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International Longevity Day – October 1, 2015 – Press Release by Ilia Stambler

International Longevity Day – October 1, 2015 – Press Release by Ilia Stambler

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The New Renaissance HatIlia Stambler
August 30, 2015

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International-Longevvity-Day Dear friends,

There has been emerging a tradition by longevity researchers and activists around the world to organize events dedicated to promotion of longevity research on or around October 1 – the UN International Day of Older Persons.

This day is sometimes referred to in some parts of the longevity activists community as the “International Longevity Day”. As this is the official UN Day of Older Persons, this provides the longevity research activists a perfect opportunity, perhaps even a perfect “excuse”, to emphasize the importance of aging and longevity research for the development of effective health care for the elderly, in the wide public as well as among decision makers.

The critical importance and the critical need to promote biological research of aging derives from the realization that tackling the degenerative processes and negative biological effects of human aging, at once and in an interrelated manner, can provide the best foundations to find holistic and effective ways for intervention and prevention against age-related ill health. Such an approach has been supported by scientific proofs of concept, involving the evidential increase in healthy lifespan in animal models and the emerging technological capabilities to intervene into fundamental aging processes. The focus on intervention into degenerative aging processes can provide solutions to a number of non-communicable, age-related diseases (such as cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases), insofar as such diseases are strongly determined by degenerative aging processes (such as chronic inflammation, cross-linkage of macromolecules, somatic mutations, loss of stem cell populations, and others). This approach is likely to decrease susceptibility of the elderly also to communicable, infectious diseases due to improvements in immunity. The innovative, applied results of such research and development will lead to sustainable, economically viable solutions for a large array of age-related medical and social challenges, that may be globally applicable. Furthermore, such research and development should be supported on ethical grounds, to provide equal health care chances for the elderly as for the young.

Therefore it is the societal duty, especially of the professionals in biology, medicine, health care, economy and socio-political organizations, to strongly recommend greater investments, incentives and institutional support for the research and development dealing with the understanding of mechanisms associated with the human biological aging process and translating these insights into safe, affordable and universally available applied technologies and treatments.

October 1 – the International Day of Older Persons — provides the researchers and advocates an opportunity to raise these points and make these demands.

http://www.longevityforall.org/the-critical-need-to-promote-research-of-aging-around-the-world/

In 2013, events during or around that day – ranging from small meetings of friends to seminars and rather large conferences, alongside special publications, distributions of outreach materials (petitions and flyers) and media appearances – were held in over 30 countries, and in 2014 in over 20 countries. (Sometimes the events’ dates vary several days around October 1, or even through the entire month of October, designated as the “International Month of Older Persons” or the “International Longevity Month”, and sometimes the events are organized independently and without prior knowledge of other events, but they are all nonetheless unified by the common action and purpose.)

http://www.longevityforall.org/october-1-international-day-of-older-persons-longevity-day-2013-2014/

Let us maintain and strengthen this tradition! Let us plan and organize a mutually reinforcing network of events worldwide. If you plan to organize an event for that day – either live meetings or on-line publications and promotions – please let know. Together we can create an activism wave of strong impact. 

Following the collection of an impressive number of longevity promoting events worldwide in honor of that day, a general public appeal will be issued, both widely disseminated and addressed to relevant officials, both governmental and supra-governmental. Yet, the strength of the appeal will depend on the strength of all the individual events and actions.

Among the materials for discussion, distribution and promotion, one may use the position paper on the “Critical need to promote research of aging and aging-related diseases to improve health and longevity of the elderly population”, briefly describing the rationales, technologies and policies needed to promote this research. The position paper is available in 9 languages and can serve as a “universal advocacy paper” both for the grass roots discussions and promotions and for the outreach to officials: http://www.longevityforall.org/the-critical-need-to-promote-research-of-aging-around-the-world/. Also one may use in the preparation a presentation briefly listing some topics in longevity science promotion, such as the feasibility and desirability of achieving healthy longevity and public actions that can be taken to achieve it – http://www.longevityhistory.com/articles/ab7.php – or any other materials of your choice.

So far, events for that day – including meetings, publications and promotions – are already planned to be held around the world, in over 30 countries on 5 continents, including:

In the US, a conference will be held at the headquarters of the International Society on Aging and Disease (ISOAD), at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, in Fort Worth, Texas. This action will be endorsed and promoted by the US Healthspan Campaign (http://www.healthspancampaign.org/).

The Longevity Day action will also be promoted by the US Transhumanist Party, during their campaign tour that coincides with October 1.

Also in the US, online promotions will be held by the MILE campaign and by the Christian Transhumanist Association.

MILE-Panel-Cover

A special promotion will be done by LEAF – Life Extension Advocacy Foundation – via its crowdfunding platform for longevity research (http://www.lifespan.io/).

A fundraising action will be launched on that day for SENS Research Foundation by Fight Aging (https://www.fightaging.org/fund-research/).

In Israel, a seminar will be held in Bar Ilan University, by the Israeli Longevity Alliance. Toward that day, Israeli activists will also freely distribute an e-book on the history of longevity research (http://www.longevityhistory.com/).

In Moscow, Russia, a conference will be organized by the Russian Longevity Alliance. Another large conference will take place in Moscow, on the “Quality of Life of Older Persons”, supported by the Gerontological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences, focusing on geroprotective substances and therapies.

In Gomel, Byelorussia, at the end of September, a conference will take place on the general subject of Radiobiolgy, at the Institute of Radiobiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Byelorussia, with a leading section on the biology of aging and longevity (“gerontological aspects of man-made factors”).

Another  small conference will take place in New Delhi, India, organized by the Solutions For the Future, with the help of India Future Society, and ISOAD India.

A series of events is planned in Pakistan, by the Pakistan National Academy of Young Scientists and the Universities of Lahore and of Malakand. The newly formed Pakistan Aging Research Society (PARS) organizes an entire month long campaign, “Go for Life” – from September 1 until October 1 – to encourage physical activity of older persons.

In Rome, Italy, a conference will be organized by the Italian Transhumanist Association and the Italian Longevity Alliance.

