The hunt for eternal life on Swedish TV

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 17:44:38 MDT

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    This sunday a television program about life extension aired, as part
    of a biotech series by the educational section of Swedish
    Television (the public service channels). Yours truly was one of the
    commentators in the studio.

    For those who can understand Swedish the site for the series is at
    http://www.ur.se/tv-universitetet/89
    There are also streamed versions of the programs (the link
    "TV-programmen" to the right).

    The program started with a number of more or less likely future
    scenarios, ranging from a 79-year old mother over a future EU with
    extremely strict health regulation to families where mother,
    daughter and granddaughter looked just as young and the immortal
    genemod babies Cain and Abel (!). Not terribly likely, but covered
    many of the issues and made them a visual reality (very nice
    treatment of smart paper newspapers and documents).

    I'm surprised by the generally positive approach to life extension.
    It did not ignore issues like social changes, the risks of mental
    ageing or that life extension might be unevenly distributed, but
    there was none of the "death is good for you" memes. Even more
    impressive was they fairly positive coverage of cryonics - it was
    treated as a big gamble, but not a crazy cult or an affront to
    nature. Much of this was due to the wonderful presence of Marta
    Sandberg from Australia, who gave a very human and loving face to
    the dream of immortality. She was great! I wish she lived in Sweden.

    The coverage of the life extensions conference in Phoenix last fall
    was also fairly positive. Not much detail (although plenty of
    familiar faces), but it showed that there exists a movement of
    people trying to do something about ageing. Natasha got a brief but
    effective appearance where she explained how we could enhance our
    bodies.

    The most impressive part was otherwise the discussion of the science
    of ageing, both genetic and free radical theories. Nice pictures of
    cell machinery, modified C elegans and caloric restriction imitation
    with 3-deoxyglucose. It showed that there is real science being
    done in addition to the dreaming.

    After the main program there was a discussion/interview with me and
    a professor in gerontology. It was nicely non-confrontational and
    constructive; I fear *I* looked like the conservative :-)

    Next week the program "the genedoctor is in the house" will be sent,
    where I will be talking about gene testing and stemcells.

    Just some positive media news to cheer you up :-)

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
    GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
    


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