From: Aubrey de Grey (ag24@gen.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jul 21 2003 - 08:23:06 MDT
Brett Paatsch wrote:
> In the Epilogue p345 hardcover at bottom.
Thanks.
> "Leonard Hayflick and a number of other prominent gerontologists
> have become so annoyed by the claims of life-extention enthusiasts
> that they recently prepared a manifesto. The document - written by
> Hayflick, S. Jay Olshansky, and Bruce Carnes and signed by a
> number of scientific luminaries, including Robert N. Butler, Steven
> Austad, Tom Kirkwood, George Martin, Carol Greider, and Andrew
> Weil
That's the right document, but the endorsers did not include Austad.
They were:
Robert Arking, Allen Bailey, Andrzej Bartke, Vladislav V. Bezrukov,
Jacob Brody, Robert N. Butler, Alvaro Macieira-Coelho, L. Stephen
Coles, David Danon, Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey, Lloyd Demetrius, Astrid
Fletcher, James F. Fries, David Gershon, Roger Gosden, Carol W.
Greider, S. Mitchell Harman, David Harrison, Christopher Heward, Henry
R. Hirsch, Robin Holliday, Thomas E. Johnson, Tom Kirkwood, Leo S.
Luckinbill, George M. Martin, Alec A. Morley, Charles Nam, Sang Chul
Park, Linda Partridge, Graham Pawelec, Thomas T. Perls, Suresh Rattan,
Robert Ricklefs, Ladislas (Leslie) Robert, Richard G. Rogers, Henry
Rothschild, Douglas L. Schmucker, Jerry W. Shay, Monika Skalicky, Len
Smith, Raj Sohal, Richard L. Sprott, Andrus Viidik, Jan Vijg, Eugenia
Wang, Andrew Weil, Georg Wick and Woodring Wright.
> - flatly asserts that dramatic increases in life span are unlikely.
This is true, and nearly stopped me signing the document, but it was a
relatively isolated statement in an article mainly focused on what we
can do today, so I let it go. The first draft I saw said "a virtual
impossibility ", so I reckoned we'd met half way.....
> "The prospects of immortality," the scientists state, "is no more
> likely today than it ever has been, and it has no place in a scientific
> discourse."
This is a blatantly misleading quote, because the above statement appears
entirely separately from the discussion of life extension and refers very
explicitly to infinite lifespans rather than indefinite ones.
Aubrey de Grey
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