Additional meetings and promotions are planned by the European Healthy Life Extension Society (HEALES) in Brussels, Belgium, including a Competition for the Best Short Film on Life Extension.

A conference on longevity/life-extension science will be held by the Waag Society – Do It Together Bio in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In Germany, meetings will be held by two new officially registered political parties that emphasize the development of biomedical research in their programs: in Berlin, by the German Health Research Party and in Stuttgart by the German Transhumanist Party.

An online promotion (videoconference) in Spanish will be organized by the Venezuela Longevity Alliance (together with activists from across Latin America). A similar videoconference (to be recorded) in Portuguese will be organized for Brazil by the Brazil Longevity Alliance.

A pro-longevity documentary promotion will be done in Helsinki by Longevity Finland – Pitkäikäinen Suomi.

A meeting will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, by Aldrandefonden/Svenska Livsförlängningssällskapet SLFS – Swedish Life Extension Society.

In the UK, the London Futurist community will celebrate longevity research as a part of a discussion of emerging technologies in London.

In Larnaca, Cyprus, the ELPIS Foundation, together with the local gerontological community, will hold a seminar “Health in Older Life” and a local TV show in honor of that day.

In Perth, Australia, a meeting will be held by the “Healthy Longevity Philosophy” society. Another promotion will be done by Science, Technology and the Future society in Melbourne, Australia.

In Kiev, Ukraine, a seminar will be held on behalf of the Kiev Institute of Gerontology of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences.

In Beijing, China, a meeting will be organized by the Technium community.

In Uganda, the Kasese Freethinkers Sports Academy will educate about the connection between physical activity and longevity.

A mini-seminar will be held in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria, by Longevity Nigeria group.

In Romania, a conference will be held at Äna Aslan National Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics, in Bucharest, toward the end of October, with earlier promotions.

In Vietnam, Hanoi, the Vietnam Public Health Association will hold a conference on the Mental Health of the Elderly, emphasizing biomedical research on neurodegenerative diseases.

In Singapore, a seminar on biology of aging will be organized at the National University of Singapore. This will precede a large Biology of Aging Conference organized by the Singapore Immunology Network (A*Star) – not “officially” a part of the “Longevity Day” events, but perhaps of the “Longevity Month.”

At about the same time, the 10th Asia / Oceania Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics 2015 for “Healthy Aging Beyond Frontiers” will take place in Chiangmai, Thailand, including sections on biology of aging.

In Paris, France, a seminar will be organized at the Biopark Cancer Campus, University Paris Sud.

In South Korea, the Korean Branch of Solutions for the Future will organize a meetup in Seoul.

In Switzerland, Zurich, the Swiss Longevity Alliance will have a presentation on longevity research. This will shortly follow a large international symposium on geroprotectors in Basel.

In Poland, the Warsaw University Students Association will support the organization of a discussion on life extension science.

In Canada, at Huntington University, an event will be held by the Canadian Institute for Studies in Aging (CISA). In Alberta University, Canada, a special discussion on Technology and the Future of Medicine will be dedicated to that day.

In Iran, a study group will be conducted in Tehran on behalf of the Iran Longevity Alliance: http://www.iranlongevity.com/.

Yet another study group will be held in Cairo, Egypt, by the Egypt Longevity Alliance: http://www.egyptplus.org/.

And yet another free discussion of longevity science will take place in Tirana, Albania – the first longevity research activism event in the country.

In Bulgaria, events toward the International Longevity Day will start earlier in September with a conference in Ravda, organized by the University for National and World Economy, Department of Management and BASAGA – Bulgarian Academic Simulation and Gaming Association, including a section on Futurism, Transhumanism and Longevity, and continuing up to the date itself with more live and online discussions and publications and a special appeal in honor of that day.

In Tokyo, Japan, Exponential Technologies Institute will hold a meetup on longevity science in the framework of Tokyo-Singularity-Meetup.

A meeting will be held in the National Library in Tbilisi, Georgia, by activists of the Georgian Longevity Alliance, including presentations on the development of longevity science in Georgia and the world, and debates.

More events and expressions of support are expected to be initiated in the very near time in different countries.

Please add your support and more events and publications for this initiative! If you would like to get involved, please let know!

You are also welcome to promote this initiative on social media:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1017229998296364/

https://www.facebook.com/LongevityDay

Preparations for the next year’s International Longevity Day – October 1 – already started as well. The next global conference of the International Society on Aging and Disease (ISOAD) will take place in Stanford on October 1-2, 2016. The topics will range from interventions for longevity through stem cell research, genetics and systems biology of aging, to public support for aging research. The submission of abstracts and proposals is already started and welcome. And a conference is being planned in Brussels, for September 29-October 1, 2016, by the European Healthy Life Extension Society – Heales.

Hopefully, thanks to these and many other events, in this year and in the years to come, the importance of biological aging and longevity research will gradually become a strong theme of the international healthcare agenda, for the elderly and for the entire population.

Ilia Stambler, PhD.

Outreach coordinator. International Society on Aging and Disease (ISOAD)

http://isoad.org/

ilia.stambler@gmail.com

Thank you!

Ilia Stambler, Ph.D. is an IEET Affiliate Scholar, researcher at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and activist at the International Longevity Alliance. He is author of A History of Life-Extensionism in the Twentieth Century.
 
He studied biomedical engineering at the Moscow Polytechnical Institute, biology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and earned his MA in English literature from Bar-Ilan University. He earned his Ph.D. at the Department of Science, Technology, and Society, at Bar-Ilan University. His thesis subject, and his main interest, is the History of Life-Extensionism in the Twentieth Century.
 
In addition, Ilia authored Life extension — a conservative enterprise? Some fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century precursors of transhumanism, Demonstration for Radical Life Extension in Tel Aviv, and Heroic Power in Thomas Carlyle and Leo Tolstoy, and coauthored Breast cancer detection by Michaelis–Menten constants via linear programming, and Comparative analysis of cell parameter groups for breast cancer detection. Read the full list of his publications!
 
