked it, with almost 2 million total views to date. Once again, as in the previous video, the ratio of support versus opposition is massively in favor of doing something about aging.

Continue reading “Overwhelming Support for Life Extension” »

This sort of thing is rapidly going mainstream, and de Grey, if still a fringe thinker, seems increasingly less so. At the very least, medical science has progressed to the point where “negligible senescence” — eternal youth, more or less — is something it might be a good idea to start talking about before it is suddenly upon us without our having thought through the implications. As with most of the other miracle technologies that have turned our lives inside out over the past 100 years — rampant automation, nuclear power, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and so on — this one, as Shukan Gendai points out, has its dark side.

Is death inevitable? True, everyone born before Aug. 4, 1900, has proved mortal (the world’s oldest-known living person, a Japanese woman named Nabi Tajima, was born on that date). But the past is only an imperfect guide to the future, as the effervescent present is ceaselessly teaching us.

Must we die? We ourselves probably must. But our children, our grandchildren — or if not them, theirs — may, conceivably, be the beneficiaries of the greatest revolution ever: the conquest of death.

Continue reading “On the quest for the holy grail for as long as we live” »

A team of scientists at the University of California San Diego led by biologist Nan Hao have combined engineering, computer science, and biology technologies to decode the molecular processes in cells that influence aging.

Continue reading “Scientists decipher mechanisms in cells for extending human longevity” »

Our CEO, Liz Parrish was invited at this event for a keynote interview with Charles Goddard, the editorial director for The Economist Asia Pacific Intelligence Unit. They discussed the complexity of regulations, the extraordinarily long time it takes for drug development from bench to bedside, the current funding environment surrounding biotech, and the pace of medical innovations. During the keynote, Liz emphasized that BioViva’s main aim is to make advanced gene and cell therapies available to all patients in need. To further this cause BioViva supports innovative and adaptive clinical trials, new models for preclinical testing, and accelerating the time to develop advanced gene and cell therapy. Finally, Liz highlighted the importance of testing gene and cell therapy in humans as quickly as possible, because animal models are not accurate.

Of all the concerns and objections we have seen, saying that an indefinite lifespan would deprive us of motivation in life is by far the most bizarre.

Of all the concerns and objections I’ve bumped into as a rejuvenation advocate, saying that an indefinite lifespan would deprive us of motivation in life is by far the most bizarre. I’d have a hard time believing this concern is so widespread that it needs discussing, but for completeness’ sake, let’s do it anyway.

The argument in a nutshell

Continue reading “Why Increased Lifespans Probably Will Not Mean a Loss of Motivation” »