From: Aubrey de Grey (ag24@gen.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 12:46:34 MDT
Brett Paatsch wrote:
> As Mez said this is not really a book about life extension,
> genetics and anti-agings techs.
I haven't read MoI yet, but it sounds as though I should, even if it's
not mainly a life-extension book.
> Another point made in the book is that there are a number
> of gerontologists and respected scientists like Steve Austad
> and Leonard Hayflick (and around 49 others) who seriously
> doubt that immortality will ever be achieved.
Please post this quote. There was a "position statement" orchestrated
by Hayflick and two others and endorsed by 48 more, whose main message
was that *existing* so-called anti-aging medicine is a misnomer (which
is why I was one of the 48), but which also (because of the bias of the
organising trio) touched on longer-term prospects. But Austad refused
to sign on.
> a better approach to attacking the anti-aging, problem has been
> suggested by Aubrey de Grey and this better (in my view approach)
> has not been addressed by Hayflick or Austad.
Correct, but deserving of a comment. Hayflick is simply very out of
date on such issues and indeed has no real clue what I'm proposing in
the necessary degree of detail, despite having taken part in my second
roundtable (see my site http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/ and the links
on the left). Austad on the other hand is among the most optimistic
of the senior cadre of biogerontologists in his public statements: he
is the one who said that the first 150-year-old is probably already
alive, and in fact he is now on record that the first 160-year-old is
probably already 60. He isn't really as up-to-speed on the details
of what I propose, but he's definitely at my end of the spectrum of
professional biogerontologists, so if MoI implies otherwise he's been
misrepresented.
> I'd really love to see Aubrey discuss the ideas in his paper
> "An engineer's approach to the development of real anti-aging
> medicine ( http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/manu16.pdf)
> with the likes of Hayflick and perhaps especially Steve Austad.
This may happen soon (with someone on Hayflick's side but much better
informed and more influential). Watch this space.
> The conventional approaches to
> anti-aging are NOT going to lead to immortality or even
> serious extension of life-spans soon, but Aubrey's approach
> is more daring. Alas it is probably also a harder sell.
Unclear. I always maintain that the only constituency I really need
to get on my side, publicly, is a respectable number of my colleagues
in biogerontology. I'm progressing quite well in that regard -- the
conference coming up in Cambridge (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/iabg10/)
is another big step in that regard. Once people like Austad start
promoting my way of thinking on the TV, the war will be over. That
may be sooner than you think.
> there is a comment in the back of MoI where
> Hall quotes Ali Brivanilou of the Rockefeller "the difference
> between mouse embryological development at the molecular
> level and human development was "night and day". "Everything
> that we know about the mouse, (embryologically), we already
> know is not true for humans".
This is (a) hyperbole, (b) embryology, and most important (c) it is
science rather than intuition. It doesn't matter a hoot how hard it
will actually be to translate late-onset mouse life extension therapy
to humans: what matters is that the general public will intuitively
feel that it may be hard but there's a fighting chance that it'll be
possible within a decade or two. That public intuition will force
public investment in pushing the effort to translate the technology
to humans as fast as it can go. How fast that is doesn't matter,
just as the war on cancer is getting just as much money now as in
the 70s despite having, shall we say, rather overrun its schedule.
Aubrey de Grey
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