He speaks Hebrew, English, Russian, German, and Yiddish. He is active in the Israeli chapter of Humanity Plus, the Israeli Society for the Biology of Aging, and the International Longevity Alliance.
 
Watch Demonstration for Radical Life Extension in Tel Aviv 5: Ilia Stambler. Read 10 Answers by Ilia Stambler. Visit his Facebook page. Read his Google+ profile and his LinkedIn profile. Read his blog Singularity | Life Extension | Transhumanism (Hebrew).

Changing the View of Aging: Are We Winning Yet? – Article by Reason

Changing the View of Aging: Are We Winning Yet? – Article by Reason

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The New Renaissance Hat
Reason
June 28, 2015
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Peter Thiel, who has invested millions into the SENS rejuvenation research programs over the past decade, has of late been talking much more in public on the topic of treating aging. Having wealth gives you a soapbox, and it is good that he is now using it to help the cause of treating aging as a medical condition. One of Thiel’s recent public appearances was a discussion on death and religion in this context.

In the struggle to produce meaningful progress in rejuvenation research, the tipping point can come from either a very large amount of money, hundreds of millions of dollars at least, dedicated to something very similar to the SENS research programs, or from a widespread shift in the commonplace view of aging. At the large scale and over the long term, medical research priorities reflect the common wisdom, and it is my view that public support is needed to bring in very large contributions to research. The wealthiest philanthropists and largest institutional funding bodies follow the crowd as a rule; they only rarely lead it. They presently give to cancer and stem-cell research precisely because the average fellow in the street thinks that both of these are a good idea.

So it is very important that we reach a point at which research into treating degenerative aging is regarded as a sensible course of action, not something to be ridiculed and rejected. Over the past decade or two a great deal of work has gone into this goal on the part of a small community advocates and researchers. It is paying off; the culture of science and the media’s output on aging research is a far cry from what it was ten years ago. When ever more authorities and talking heads are soberly discussing the prospects of extended healthy life and research into the medical control of aging, it is to be hoped that the public will follow. Inevitably religion is drawn in as a topic in these discussions once you start moving beyond the scientific community:

Quote [Source: “Peter Thiel, N.T. Wright on Technology, Hope, And The End of Death” by Max Anderson – Forbes/Tech – June 24, 2015]:

The Venn diagram showing the overlap of people who are familiar with both Peter Thiel and N.T. Wright is probably quite small. And I think it is indicative of a broader gap between those doing technology and those doing theology. It is a surprise that a large concert hall in San Francisco would be packed with techies eager to hear a priest and an investor talk about death and Christian faith, even if that investor is Peter Thiel.

Thiel has spoken elsewhere about the source of his optimism about stopping and even reversing aging. The idea is to do what we are doing in every other area of life: apply powerful computers and big data to unlock insights to which, before this era, we’ve never had access. Almost everyone I talk with about these ideas has the same reaction. First there is skepticism  – that can’t really happen, right? Second, there is consideration  – well those Silicon Valley guys are weird, but if anyone has the brains and the money to do it, it’s probably them. Finally comes reflection, which often has two parts – 1. I would like to live longer. 2. But I still feel a little uneasy about the whole idea.

The concept of indefinite life extension feels uncomfortable to people, thinks Thiel, because we have become acculturated to the idea that death, like taxes, is inevitable. But, he says, “it’s not like one day you’ll wake up and be offered a pill that makes you immortal.” What will happen instead is a gradual and increasingly fast march of scientific discovery and progress. Scientists will discover a cure for Alzheimer’s and will say, “Do you want that?” Of course our answer will be “Yes!” They will find a cure for cancer and say, “Do you want that?” And again, of course, our answer will be “Yes!” What seems foreign and frightening in the abstract will likely seem obvious and wonderful in the specific. “It seems,” Thiel said, “that in every particular instance the only moral answer is to be in favor of it.”

One of Wright’s objections was to articulate a skepticism about whether the project of life extension really is all that good, either for the individual or for the world. “If [I] say, okay I’ll live to be 150. I’ll still be a sinner. I’ll still be conflicted. I’ll still have wrong emotions. Do I really want to go on having all that stuff that much longer? Will that be helpful to the world if I do?” This roused Thiel. “I really have to disagree with that last formulation…it strikes me as very Epicurean in a way.” For Peter Thiel, Epicureanism is akin to deep pessimism. It means basically giving up. One gets the sense he finds the philosophy not just disagreeable but offensive to his deepest entrepreneurial instincts and life experience. “We are setting our sights low,” he argued, “if we say everyone is condemned to a life of death and suffering.”

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries. 
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This work is reproduced here in accord with a Creative Commons Attribution license. It was originally published on FightAging.org.

Rise to Meet the Enemies at the Gates: Join the Battle against Disease and Death – Article by Eric Schulke

Rise to Meet the Enemies at the Gates: Join the Battle against Disease and Death – Article by Eric Schulke

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The New Renaissance HatEric Schulke
June 25, 2015
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A lot of your great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers have prepared and gone through the fire of war. This happened time and time again over the centuries. It was nearly routine.

The video “World Battleground, 1000 Years of War in 5 Minutes” adds some good perspective to the frequency of larger-scale conflicts.

If you didn’t have the genes for it, didn’t have it in you to put up a staunch defense or go on a successful offense when necessary, then you and your people didn’t survive as often. It is unfortunate that such a terrible trait has played such a fundamental role in shaping who we are, but that seems to be the way it is.

It is in us to adrenalize in the face of battle and do what it takes to find victory. Most of us don’t directly chase it, and we shy away from it when necessary, but when cornered or challenged, when our towns are burned down or our family and neighbors are murdered on the trails, we draw our weapons and pursue the enemy to the corners of the lands, taking them dead or alive.

Aging and diseases have us cornered. So what are we to do? Should we approach it like it is peacetime? Should we get up in the morning and think of aging and disease as another day at the office or another bill to pay, another fish to be caught for supper or another window to be boarded up for a storm?

