The Science of Immortality

Such a title requires suspension of disbelief to sound credible.  Not in this case.  The video below is from the TED conference, which is arguably the best conference on the planet.  Aubrey de Grey is a biologist who has shown me the most credible scientific arguments so far on whether aging can be prolonged indefinitely.  It is clear, to the point, and inspiring to watch.

The only irony, I must say with respectful poetic license, is that for somebody researching anti-aging, he sure looks like he is pro-aging.  When you look at the image you may think more Dumbledore and Gandalf, but when you click on it you'll realize it's more Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter.

Comments

[Emre Sokullu]

Out of topic but this showed me a nice feature of VideoEgg; seems like you can crop and resize videos. I was afraid the whole speech would take hours but then just after Grey's seminar, it jumped to the Q&A section of the conference. Nice feature...

[Attila Csordas]

I like the regenerative medicine argument supporting maximum life extension: The aim of regenerative medicine is to regenerate all tissues and organs of the human body with the help of stem cells’ regenerative potential. Theoretically if all tissues and organs of an adult body were regenerated once, then it could be regenerated two and eventually n times. This technological possibility is called partial immortalization.
My blog is about that topic. For this concept I have a viable real-life project, and the key is the gradual regeneration of the different organ and tissues with a different ageing rate. The other key is...money a large but discrete amounts. :)

[baris]

Attila,
Thanks for letting my readers know about your fantastic blog.

If I had the money, this is a cause I'd happily give it to.

[Attila Csordas]

Baris,
thank you. For VC-s let's take a look at maximum life extension as business, well: What makes a business huge? If you’ve got a terrific product or service in your hand, there is a constant demand for it and the range of the potential customers is always rising. Partial immortalization is the ultimate business enterprise in every respect: in the long run the service time could be extended unlimitedly, and potentially every adult human being above a threshold age, say 30, could be a client. Think about it: regeneration of the whole human body inside out is no other, than inside plastic surgery for functional reasons.
One chapter of my would-be book is: Partial immortalization as business, for venture capitalists. :)

[Baris Karadogan]

Attila,
The business chapter of your book need only be two sentences long.

"There is no better value proposition on the world than enabling a longer life. Our pricing will be a sizable fraction of our customers' net worth."

[Attila Csordas]

:))))))))) Baris, you're absolutely right. It is as intuitive as positive numbers, but sometimes a little didactics is worth a dime. Other question is the modelling of the putative economic effects of maximum life extension. But for me as a stem cell researcher and continuous regeneration treatment visionary it's better to concentrate the technological details.

[Ali Hortacsu]

Baris -- I know that the value proposition is quite clear, but here's a paper (by two very well-known economists) that tried to quantify the economic gains from increased longevity. It may help with the pricing exercise.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=742364

[baris]

Ali,
Good point. I was thinking of the value of living longer as what you would pay to get a few more years after you retire. So in my model you charged the person based on his balance sheet.

The article's abstract suggest that there is also a big impact of longer life on one's income statement since they will work longer.

So I suggest we charge not only a percentage of net worth but a royalty on all future earned income. :-) :-)

[CP]

I'm also an aging biology blogger -- Attila pointed me in the direction of this article.

From a consumer standpoint, I like the idea of charging a percentage of net worth and earned income. That way the technology wouldn't exclusively be the province of the ultra-rich -- leaving aside arguments about who has the right to the products of others' minds, exacerbating the have/have-not gap generally causes social strife. Plus, the merchant has every incentive to sell an effective product (because the longer one's clients live, the more money one would make).

[Attila Csordas]

Hi Baris, I am running a blogterview series with life extension supporters/bloggers if you are interested on http://pimm.wordpress.com/
Questions are:
1. What is the story of your life extension commitment?
2. Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension?
3. What is your favourite argument supporting human life extension?
4. What kind of moderate life extension technologies have the chance to become successful, and when?
5. What is the most probable technological draft of maximum life extension, which technology or discipline has the biggest chance to reach it earliest? When?
6. What can blogs and other websites do for LE?

Feel free to answer me, cheers,
Attila.

[Attila Csordas]

And a special question for you Baris: What can VCs do for life extension? :)

[Attila Csordas]

Dear Baris, I made a post out of the comments here in a graphic storytelling form: :)
http://href.hu/x/1x3n
I hope you don't mind.
Attila.

[baris]

It's very funny.

(but I think my quote is misspelt. "on the world" not "of the world")

[Attila Csordas]

On-of problem corrected.

[Jim Craig]

I predict that by 2050 50% of the worlds economy will be based on health related products, services and therapies. Much of this will be anti-aging and rejuvenation related.

[Attila Csordas]

I've posted Aubrey's answers to my questions: http://href.hu/x/1xdv

[Kevin Dewalt]

Thanks for posting the video. I've been reading Aubrey's work for several years. Glad to see it finally make the "mainstream"; maybe now people won't look at me so strange at parties. ;-)

A few updates... Pay-pal co-founder Peter Thiel recently donated $3.5M http://www.mprize.org/index.php?pagename=newsdetaildisplay&ID=0107 to the fund. So it is getting close to $4M. I'm going to contribute some stock this year and join the 300 club.

MIT technology review recently held a $20,000 contest to anyone who could prove that SENS is "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate". Suffice it to say...nobody won the prize. http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17146&ch=biotech

[Longevity Science]

Thank you for your interesting post!
I thought perhaps you may also find this related story interesting to you:
Longevity Science: SENS
http://longevity-science.blogspot.com/2007/01/sens.html

[Longevity Science]

Thank you for your interesting post!
I thought perhaps you may also find this related story interesting to you:
Longevity Science: SENS
http://longevity-science.blogspot.com/2007/01/sens.html

[Longevity Science]

Also perhaps you may be curious to see this info on related topic:
New Books Discussing Aubrey de Grey Ideas
http://science-library.blogspot.com/2007/06/new-books-discussing-aubrey-de-grey.html
Shorter link:
http://tinyurl.com/29dt5o

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