When an adjacent empire marches in and demands allegiance to expand its power, with the alternative of impalement or crucifixion for everybody you’ve ever known, you churn out ramparts, build your defenses, get the trenches dug, get the spit and sweat out, and make a stand for life against a bunch of killing scum-bags like you’re supposed to do. There is a time for the industry of peacetime, and there is a time for war.

It is like wartime right now.

In this war against aging, other diseases, and death in general, we don’t need guns, and – it’s incredibly lucky for us – we don’t even need to spill guts. Our enemy causes our guts to be spilled, but these gutless intruders don’t even have them to spill. They are microscopic misalignments, cellular maladjustment, biological disrepair, but they are terrible opponents nonetheless. They snatch our lives away from us. That’s why we put up staunch defenses, and beyond that, prepare a fierce, forceful, battering offense in the form of a worldwide expedition in support of the philosophy and research of indefinite life extension – of extended healthy longevity.

If winning a war involves spilling forth solutions from your head and not guts from people’s bodies, and you won’t do it, then we can only be left to assume that winning isn’t worth it for you unless you can dismantle flesh. That’s not the case, is it? It is catastrophic to the outcome of an urgent fight for life if we can’t recognize that a deadly enemy that doesn’t bleed is still an enemy.

Comanches on the warpath had a lot less to lose than you do, and yet they put up a lot more of a fight. Match them, at the least. You have it in you, and we desperately need you at these front lines of the diseases of aging and general death.

We can’t win this unless we expedite, instill energy, move fast, work hard – work wartime hard. And why shouldn’t we get serious if it means a great shot at winning this? Indifference is one of our biggest obstacles here, and that indifference comes in large part from this phenomenon of the children of warriors not recognizing war without enemy blood. As more battle cries go up around the world, those centuries-old frequencies of battle will begin to ring in the DNA of more brave new life-extension advocate centurions and soldiers like you. With a little time, a great army can be raised up in this showdown with the Grim Reaper and its despicable harbingers of aging, and other forms of diseases and death.

Attack disease and death with this attitude. Get pumped up: it’s the only way to accelerate the pace and save life. Join the battle.

You weren’t bred to back down and wimp out. You are the sum total of the survivors of thousands of years of constant brutal wartime. Respect your ancestors by harnessing that fury and stepping up to this call of duty. Report to your nearest life-extension organization or project. Fight for the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension with everything you’ve got.

Pick your legion, be it Fight Aging, the Methuselah Foundation, Longecity, the SENS Research Foundation, Foresight Nanotech Institute, the California Life Company (Calico), the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Longevity Party, the Transhumanist Party, the Buck Institute, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the Life Extension Foundation, or another, and report.

The Movement for Indefinite Life Extension supports and lists as many of the core, main organizations as possible on this page.

The world is at stake. We all need you.

This song, not affiliated with this movement (yet. Call us, Rammstein), illustrates the concept well.

Translated lyrics:

Even on the waves there is fighting
Where fish and flesh are woven into sea
One stabs the lance while in the army
Another throws it into the ocean

Ahoy

Arise, arise seaman arise
Each does it in his own way
One thrusts the spear into a man
Another then into the fish

Arise, arise seaman arise
And the waves cry softly
In their blood a spear is lodged
They bleed softly into the ocean

The lance must be drowned in flesh
Fish and man sink to the depths
Where the black soul dwells
There is no light on the horizon

Ahoy

Arise, arise seaman arise
Each does it in his own way
One thrusts the spear into a man
Another then into the fish

Arise, arise seaman arise
And the waves cry softly
In their blood a spear is lodged
They bleed softly into the ocean

Arise, arise seaman arise
And the waves cry softly
In their heart a spear is lodged
They bleed themselves dry on the shore

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 15 years.

“La mort, c’est mal!” – French Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Philippe Castonguay – Post by G. Stolyarov II

“La mort, c’est mal!” – French Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Philippe Castonguay – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
May 16, 2015
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La mort, c’est mal! – the French translation of Death is Wrong – is now available for download from The Rational Argumentator. You can obtain your free PDF copy here and may spread it to French-speaking audiences as widely as you wish.

La mort, c’est mal! was generously translated into French by Philippe Castonguay.

Death_is_Wrong_French_CoverPaperback copies of La mort, c’est mal! can be purchased in the following venues:

Createspace – $9.48

Amazon – $9.48

Kindle copies of La mort, c’est mal! can be purchased on Amazon for $0.99.

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Si vous avez déjà demandé « pourquoi les gens doivent-ils mourir? » alors ce livre est pour vous. La vérité est que non, la mort n’est ni bonne, ni nécessaire, ni inévitable. En fait, la mort, c’est mal! La mort est notre ennemie à tous et toutes et doit être combattue par la médecine, la science et la technologie. Ce livre vous introduit au plus grand défi de notre espèce, à son mouvement le plus révolutionnaire; celui d’augmenter radicalement l’espérance de vie humaine pour que vous n’ayez plus à mourir, du tout.

Vous trouverez dans ce livre des plantes et des animaux à la longévité spectaculaire, des découvertes scientifiques récentes pavant le chemin vers l’augmentation de la durée des vies humaines, ainsi que de simples, mais puissants arguments pour affronter ceux en faveur de la mort. Si vous avez déjà pensé que la mort était injuste et qu’elle devrait être vaincue, sachez que vous n’êtes pas seul. Lisez ce livre et prenez part à la plus importante quête de l’histoire de l’humanité.

Ce livre a été écrit par le philosophe et futuriste Gennady Stolyarov II et illustré par l’artiste Wendy Stolyarov. Ici, il vous sera démontré que, peu importe qui vous êtes et peu importe vos habiletés, il vous est toujours possible d’aider l’humanité dans sa lutte contre la mort.

Tomorrow Will Be Different From Today – Article by Reason

Tomorrow Will Be Different From Today – Article by Reason

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The New Renaissance Hat
Reason
April 16, 2015
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We live in an era of very rapid change driven by technological progress. Today’s world is enormously different from that of three or four decades past: consider the pervasive effects of the revolution in communications and computing technologies that has taken place over that time. Yet, human nature being what it is, most of the people who lived through this profound shift in capabilities and culture are nonetheless very skeptical of claims that the future will look radically different from today in any important aspect. It is strange.

In particular the concept of actuarial escape velocity leading to thousand-year life spans is a very hard sell. People look at the large number that is very different from today’s maximum life span and immediately reject it out of hand, no matter the reasonable argument behind it. Any medical technology that produces some rejuvenation in old patients buys extra time to develop better means of rejuvenation. At some point the first pass at rejuvenation treatments will improve such that remaining healthy life expectancy grows at more than a year with each passing year. At that point life spans will become indefinite, limited only by accident or rare medical conditions not yet solved.

It doesn’t help that most of the public has very little knowledge of the present state of medical research in any field, never mind the specific details of how aging might be treated and brought under medical control. The only solution to that issue is to keep on talking: educate, advocate, and spread the word.

Quote:

It is likely the first person who will live to be 1,000 years old is already alive today. This is according to a growing regiment of researchers who believe a biological revolution enabling humans to experience everlasting youthfulness is just around the corner. At the epicentre of the research is Aubrey de Grey, co-founder or the California-based Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Research Foundation.

“The first thing I want to do is get rid of the use of this word immortality, because it’s enormously damaging, it is not just wrong, it is damaging. It means zero risk of death from any cause – whereas I just work on one particular cause of death, namely ageing.” de Grey said his research aims to undo the damage done by the wear and tear of life, as opposed to stopping the ageing process altogether. “If we ask the question: ‘Has the person been born who will be able to escape the ill health of old age indefinitely?’ Then I would say the chances of that are very high. Probably about 80 per cent.”

“The therapies that we are working on at the moment are not going to be perfect. These therapies are going to be good enough to take middle age people, say people aged 60, and rejuvenate them thoroughly enough so they won’t be biologically 60 again until they are chronologically 90. That means we have essentially bought 30 years of time to figure out how to re-rejuvenate them when they are chronologically 90 so they won’t be biologically 60 for a third time until they are 120 or 150. I believe that 30 years is going to be very easily enough time to do that.”

Link: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/researchers-believe-a-biological-revolution-enabling-hu

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries. 
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This work is reproduced here in accord with a Creative Commons Attribution license. It was originally published on FightAging.org.

Peter Thiel on Longevity Research and the Defeat of Aging – Article by Reason

Peter Thiel on Longevity Research and the Defeat of Aging – Article by Reason

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The New Renaissance Hat
Reason
April 4, 2015
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It has always been the case that the cause of serious rejuvenation research needs more well-regarded individuals to stand up and talk in public about the road ahead, the prospects for success, and the righteousness of the goal. Just lay out the situation as it is, no need for salesmanship: it is simply the need for this to be a topic not left on the edge of polite society. Aging is by far the greatest cause of suffering and death in the world, and we should all be doing more than we are to help bring an end to all of that pain, disease, and loss. For that to happen, the vast majority of people who never think about aging and rarely think about medical research need to give the topic at least as much thought and approval as presently goes towards the cancer research community.

We find ourselves in a peculiar time. Technological barriers to the successful treatment of aging are next to non-existent; progress is falling out of the woodwork even at low levels of funding and interest; this is an age of revolutionary gains in the tools of biotechnology, and that drives the pace of medicine while the cost of meaningful research plummets. This isn’t a space race situation in which the brute force of vast expenditure was used to wrest a chunk of the 21st century into the 20th and land men on the moon. If following the SENS program aimed at repair of the causes of aging, the cost of implementing the first prototype, working rejuvenation treatments in old mice would by current estimates be only 1-2% of the Apollo Program budget. There was vast popular approval for the space race to match the vast expense. The path to human rejuvenation is in exactly the opposite situation: there is very little support for the goal of treating aging as medical condition, but the costs of doing so successfully are so small that given even a minority of the public in favor those funds would be raised.

This is why advocacy is so very important. This is why people with large soapboxes can help greatly simply by talking on the topic. Investor and philanthropist Peter Thiel has been supporting scientific programs such as SENS and related areas in biotechnology for a decade now, but I notice that he is more vocal and direct in public about this cause now that other organizations such as Google Ventures are making large investments. This is all good; we need a sea change in the level of public support for rejuvenation research, and their understanding of the prospects for the future. Aging is far from set in stone, and a range of the biotechnologies needed to treat aging and bring it under medical control are on the verge of breaking out into commercial development, or just a few years away from that point. All it takes to turn the stream into a rapids is a little more rain.

Peter Thiel’s quest to find the key to eternal life – Washington Post

Quote:

WP: Why aging?

Thiel: I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing. I think that’s somewhat unusual. Most people end up compartmentalizing, and they are in some weird mode of denial and acceptance about death, but they both have the result of making you very passive. I prefer to fight it. Almost every major disease is linked to aging. One in a thousand get cancer after age 30. Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, and there has been frustratingly slow progress. One-third of people age 85 and older have Alzheimer’s or dementia, and we’re not even motivated to start a war on Alzheimer’s. At the end of the day, we need to do more.

WP: All your philanthropic projects are founded on the idea that there’s something wrong with the way the current system works. What are the challenges you see in biomedical research?

Thiel: I worry the FDA is too restrictive. Pharmaceutical companies are way too bureaucratic. A tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of NIH [National Institutes of Health] spending goes to genuine anti-aging research. The whole thing gets treated like a lottery ticket. Part of the problem is that aging research doesn’t always lend itself to being a great for-profit business, but it’s a very important area for a philanthropic investment. NIH grant-making decisions end up being consensus-oriented, focused on doing things that a peer review committee thinks makes sense. So you end up with a very conservative bias in terms of what gets done. [On the other hand,] the original DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] was phenomenally successful. You had a guy running it, and he just gave out the money. It was more focused on substance and less on the grant-writing process. That’s the direction we should go. I worry that right now, we have people who are very nimble in the art of writing grants who have squeezed out the more creative.

WP: You’re currently funding Cynthia Kenyon, Aubrey de Grey and a number of other researchers on anti-aging. What was it about these individuals and their work that got your attention?

Thiel: They think far outside the conventional wisdom and are far more optimistic about what can be done. I think that’s important to motivate the research.

WP: How long is long enough? Is there an optimal human life span?

Thiel: I believe if we could enable people to live forever, we should do that. I think this is absolute. There are many people who stop trying because they think they don’t have enough time. Because they are 85. But that 85-year-old could have gotten four PhDs from 65 to 85, but he didn’t do it because he didn’t think he had enough time. If it’s natural for your teeth to start falling out, then you shouldn’t get cavities replaced? In the 19th century, people made the argument that it was natural for childbirth to be painful for women and therefore you shouldn’t have pain medication. I think the nature argument tends to go very wrong. . . . I think it is against human nature not to fight death.

WP: Assuming the breakthrough in eternal life doesn’t come in our lifetime, what do you hope to have achieved through your philanthropy before you die? What would you like to be remembered for?

Thiel: I think if we made some real progress on the aging thing, I think that would be an incredible legacy to have. I have been fortunate with my business successes, so I would like to encourage, coordinate and help finance the many great scientists and entrepreneurs that will help bring about the technological future. It’s sort of not important for me to get credit for the specific discoveries, but if I can act as a supporter, mentor and financier, I think that feels like the right thing.

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries. 
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“Death is Wrong” Reviewed by Robert W. Franson of Troynovant

“Death is Wrong” Reviewed by Robert W. Franson of Troynovant

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Read the excellent new review by science-fiction author and literary essayist Robert W. Franson of Death is Wrong. The review is published on Mr. Franson’s website Troynovant, which offers extensive literary and philosophical analysis.

Here is an excerpt: “Death is Wrong is a short book, clearly written and easy to read. I like the personal approach: it doesn’t talk down and is quite accessible. A striking concept presented quite reasonably and supported matter-of-factly. There are apt quotations from a variety of thinkers, including several of my personal heroes of modern times: Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, Friedrich Nietzsche. These people and some scenes from nature are nicely illustrated by Wendy Stolyarov. For readers who want a little more about the background concepts, there is a brief Appendix discussing the seven basic causes of senescence, such as cell loss and atrophy. There are some links for further learning. It’s a good book, entertaining and thoughtful, and certainly gives us a challenge to think about.”

Updates on a Crowdfunded Mouse Lifespan Study – Article by Reason

Updates on a Crowdfunded Mouse Lifespan Study – Article by Reason

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The New Renaissance Hat
Reason
January 3, 2015
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For all that I think it isn’t an efficient path forward, one likely to produce meaningful results in moving the needle on human life spans, there is considerable interest in testing combinations of existing drugs and various dietary compounds in mice to see if healthy life is extended. I expect that as public interest grows in the prospects for aging research to move from being an investigative to an interventional field, wherein researchers are actively trying to treat aging, we’ll only see more of this. There is certainly a sizable portion of the research community who think that the the best path ahead is in fact the pharmaceutical path of drug discovery in search of ways to slightly slow the aging process. To their eyes slightly slowing the aging process is all that is plausible, and adding five healthy years to life by 2035 would be a grand success. Google’s Calico initiative looks set to take that path, for example, which I is why I’m not all that hopeful it will produce meaningful results in terms of healthy years gained and ways to help the old suffer less.

There is a considerable overlap between researchers aiming to gently slow aging via drug discovery and researchers whose primary motivation is still investigation, not intervention: to produce a complete catalog of metabolism and how it changes with age, and it’s someone else’s problem to actually use that data. So we have, for example, the Interventions Testing Program at the NIA. This program was long fought for by researchers tired of the lack of rigor in most mouse life span studies, and the people involved are essentially engaged in replacing a lot of carelessly optimistic past results with the realistic view that very little other than calorie restriction and exercise actually does reliably extend life in mice if you go about the studies carefully. This is good science, but it isn’t the road to extended human life spans: it instead has much more to do with understanding the process of aging at a very detailed level. That task is vast and will take a very long time even in this age of computing and biotechnology.

To my eyes the right way to go is the repair approach: build the biotechnologies needed to repair the forms of cellular and molecular damage produced as a side-effect of the normal operation of metabolism, and which clearly distinguish old tissues from young tissues. If you want rejuvenation of the old, a path to adding decades to healthy life, and to eliminate all age-related disease, then repair is the way to go. Fix the damage, don’t just tinker with the engines of life in ways that might possibly slow down damage accumulation just a little. This strategic direction can allow researchers to largely bypass the great complexity of the progression of aging and focus instead on fixing things that are already well known and well cataloged. But I say this a lot, and will continue to do so until more than just a small fraction of the research community agree with me.

Back to mice and lifespan studies: in this day and age institutional research is far from the only way to get things done. Early-stage research is becoming quite cheap as the tools of biotechnology improve, and the global economy allows quality scientific work to be performed in locations that are lot less expensive than the US or Western Europe. We have crowdfunding, the internet, and a supportive community, which means that any group of ambitious researchers can raise a few tens of thousands of dollars and set an established lab in the Ukraine to running a set of mouse lifespan studies. So that happened back in 2013, and has been ongoing since then despite the present geopolitical issues in that part of the world. It is perhaps worth noting that this is the same group that found no effect on longevity from transfusions of young blood plasma into old mice. The studies mentioned below used pre-aged mice, starting at old age as a way to try to discover effects more rapidly, an approach that is fairly widespread.

I am a little mouse and I want to live longer: updates

Quote:

Dear contributors, we wish you a happy New Year! We are sorry to be taken by a very-expected but very time-consuming c60 lifespan study to digest the data in a way to make the long report we had announced. So, for the New Year and in order for you not to wait longer, please find at least the main results so far:

1) 23 months old C57BL6 mice received a mixture of 6 therapies that had already been reported to extend the lifespan of mice: Aspirin; Everolimus (mTOR inhibitor, similar action as rapamycin); Metoprolol (beta blocker); Metformin (anti-diabetic drug); Simvastatin (lowers LDL cholesterol); Ramipril (ACE inhibitor).

The drugs were given in the food, at doses that had been reported to extend lifespan … when taken individually. Some people are given that combination of medicines so we hoped that the drug interaction would not be too damaging, and we had wondered if some lifespan synergy within some of these drugs could lead to an overall high lifespan (e.g. if the different drugs improve different functions). But we observed a lifespan reduction in males and in females.

2) In the food of some remaining females we mixed low doses of 4 medications against cardiovascular conditions: Simvastatin; Thiazide (lowers blood pressure); Losartan potassium (angiotensin receptor blocker, lowers blood pressure); Amlodipine (calcium channel blocker, lowers blood pressure).

The question was: taken at a low-to-medium dose, could these drugs that many aged persons take have some overall preventive effect? We transposed to mice an ongoing polypill clinical trial in the UK, using a basic human-mouse conversion scale. Again, a decrease in lifespan was observed.

3) Adaptations of the first combination of drugs actually extended lifespan!

We started at age 18 months instead of 23 months, reduced the dose (as a function of weight) and gave a) the 6 compounds b) ‘only’ aspirin+metformin+everolimus. The results are to be analysed in greater details as we haven’t analyzed the latest data yet. Also, whatever the refined analysis, we would already like to indicate that it would be good to reproduce the experiment in some other conditions, e.g. hybrid mice; in particular as the mortality rates of these mice was higher than the first series (but in a consistent way that supports the life extending effect).

4) Ongoing C60 experiments

After many difficulties in setting the experiment (cross-border transportation in current geopolitical times, checking absorption in mice/ detecting C60/correct source of C60, administration tried in food and replaced by gavage, training for gavage and various measures) we have transposed the popular lifespan test with c60 fullerenes reported in rats by Baati et al. to mice (CBA strain, common in the lab) and with more animals (N=17 per group). There are three groups (gavage of water, of olive oil, of C60 dissolved in olive oil), there are … a lot of health measures and a lot of gavage (at the beginnings of the experiment as administrations are first very frequent and then gradually less frequent). Given that the experiment starts with mid-aged animals, the results are expected for the beginning of 2016.

The original C60 results from a few years back were greeted with some skepticism in the research community, given the very large size of the effect claimed and the small number of animals tested. There was, I think, also a certain annoyance: now that someone had made what was on the face of it an unlikely claim of significant lifespan extension via administration of C60, then some other group was going to have to waste their time in disproving it. We’ll see how that all turns out, I suppose. This is science as it works in practice.

At some point the broad structural classes of research illustrated by the Interventions Testing Program and this crowdfunded mouse study will meet in the middle, and the process of funding and organizing scientific programs will be a far more complicated, dynamic, and public affair than is presently the case. I think this will be for the better. All that we have we owe to science, and a majority of the public thinks all too little of the work that will determine whether they live in good health or suffer and die a few decades from now. The more they can see what is going on, the better for all of us in the end, I think.

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries. 
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Why Do We Advocate for Rejuvenation Research? – Article by Reason

Why Do We Advocate for Rejuvenation Research? – Article by Reason

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The New Renaissance Hat
Reason
November 24, 2014
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Yesterday, I had occasion to spend six hours or so in the emergency room of a medical center largely focused on treating serious conditions that are most prevalent in old people. A part of that experience by necessity involved listening to the comings, goings, and conversations of those present. These are not private places: they are typically divided visually by screens but with no way to avoid overhearing the staff and patients. The people there are generally not too concerned about privacy in the immediate sense in any case, having far more pressing matters to focus upon.

So, by proxy, one gets to experience small and somewhat wrenching slices of other people’s lives. It is very easy for even those who follow aging research and speak up for rejuvenation treatments to forget just how hard it is to be very old. It’s one thing to know about the catalog of pain, suffering, and loss of capabilities, the conditions we’d like to find ways to turn back, and another to watch it in action. It is, really, a terrible thing to be frail.

A fellow was brought in a little while after I arrived, a 90-something man who looked a lot better on the exterior than perhaps your mental picture of a 90-something individual might be. Tall, and surprisingly lacking in wrinkles stretched out on the rolling gurney under blankets, a mess of cables, and an oxygen mask. That he had fallen was what I heard from the conversation of the medics, and was in pain. He cried out several times as he was moved from the gurney. It took some time and care to do it without hurting him more, given his weakness.

He seemed confused at first, but that was just my misperception: you try being 90 and in pain some time and see how well you do while you’re being moved around and told to hold this and let go of that. The fellow answered the bevy of questions the receiving staff had for him, but the thing that caught at me was the time he took with the answers, and the questions he just missed. He was coherent, even quite sharp at times, not on any more painkillers than a handful of Tylenol, as I later heard, but he clearly struggled with something that we younger folk all take for granted: parse the question, find the information, form up a reply and speak it. Cognitive ability in all these areas becomes ever less efficient with old age, and there’s something hollowing about hearing what is clearly a capable guy set back for a dozen seconds by a short question about one of the details of his fall. The medic repeated the question a few times and in different ways, which was clearly just making the information overload worse.

It sticks with you to be the observer in this situation and clearly and suddenly realize that one day that faltering older person will be you, trying and often failing to force your mind into the necessary connections rapidly enough for the younger people around you. I know this, but knowing it and having it reinforced by being there are two very different things. An aged person is no less intelligent, far more experienced, wiser and all the rest, but the damage to the structure of the brain that occurs even in those without dementia means that making use of all of that in the way it deserves is near insurmountable.

The fellow’s 60-something daughter arrived a little later to provide support and fill in more of the details. A story was conveyed in bits and pieces: that he was near blind now, and just about too frail to walk safely, even with a frame. The blindness explained a great deal of what had sounded to my ignorant ears as confusion in the earlier part of the fellow’s arrival: we assume all too many things about those around us, such as the use of sight in an unfamiliar environment, or the ability to walk, or think quickly – and all of this is taken from us by aging. The fellow lived with his wife still, and she was of a similar age to him. His wife was not there because she herself was too frail to be undertaking even a short trip at such short notice. That seemed to me a harsh blow on top of the rest of what old age does to you. At some point you simply cannot do everything you’d want to as a partner. You are on the sidelines and at the point at which your other half is most likely to die, you are most likely unable to be there.

In this case the fellow was in no immediate danger by the sound of it. By good luck this was in no way likely to be a fatal accident, but rather another painful indignity to be endured as a part of the downward spiral of health and ability at the end of life. Once you get to the point at which simply moving from room to room bears a high risk of accident, and this is by no means unusual for a mentally capable person in their 90s, then it really is just a matter of time before you cannot live for yourself with only minimal assistance.

When talking with his daughter while he waited on a doctor and medical assistants to come and go with tests and updates, the fellow was much faster in his responses, though this was interrupted by a series of well-meaning but futile attempts to ease his pain by changing his position, each as much an ordeal as the move from the gurney had been. The conversation between father and daughter had the sense of signposts on well-worn paths, short exchanges that recapitulated the high points of many discussions that had come before. She wanted her father to move into an assisted living facility, and this fall was the latest in a line of examples as to why it was past the time for this – she simply could not provide all of the support needed on her own. She wasn’t even strong enough herself to be able to safely get him back up on his feet after a fall. He was concerned about cost and the difficulties of moving, uncertainties and change. They went back and forth on this for a while. “We have to accept that it’s just going to be more expensive as we get older,” she said at one point, and he replied “I think you’re getting the picture now,” and laughed. There wasn’t much to laugh about, but we can all do it here and there under these circumstances. I believe it helps.

I walked out of there after my six hours of hurry up and wait was done. They were still there, and whenever it is he leaves to go home it is unlikely it will be on his own two feet. But this is a scene I’ll no doubt be revisiting at some point in the future, some decades from now, playing the other role in this small slice of life. What comes around goes around, but I’d like it to be different for me, and more importantly to be different for millions of others a lot sooner than my old age arrives.

Which leads to this: why does Fight Aging! exist? Why do we do this? Why advocate, why raise funds for research programs into ways to treat aging that may take decades to pay off? We do this because we can help to create a future in which there will be no more emergency rooms like the one I visited, no conversations about increasing disability, no pain, and no struggles to answer questions as quickly as one used to. No profound frailty. All these things will be removed by the advent of therapies that can effectively repair the causes of aging, curing and preventing frailty and age-related disease, and the sooner this happens the more people will be spared.

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries. 
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MILE Activist Contest II Entry: Life-Extension Game Developers’ Matching Fund – Post by G. Stolyarov II

MILE Activist Contest II Entry: Life-Extension Game Developers’ Matching Fund – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
Gennady Stolyarov II
August 18, 2014
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This is Mr. Stolyarov’s entry into the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) Activist Contest II.

Computer games are a powerful way to spread the message of indefinite life extension to a new demographic. By engaging the players through art, concepts, and gameplay elements expressing the feasibility and desirability of indefinite lifespans, computer games can attract interest in life-extension activism that will be perceived as leisure and entertainment by those who engage in it.

If I had $5,000 to devote to raising awareness about people, projects, and organizations wording toward indefinite life extension, I would create a matching fund for fundraising projects pertaining to life-extension-themed computer games currently in development. This Life-Extension Game Developers’ Matching Fund (LEGDMF) would match, dollar for dollar, the funds raised via Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and other crowdfunding platforms by game developers whose works would meet the following criteria:

(i) The game should promote and express the message of indefinite life extension in a favorable way.

(ii) The game should enable the player to find out about some of the people, projects, and organizations working toward indefinite life extension.

(iii) An alpha, beta, or demo version of the game should exist and be playable by the general public.

(iv) The game developers must be willing to publicly disclose the amount of funds raised, either through a fundraising platform or through information they post directly on a publicly viewable website.

A great example of a life-extension-themed game, whose gameplay also deeply integrates the pursuit of longevity escape velocity, is LEV: The Game , which is currently in the midst of an Indiegogo fundraiser. (For more details, read my recent article about LEV: The Game.) LEV: The Game would be one of the efforts, but not necessarily the only effort, which could be greatly aided by the LEGDMF.

The purpose of a matching fund is to bring in additional resources by enabling any donor to leverage the impact of his or her contribution. Instead of selecting eligible games through a contest where a panel of judges or the contest organizer(s) would decide upon the winning entries, a matching fund enables donors from the general public to vote with their money and helps these votes to matter more in influencing real-world outcomes. The LEGDMF would continue to match contributions to eligible game-development projects, dollar for dollar, until the $5,000 fund is exhausted.

An advantageous feature of the LEGDMF would be that all the money could be given directly to eligible game-development projects. Fundraising platforms would collect fees ranging from 4% to 9% of the funds donated, and payment platforms – such as PayPal or payment processors employed by banks – would collect additional fees. However, it would be unlikely that the total fees would exceed 15% of the funds contributed, meaning that more than $4,250 (85% of $5,000) would substantively benefit game developers in their efforts to create engaging, immersive, and entertaining portrayals of the life-extension message.

Success for the LEGDMF would be measured by the ability to successfully fund the creation of a life-extension-themed game (or even multiple games) and, ultimately, by the release of such a game to the general public and the amount of engagement (number of plays or number of downloads) that the game would receive. A nearer-term measure of success would be the ability to attract sufficient interest in life-extension-themed games as to raise $5,000 in independent contributions from the general public, which would exhaust the LEGDMF through matching donations – leading to a total of $10,000 in funds invested in this worthwhile goal of informing new demographics about life extension through an exciting and innovative medium.

The demographics that could potentially be attracted by life-extension-themed computer games would include anybody who plays computer games for entertainment. Gamers come in all ages, but there are many children and teenagers among them, who could become vital members of the next generation of scientists, technologists, philosophers, and activists working in pursuit of indefinite longevity. These individuals would discover the life-extension-games once they are released on various online sites. Depending on the game, these could be flash-game sites that allow the games to be played for free, or these could be sites offering files for download. While no game can guarantee a specific number of players, games that are designed well and have an innovative premise would attract a large user base through the appeal of the gameplay itself. A game that catches on and achieves a steady following could even revolutionize the public perception of indefinite life extension and bring the idea of pursuit indefinite lifespans into the cultural mainstream.